REVIEW : The Ascent – Cyber Heist (PC)
The Ascent was a game that I was quite interested in. A cyberpunk diablo-style shooter is a dream come true for me. However, while the game was mainly great, it was also so problematic that my character was rendered nearly worthless for months after its release, glitched out of executing any hacking necessary by the game. When it was revealed that we would be getting a new story DLC called Cyber Heist, I booted up the game and noticed that my previously unusable character was now functional. It’s about time.
Despite my troubles with bugs, I enjoyed The Ascent. Its main story was forgettable, but the nonstop action, cyberpunk imagery and music, and the skills and augments you could use made this isometric shooter a blast. Still, seeing more content being created for it just over a year later made me curious whether it would continue the events of the main game or turn out to be one extra long side quest. While Cyber Heist does take place after the main game, it is unquestionably more of the latter, with a wonderful new environment but a story that is essentially a three-hour fetch quest.
As Cyber Heist simply adds a new region to explore, new weapons, a new plot campaign, and new side missions, I won’t be revisiting its basic mechanics or fighting systems because nothing has changed. While the title has undergone a few quality-of-life improvements over the last year, such as the ability to transmog your armour, there isn’t anything fundamentally changed here, as this feels more like a content pack release than a semi-sequel.
Cyber Heist lasts between 3-5 hours, depending on how much of its new map, the Dark Playground, you explore. The map is very large, with a few districts to call home, but while we are convinced that this new location is “unlike any area we have been thus far,” it feels very similar to other locales, albeit with a bit more neon and some terrible environmental catastrophe. The plot revolves around you tracking down a scientist who possesses some cutting-edge technology that your customer wishes to obtain. You do have an opponent in the form of a rival contractor, but aside from a few lines of dialogue and one sleek sniper rifle cutscene, they are as hollow as their hollowpoint rounds; all style and no substance.
With foes ranging in level from 30 to 40, Cyber Heist may be substantially more difficult than the main game, with a couple of battles that had me white-knuckling the controller as I rolled and exhausted all of my powers to stay alive. Even though it had been a year since I had delved into The Ascent in any way, I couldn’t tell you whether the perils I encountered were fresh or just recycled adversaries. Regardless, nothing jumped out at me as being new or different from what Cyber Heist was attempting to deliver.
Still, the presence of melee weapons is novel, although I only found three during my entire time with this DLC.
I discovered a baseball bat that was subsequently replaced by something dubbed the Rock Crusher, but those were all discarded until I discovered the Guillotine, a glowing cyberpunk-infused katana that honestly, seldom left my hand. Sure, I’d use my gun occasionally, but this short-length DLC was mostly about my cyberpunk hero and their katana, taking on the world one slice at a time. While the melee weapons are good, I never found a new gun that could compete with what I already possessed. This continued true even after completing the DLC with the same augments, armour, and HD642 Dominator on me at all times.
Apart from the new melee type, the game’s PR write-up mentions new weapons, but I couldn’t tell you whether anything I picked up was new or part of this DLC because nothing came close to matching the stats and power of what I already had.
The main issue with Cyber Heist is that it feels like one lengthy side quest. While the Dark Playground is a decent new setting with one awesome train level, I think it could have been so much more, especially for a paid DLC add-on. Apart from the melee weapons, there’s nothing new here.
REVIEW : Maritime Calling (PC)
