For this reason or the other, we're really not seeing much excitement about The Ascent (game). Not to be mistaken with the 1977 Soviet drama, of course. We've got a few ideas on why this might be the case, but the good news is that you very well should be hyped for The Ascent.

This open-world action RPG is set in a far-future cyberpunk universe, and it seems to share a lot of its DNA with classic hack 'n' slash titles. Think Diablo, Grim Dawn, Path of Exile. The obvious difference lies in its gunplay-oriented combat loop. Of course, there's also the fact that it's ridiculously beautiful, which we bet you didn't see coming from a top-down twin-stick shooter.

Down below, we're going to go over everything we know about The Ascent in short order. From its upcoming release date all the way to system requirements and genre novelties. By the time we're done, we think you'll agree with our general assessment of the game! Now, let's get to it.

Pre-Order The Ascent today and snag a sweet discount while you're at it!

The Ascent Game - What Is It?

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As we already suggested, The Ascent game is a whole bunch of things. Here are a few modifiers we'd use to describe it in the shortest possible order: it's an isometric tactical open-world cyberpunk twin-stick shooter. Whew. Honestly, we're not even sure if we successfully covered all the niches that this game is about to tackle. From what gameplay we've seen, there's some cover shooting, too, so who knows!

Set on the mechanized world of Veles, The Ascent is a far-future dystopia. Whereas, say, Cyberpunk 2077 is a reasonably close approximation of our own reality in 2021, The Ascent goes way beyond that. This is the kind of cyberpunk that has aliens, which isn't really the default for the sub-genre.

Another feature of the game that's surprised us, in particular, is the fact that it's a fully-fledged open-world role-playing game. There's a huge sandbox overworld for players to explore and travel through, which is far from a given in the twin-stick niche.

Overall, it's clear right off the bat that The Ascent is anything but a bog-standard isometric shooter.

The Ascent Steam Release Date

As of right now, The Ascent is set and primed to come out on July 29th. Not a long way to go, now.

Multiplayer Availability

Finally, there's the matter of multiplayer. We're happy to report that The Ascent will support up to four-player cooperative multiplayer sessions simultaneously, which is a big boon for those of us who might've played similar ARPGs with friends in the past.

What Makes The Ascent Special?

Now, it's time to go over what truly makes The Ascent interesting.

First, there's the fact that the game world is ridiculously destructible. Remember how XCOM 2 handled building damage? Yeah, that's the sort of stuff you can expect out of The Ascent. No word yet on whether it's purely cosmetic, mind, but it's definitely very impressive.

On top of this comes the game's unique aiming system. Like any other twin-stick shooter under the sun, you can target center-mass and shoot enemies down the regular way. However, you can also hold right-click to turn on the game's high-aim mode, which will allow you to target the enemies' weak spots and critical areas.

A more granular aiming system also comes in handy while taking cover, because The Ascent leans heavily into its tactical shooter features. Namely, you can take cover if needed, and blind-fire when you're being rushed. Not very innovative on its own, to be sure, but it's not a common sight in this particular genre.

Why aren't more people talking about The Ascent?

It's just a theory, mind, but we believe that The Ascent game might be getting mixed up with other, previously released cyberpunk-themed twin-stick shooters. 2017's Ruiner, for one, is really similar to The Ascent at a glance. Further, twin-stick shooters haven't been able to capture the mainstream audience appeal for decades now. It's hardly a surprise that such a major release would go under the radar compared to, say, Scarlet Nexus, Battlefield 2042, or - hell - Elden Ring.

Then there's the fact that a certain huge cyberpunk-themed release recently imploded in the most miserable way possible. That did put a dampener on all things cyberpunk-themed, didn't it? Even though The Ascent is closer to something like Ghostrunner, this isn't necessarily obvious at a glance. The end result, then, is a general distaste for the genre until the dust settles.

Regardless, there's little doubt in our mind that The Ascent will prove its worth once it's out. The game looks, feels, and plays amazingly well. Provided that the developers managed to execute their open-world experience well, The Ascent is bound to be a smash-hit.

The Ascent Game Technical Overview

Now for the technical bits! You've probably noticed by now that The Ascent game looks suspiciously good. As in - remarkably so. With sharp, well-defined assets and a stellar approach to volumetric, any given screenshot of the game really is a sight to behold. But, what does that mean for the recommended PC system specs? Does the game actually feature some sort of raytracing? Well, let us explain!

PC System Requirements

Thankfully, we've been afforded a reasonably detailed look at what makes The Ascent tick. It should come as no surprise the game that the game won't be featured on any of our low-spec gaming top-lists anytime soon. Quite the opposite, as we've got the RTX 2070 as the recommended GPU...

Minimum Hardware Spec

Recommended Hardware Spec

Now, notice that the recommended spec has some unknowns attached. This isn't a mistake, as the official Steam listing - at the time of writing - has those exact same question marks in place. This makes us believe that the CPU itself isn't all that important, and that your GPU will definitely be doing the heavy lifting here.

Raytracing Availability

Given that The Ascent features RTX 2070 as the recommended GPU model, and seeing its advanced shadows, reflections, and lighting, it's not hard to surmise that the game features raytracing. This is correct, as the game will offer full support for both raytracing and Nvidia's own temporal upscaling technique; Deep Learning Super Sampling.

Those who've been keeping up with our blog will know that we're big fans of DLSS. It's a genuinely remarkable technology that will easily bolster your framerates at a minimal loss of visual quality - if there's any loss at all. Remember that Death Stranding looked significantly better with DLSS on than it did at native-level rendering.

As some of you surely know, AMD's own FidelityFX Super Resolution has recently launched, and it offers a similar albeit worse approach to upscaling. More importantly, though, FSR is open for implementation across a far larger array of hardware, since it doesn't rely on RTX graphics cards' Tensor Cores to do its upscaling. No word on whether this tech will make its way to The Ascent, we're sorry to say.

Final Thoughts

We find ourselves really excited to play The Ascent game towards the end of the month. While isometric shooters are a dime a dozen nowadays, The Ascent promises to deliver on virtually all fronts, and with gusto. The game is firing on all cylinders, from its fascinating open world all the way to its remarkably good graphics. Then there's the ridiculously cool physics integration and great gunplay, too. All in all, it's been a long while since we've last been so hyped about a game such as this.

If you find yourself underwhelmed still, that's fine - we understand that not everyone enjoys this genre! To that end, perhaps you'd be interested in checking out some of our other content? Here are a few recommendations!

Otherwise, stay tuned to our Community Hub. Just this last weekend, we ran a special site-wide sale for the 4th of July. We've got big plans for our future deals and discounts, too, so it'll be worth your while. Have fun!

Pre-Order The Ascent today and snag a sweet discount while you're at it!

For this reason or the other, we’re really not seeing much excitement about The Ascent (game). Not to be mistaken with the 1977 Soviet drama, of course. We’ve got a few ideas on why this might be the case, but the good news is that you very well should be hyped for The Ascent. This open-world action […]