If you have not heard, Indie developer PlayFusion will soon drop a fresh arena shooter. Ascendant, set in a biopunk world, provides the player with a multi-3-on-3-team capture-the-flag first-person experience focused on fair matches, fun, and gimmicks.
When I heard about the opportunity to preview Ascendant, I will be honest and admit I was skeptical, given their competition. Putting this aside, I love a good shooter and was eager to try Ascendant’s new take on gunplay and strategy.
Background, Lore, and the Aesthetics of Ascendant
In Ascendant, the story and lore take a backseat as it is heavily focused on competitive yet fun team-oriented shooter combat, but there are other aspects. Basically, human civilization crumbles from natural disasters, and your character gets put to cryosleep and wakes up years later than intended in an 80s-inspired uninhabitable world. This leaves the door open for Playfusion’s creativity to unfold and create a life of craziness and a non-practical yet relatable in-game ecosystem and society.
Although Ascendant appears cartoonish and playful, it has a level of adult visuals and comedy, leaving the player with a mixed bag of a world that somehow works. The game doesn’t take itself too seriously, and it doesn’t waste time proving it to you with dialect, tongue, music, and more.
There is a home base, or town, underneath the unique Earthtree that casts shade, creating a safe environment for humans to survive. Anyway, the show’s stars are the Biocores, which act as the flag in Capture the Flag (the only game mode of Ascendant). The Biocores give earthlings supreme powers that help them survive in their new cruel home.
Not only does the town act as a holding ground for players to interact before queuing into a match, but it also acts as a hub or main menu. All your in-game needs can be found here, such as weapon and character customization, perk and weapon loadouts, and training grounds, and you can even play mini-games like hide and seek with your fellow server friends.
It was enjoyable and exciting to run around the town rather than sit on a mundane menu with tabs. Playfusion wanted to elevate what a shooter is meant to look and feel like socially, and the town is an effective way of removing pesky holding pen lobbies or scrolling on your phone waiting for your friend to ready up.
Character customization presents a wide variety of clothing and physical attribute choices, all of which are unlockable by playing the game, not by paying. Suppose you are skeptical about shelling out dollars on dollars for another pay-to-win game. In that case, the developer has given players fair play by returning to in-game unlockables, cosmetics, and in-game upgrades. Hopefully, this remains the premise, as they show numerous grayed-out areas in the customization menu.
Gameplay Mechanics and Other Features Worth Noting
In my time with Ascendant, I had the time to tackle two full matches, which lasted about 20 or so minutes. It is four teams of 3 rushing to capture Biocores that spawn one at a time sequentially in different areas on a large map. The Biocores appear using procedurally generated systems that PlayFusion claims as “procedurally unlocking.” The map doesn’t change in shape or structure, but different aspects are available for each match, such as the location of in-game events, stores or shops, doors and rooms, and available weapon kits or vehicles.
Each player can choose perks before the game begins, along with their preferred weapon customization and Biorcore ability. Did I mention that holding the Biocore grants you a special move? Well, I only had the time to try the Blast Wave, and I almost landed a team wipe.
The weapon modification gets pretty deep with various types of ammo and mods that alter recoil, spread, fire rate, and more, but there are few weapons to choose from, and the designs seem rather stale. I can see how having a visually modular weapon makes the game mechanic of deep weapon customization a bit more practical.
The kicker is that your starter weapon is in the standard tier, as there are different tiers of weapons you have to fight to unlock in-game. Since Playfusion wanted to eliminate pay-to-win gameplay, each match of Ascendant requires the collection of “Power” located around the map by killing NPCs and competitors or finding it placed around the map. This power grants you and your teams a form of in-game currency to cash in at the stores procedurally located on the map. Your team collects power together, but you each spend separately.
I came to like the in-game shop mechanic, as it acted as a fair way to deter players from constantly focusing on the objective and working on powering up their shields, buying ammo, or buying top-tier weaponry procedurally gifted by the way you play. Instead of wasting all of your lives, why not level up and face the foes and the biocore with an edge? The choice is always yours in Ascendent. Just know that focusing too much on one task can hinder your team’s focus on actually getting to the Biocore.
If I’m giving my opinions on the gameplay and flow right now, it’s fun, easy to pick up, and provides a great feel of variety the entire time the game clock runs. On the negative, Ascendant is very slow-paced and gimmicky in most ways. I also needed help understanding which team was in the lead, as no prominent HUD elements were present. This even led to us losing one of our demo games; I thought I was in the lead, but we were losing, and we never knew.
Each match has plenty of areas to loot and protect, such as the basement covered in deployable poison traps or the upper-deck airstrike room that you can surprise on your enemies, but rarely did I find any combat in the spots Playfusion wants the combat to happen in unless the Biocore is there.
Otherwise, Ascendant has many fun mechanics, such as melee attacks granting shields, shooting doors to open them, trading off the noise for spending power, spawning at forward operating bases, and in-game maps to spy and control.
Overall, the environment was always visually appealing, full of depth and perspective, height and verticality, and did I mention no falling damage?
Final Thoughts About Ascendant
Ascendant has a lot of room for improvement regarding the speed and flow of each match. The gameplay seems too relaxed, but maybe that should change as a community and gameplay meta evolves. The gun kits and loadouts often require reloading; in most cases, players have shields, and there are many ways to escape player encounters, creating stalemates and unsatisfying conclusions. Not to mention, shots are challenging to land due to the nature of the movement.
Granted these negatives before release, there are many bright areas that Ascendant does well, and I can’t say I didn’t have a blast playing the game. Possibly, fostering more players, more time in development, and a wider array of opinions will open up this game in ways that PlayFusion didn’t intend to.
We live in a free game society nowadays, and if you showed me this title and asked me how much it costs, I would guess $0. Granted, once I hear that there are no paid unlockables to keep the game fair, that’s something to consider at an early access price of $30
Ascendant is coming soon to PC via Steam and is planned to be released on console after the PC launch. If you want to get your hands on the game pre-release, look out for the Ascendant beta, which will be released on August 3 and 4. Capture those Biocores, everyone.
