The Ascent presents a pretty fashion-forward dystopia, one where you can choose to offset your hulking robotic servo arms and oversized gun with a tank top that features a cartoon cat or warped smiley face, and disable helmets to keep your mohawk or skull tat visible at all times. The latest update adds transmogrification, letting you give any piece of armor the appearance of a different one, or make it invisible. The Stylist, a shop added to each safe zone, will transmog any equipped armor for a fee.
The latest update also adds eight free items of clothing—streetwear like caps, jeans, t-shirts and so on for you to try out the transmog feature on, as well as the photo mode added in a previous update. It also patches various issues with stability, achievements, and co-op players not being able to hear each other shooting. See the full patch notes for details.
At the same time, a paid DLC called the CyberSec Pack has been released. It gives you two new weapons (a grenade launcher and ballistic burst rifle), four pieces of armor (one torso, one leg, and two headgear options), and four animated weapon skins. If you'd rather live out your Tom Clancy miltech fantasy and look like a filthy corpo agent, this is the gear for you.
The Ascent may have some jarring difficulty spikes, but it's a quality arcade shooter with a setting you'll want to descend into and take screenshots of. As Andy Kelly said in his review, "From the lavish Golden Satori casino to the bleak, dilapidated Black Lake slums, this is a masterclass in creating a sense of place and establishing an atmosphere."
Developers Neon Giant are planning to continue with planned additions like more voice-over for side missions and a new game+ mode.
