What if culture just stopped in the 1980s? In the wake of a civilisation-ending environmental cataclysm that forced humanity to quite literally freeze itself in time until the planet could (hopefully) recover, the world of Ascendant (formerly Ascendant Infinity) is stuck in the 80s, with all the big hair, lycra, and music very much intact. The difference is that, outside of protective shelter of a few Earthtrees, it’s now a hellscape out there with mutated monsters, and scarce resources that your tree’s inhabitants need to fight over using all the Biopunk tech they have to hand.
With Ascendant heading into an open beta weekend in early August, we’ve been hands on once again to check it out.
If we want to be brutally honest, the games industry is rarely about the next big thing. The battle royale genre is a case in point: after PUBG and Fortnite, the only real success story has been Apex Legends, despite probably hundreds of attempts. Of course, there does always need to be that spark, that game that popularises a new idea, and Ascendant has the potential to pull that off, even if it’s building off another established formula.
Strictly speaking, Ascendant is an extraction shooter, where you get in, fight to grab some loot and then try to get it back out to safely extract as other teams bear down on you and try to wrestle it away – the Biocore carrier emits a ping that pinpoints them on the map for others. It’s a format popularised by Escape from Tarkov, but Ascendant mixes it with the general feel of Apex Legends and throws a whole host of other ideas into the pot that should help it really stand out from the crowd.
PlayFusion is trying to brand this as the first Adaption Shooter, and you can absolutely see where they’re coming from in that regard. There is a single map in the game to start, but where a battle royale gives you the full map to start with before the storm rolls in, Ascendant takes this one map, locks and opens certain areas and avenues, throws in interactive elements and modifiers and tells you to… well, adapt.
There’s some real Hunger Games vibes to some of these, with the possibility of being able to launch missiles from a command tower, send EMP bombs to dampen shields on a part of the map, or use a huge armoured vehicle with flamethrower, artillery and more on it. It’s immensely satisfying to be able to pull the handle on a rocket barrage to land on another team and see damage and knockdowns ping on your screen.
There’s a lot to learn here, and that’s going to take a good few matches as different variables come into play, but as you learn these elements, you can also start to read what other teams are doing. If a rocket barrage is launched, then you can immediately pinpoint where that team is and make a choice to go and attack them or steer clear and do something else – with a pool of respawns and forward bases to capture, you can be pretty bold in your decision here.
With a blend of devs and playtesters in the lobby alongside us, there were some interesting strategies playing out through our two matches. On one occasion, there was one player from another team playing the role of disruptor, running around and harassing us as we explored the underground passageways. On another, one team actually managed to grab a later Biocore and then tried to use that core’s ability as a way to beef up an attack on an earlier core that was still in play.
Another big element to wrap your head around is your character build. There’s no defined classes here, but you rather have up to four perks equipped at once, deeply upgradeable and customisable weapons, and Biocore abilities to effectively create your own class. The intention from PlayFusion is to have breadth as opposed to depth, so newcomers to the game can quickly get to the dominant meta or experiment with new builds without being at a sudden deficit.
Not everything is going to be in your hands at the start of a match. You start with a base weapon, but anything that you’ve customised will then have a price tag on it, with more powerful weaponry set to cost you a pretty penny from what you earn in a match, and picked up from vending machines at various points. Biocore abilities, such as a powerful shockwave or a big leap across the map, are then only active while you’re actually holding a core and have the target on your back.
What’s also fairly distinct for this kind of game is that there’s a social hub to hang out in between matches. Instead of having a basic menu screen, you head back to your home tree and a social space called The Shade for up to 24 players. It’s similar to visiting the Tower in Destiny 2, letting you run around between specific vendors and talking to characters who can give you missions and rewards – there’s 60 NPCs who can hand out fairly simple quest chains that, while they won’t affect the core gameplay, might nudge you toward using a particular weapon type, or something similarly straightforward.
But there’s a more playful side to this as well. Already in the hub is a hide & seek game that players can sign up to take part in before trying to disappear off to different corners of the map – it plays like a classic game of Infection or Zombie, without guns – and they’re working on adding little RC car races, and more.
Behind the scenes there’s actually a bit of social matchmaking going on, with the game looking at your friends list, keeping a tally of people you’ve played with before, and trying to make it so there’s names you already or will come to recognise. When the matchmaking turns to be skill-based, there’s a different weighting between casual and ranked play, with casual emphasising K/D ratios and damage output and ranked more the actual objective play.
And there’s already plans for how events can mix up the main Biocore hunt. While the game is built around having four teams of three, there’s really no limits to player count, as far as PlayFusion is concerned, so there could easily be a weekend event with two teams of ten, ten teams of two, and the like.
While the somewhat cheesy 80s aesthetic is the hook, there’s plenty going on with Ascendant that helps differentiate it from other extraction shooters, from how the map and modifiers are remixed for each match, to the social space that you can mess around in between games. If you’re looking for a fresh alternative to a battle royale or extraction staple that’s getting long in the tooth, then you should definitely check out Ascendant with its open beta weekend.
