The Rise of Game Pass is unplayable on Xbox Series X / S

This is the perfect time to a game like Ascension. There’s not much else to release right now, so there’s more incentive to step through its slow opening to access some of the bigger gameplay in the back half of the game. on Game Pass for PC and Xbox, so you can jump in, try it out, and bounce back with minimal upfront investment. There’s just one catch: cyberpunk action-RPG is a puzzle to play on console.

Yes, the game is a bit janky. No, the two-stick top-down shot doesn’t feel right. But the real problem is that the game is a visual mess to navigate on a conventional TV screen with tons of borderline impossible to read text. None of these issues are exactly new. me and others have been complain about tiny fonts for years now. And it’s clear that while console makers have tried to make porting games from a PC easier than ever before, especially on the Xbox side, the games themselves are rarely optimized for anyone who doesn’t play with a keyboard and mouse while sitting two feet from a giant computer screen.

Ascension has been a big part of the Microsoft Xbox Series X / S marketing push, however. The company listed him as one of its “the largest line of exclusive games of all time”And clearly thought it was worth locking in as a Day 1 Game Pass title as well. And, look, three hours later and I’m still quietly enjoying myself morbidly fascinated by the oppressive details and density of Neon Giant’s take on cyberpunk. At the same time, I have almost no idea what’s going on or how his progression systems work because I can’t fucking read a thing on screen:

While Ascension has a display option in the settings menu to increase the size of the front side, this only seems to work for cutscene subtitles. The ambient conversations in the rest of the world and a cascade of RPG-lite menus remain incomprehensible. A few times, I walked over and stood directly in front of my 50-inch TV to read some flavor text or compare stats on the store’s new armor. Most of the time, I ignore the story completely and dump skill points into random stats. A number of people tell me it’s a perfectly achievable way to play and beat the game. It’s also, frankly, a disappointing way to play.

There are other flaws with the console version. Multiplayer was a bit of a mess. There are also no visual ray tracing or DLSS (super deep learning) features at this time, although they will be added soon. I can accept these compromises for the option of playing filthy sci-fi Diablo– like from the comfort of my couch, however. Maybe one day it will be a real option. For now you can find me surfing Ascension wiki to get a feel for what’s really going on aside from all the looting and augmented fire.