CYBERPUNK 2077’s disastrous launch last year could have killed the genre but Neon Giant’s The Ascent proves the dystopian sci-fi scene is alive and well.

Like CD Projekt Red’s wonky opus, this twin-stick shooter comes with its own share of bugs but can be excused given The Ascent’s developer numbers fewer than a dozen employees (versus the 1,000-plus of CDPR). Neon Giant’s tiny size makes the game’s astonishing world even more remarkable, a densely packed megacity whose corporate overlords have gone bankrupt, leaving chaos in its wake.

This narrative set-up amounts to little, providing barely a fig-leaf of an excuse for your mercenary to embark on a protracted series of hunt-and-kill quests, playing rival gangs off each other while exterminating waves of feral aliens and mouthy thugs. As if in a sci-fi Diablo, you battle your way to a location, collect loot, upgrade your gear, level yourself up – and head back across the city to repeat it all again.

It’s not that it’s boring – it’s actually quite sharply executed in terms of shooting mechanics. But tactics boil down to entering a combat scenario, backing away from danger and kiting enemies until the last foe falls.

What saves The Ascent from mid-table mundanity is that incredible-looking multi-level cityscape, a riot of neon, bustling streets and throngs of humanity. Sure, the Blade Runner DVD in the Neon Giant office is probably worn out from research. But while The Ascent’s visual style may not be wholly original, its depth and imagination frequently produces amazing vistas.

The same cannot be said of its map design, surely the worst since, um, Cyberpunk 2077. It fails utterly to convey your position in the crowded floor plans, exacerbated by the vague directions offered by many quest-givers and the fixed isometric viewpoint that can’t be rotated. The user interface on Xbox also suffers from tiny text that betrays its origin on PC.

The Ascent feels a bit of a slog in single-player but supports co-op mode with up to four players. You will get impatient as yet another mission resembles the last. But then you round a corner to another startling panorama of the metropolis and almost all is forgiven.