The Ascent was updated for Xbox and Windows 10 Thursday, putting it on parity with the version Steam players have had for nearly two weeks. It fixed some things, but it seems to have broken a lot, too.
First released in late July, The Ascent is a sci-fi twin-stick shooter for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, meant to be played cooperatively by up to four players. Fundamentally, it’s a great game with rock-solid shooting, intriguing RPG mechanics, and an eye-popping cyberpunk setting. But like many recent multiplayer games, it launched with several issues, from the minor (framerate dips) to the major (totally busted multiplayer).
Read More: Cyberpunk Game The Ascent Might Be Blowing Up, But Multiplayer’s Busted
This first major patch—which became available for Steam players on August 6—is a beefy one that purports to fix many of those problems. It claims to have improved stability for local and online co-op and addresses some broken quests that prevented the player from progressing due to specific conditions (say, a quest-essential NPC refusing to respond). It also introduces “a new system to circumvent situations where save files could become corrupted.”
Oh, and there’s ray-tracing for everyone on PC now.
However, with the rollout on Xbox consoles and Windows 10 (the “Xbox Game Pass version”), some people are seeing even more problems. Multiple players say the framerate, which was solid but not perfect, now dips to unplayable levels—around 10fps or lower. Others have reported wipes to the “cyberdeck,” an equipment slot that allows you to beef up your in-game hacking abilities. Some say the game has crashed multiple times. Issues with bugged achievements persist, which developer Neon Giant has acknowledged. And one player even says they completely lost their high-level character when trying to start up a co-op game.
Kotaku reached out to developer Neon Giant for details about a potential follow-up patch—including if it’ll launch across platforms simultaneously—but did not hear back in time for publication.
DISCUSSION
Dang! I put about 5 hours into this game during it’s first week, but have been waiting on functional Raytracing and DLSS to be patched into the GamePass Ult version(GPU?!). Guess I’ll leave this one in the oven for another few weeks. Shame, cause I think it’s neat title.
I have to say though playing Maneater, The Evil Within 2, and Quake has been worth the price of admission. I mean almost all Bethesda titles are now on GaPaUlt on PC, so I have quite a bit to choose from while I wait for Psychonauts 2.