REVIEW — The Ascent: Cyber Heist DLC
If you’re looking for about 3 more hours of the Ascent to play, then you might like to pick up Cyber Heist. You might also pick it up if…
If you’re looking for about 3 more hours of the Ascent to play, then you might like to pick up Cyber Heist. You might also pick it up if you want to support the devs or perhaps try out the beefy melee weapons. I got the Ascent on a deep discount through Humble Monthly so I didn’t feel bad picking up Cyber Heist, and maybe you’re in a similar group as well. If you see Cyber Heist on, maybe say a 50% discount, I think I would definitely recommend it then. Overall, I was happy to buy this DLC just to stick around a bit longer and level up a few more times before putting it down.
But some other things need to be said. I usually like my games (and game-adjacent purchases) to follow a nice 1:1 ratio… I pay a buck, I get an hour of gaming. You can’t stretch Cyber Heist’s base $10 USD to 10 hours. You might be able to stretch it to five hours if you achievement hunt for those level 35 VIP enemies but that’s pretty optional. Time-wise, Cyber Heist is not off to a good start.
This combined with the game-stopping bugs I encountered was very disappointing. I had my fair share of game crashes in the base game, so I thought I knew what to expect… but there are somehow more in the DLC? There’s a mission that spawns waves of enemies that bugged out on completion, so I had to do it all over again. The final boss didn’t spawn on his platform on my second attempt and there wasn’t a boss checkpoint, so on restarting then, I had to grind a 30-minute section again to get to the boss… If Cyber Heist’s main offerings are only about 3 hours, I feel as though it should have been simple to QA test it a bit more before it launched, you know?
The new area, the ‘Dark Playground’ isn’t very big, and the story doesn’t have any cool twists like the main story. I was expecting to learn what all the fuss was about with this main quest line that bombastically opens the DLC, but you get to the end of it all and the game has the audacity to essentially say, “Sorry merc. Can’t tell ya. That’s just the way it is.” So you don’t really get a satisfying narrative conclusion in that regard. Combat is more of the same as the base game, but there’s a heavier emphasis on melee weapons, a new inclusion to the game. Those are fun, but in many end-game combat scenarios, they have so many groups of enemies that melee weapons are impossible to use without getting flatlined.
Speaking of enemies, there are enemies EVERYWHERE and around every corner, just huge dense groups of them. Often I would find myself completing a firefight just to aggro an enemy in the next city section over, and they would waltz over and another fight would happen. This makes traversing the ‘Dark Playground’, really challenging, somewhat difficult, and lightly cumbersome. Without them being absolutely everywhere, this DLC would definitely be half the length, for sure. Made me kind of sad because I really appreciated those serene moments in the base game where I could just appreciate the game's detail, the skyline, etc. You don’t really get that here.
The real value would be in how many superior components you get from playing… I found myself overflowing with them. I had so many that I maxed every weapon I could, still had oodles left over, and am now bottlenecked by needing basic and advanced components. It is terribly unbalanced in that way, though it is probably the developer's way of saying “Play new game plus”.
I played Cyber Heist, I enjoyed it for what it was, but it has its problems, and the devs really need to acknowledge the bugs and perhaps the price before I give it an overflowing recommendation (which is a real tragedy because I love the base game a lot and hope more people play it).
Overall, if you’re looking to stick around the Ascent for a little bit longer with a few new toys in the post-game, then I don’t think you’ll be too disappointed, and the surplus of superior components makes leveling up a few more weapons a cinch. However, I feel like the majority of players would probably find New Game Plus to be more fulfilling than this slightly overpriced, kinda barebones DLC. Off-Brand.
Originally published 28 Sept 2022 at https://www.backloggd.com.