Ascendant.com (previously known as just Ascendant) advertises itself as the world’s first adaption shooter, claiming to shake up each match with game-changing events. And although the squad-based shooter is good–I think it might even have the capacity to be great–it doesn’t seem to deliver what’s advertised on the tin. At its core, Ascendant.com feels like a solid shooter with an engaging capture-the-flag gameplay loop, but the various in-match events I experienced didn’t impact the flow of the game to the extent that I needed to change up my strategy between games. Ascendant.com has all the markings of being a good time but doesn’t seem to be all that different from any existing squad-based first-person shooter out there.
Each match of Ascendant.com puts you into a team of three and tasks your squad with hunting down one of the various biocores scattered about its map. While hunting these cores down, you can take the time to complete optional objectives–kill hapless wildlife to earn in-match currency, for example, or discover spawn points that will allow you or your allies to get back into a fight faster. It’s up to you whether you prefer to run straight for one of the various biocores or spend time outfitting yourself in case you run into one of the opposing teams. Once your team has successfully nabbed a biocore, you have to make the long walk back to your squad’s original spawn point, where you will defend the biocore for several minutes while it extracts. The team with the most biocores extracted at the end of the match wins.
Calling in an airstrike can be a quick way to thin the numbers of multiple enemy teams.
There’s an entertaining cat-and-mouse dynamic to this set-up that feels reminiscent of The Finals or other extraction-focused shooters. Your team can choose to be aggressive and go for the closest biocore, play it safe and only go for a biocore once most teams are fighting over a different one, or let other teams handle the heavy lifting and simply steal a biocore from a weakened team. There are a lot of ways to go about completing your objective, and I had just as much fun raucously laughing at my helpless victims as I beat a biocore out of their hands as I did sneaking through a hallway with bated breath on our way to the next biocore.