oOo Ascension

Review

Test your reflexes and skills as you solve puzzles, race against the clock and test your patients in this rage-inducing game from developers, Kenny Creanor and Extra Mile Studios.

There are nine different stages, with each stage consisting of ten levels, so that’s ninety levels of pure rage-inducing puzzle-solving, racing against the clock. Every level is in the shape of a ball or sphere and each level in a stage follows a similar theme of puzzles or obstacles getting in your way of reaching the end.

The first levels start off easy, where you’ll manoeuvre your ship from your starting point, indicated by a small yellow platform, and your goal is to reach the small blue platform in the fastest time possible. In between your start and finish points you’ll find obstacles like walls (sausages), where you’ll have to navigate your way around and through tight spaces in ever more complex mazes as you progress to another level.

Soon you’ll not only have walls (sausages) to deal with, but moving obstacles as well, such as spinning arms with blades attached to the end, or blades fired from turrets which return or make their way around the spheres. Each level becomes more and more complex and so does each stage. Each new stage will bring something new for you to overcome, like platforms with arrows pointing in opposite directions. Standing on one of the arrows will allow that platform to move in that direction.

Falling off a platform, getting hit or literally touching anything between the start and finish points will crash your ship, and it’s back to square one. You will fail more times than you’d like, especially if you’re going for the suggested time to beat, which doesn’t seem possible sometimes. It all boils down to timing - when to speed up or when to slow down - on a lot of the levels, to beat the suggested times. The clock starts ticking as soon as the level loads or you respawn; there’s no 3,2,1 countdown so don’t delay too much, although you will have to delay on some levels otherwise you’ll die, spawn, die, spawn, but you’ll get used to that.

There is also some puzzle-solving for you, while you try and avoid any and all obstacles. Solving a puzzle may open somewhere up or move a platform into a position where you can make use of it, like bridging a gap to reach the finishing point. If you want to check a current level you may be having difficulty with, or just to get a heads up on what’s in store for you, you can exit to the stage screen. Here you’ll find any levels you’ve currently unlocked; you can then select any of these and then rotate the sphere, showing the obstacles in your way, and maybe you’ll be able to find a way through.

Once you’ve completed all ten levels of a stage, you’ll be given a time of how long it took to complete that stage; this can be found on the stage screen in the top right-hand side corner. Your score will then be added to the online leader boards where you’ll be able to compare with friends or other players to see how well you’ve done. Selecting a level will reveal your current best time along with the suggest time in completing a level.

The game looks great with the neon looks; music is good and it’s a very enjoyable game to play, even though you may want to throw your gamepad at the wall as you die, die, die and die again. Each of the rage-inducing levels will keep you coming back for that one more go, over and over again as you try not only to beat the level, but to do it in the fastest time possible, putting your reflexes and skills to the test.

On the main menu you’ll only find the choice of single player, a two-player option with split screen gameplay for local multiplayer, and quit. There are a few options available to you while you’re on a games level and have paused the game. Here you’ll find options to turn the music on or off,  along with the sounds, should you wish to do so. There’s a play button and a go-back-to-a-previous-screen button, you can also select the current stage, which will show you any levels in that stage which have been completed thus far.

You can set the game controller’s sensitivity, which ranges from one (slowest) to ten (fastest) sensitivity. You also have the option to turn on or off ghosting of your previous fail (attempt), or your fastest time, once you’ve completed a level. There are no graphic or resolution settings, but everything looked nice and ran smoothly on my default 1920x1080 resolution screen.

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com!