Ascend!

Wow, two months since my last post, eh?  I blame Animal Crossing, which I'm still getting entirely too much mileage out of.  It's the first time in a long time that I've had a game for a system get a good enough grip that, while I know there are other games I'd like to try out, I won't even give them a look because it'll cut into the playtime of my current game.

Still, man cannot live by the small 3D screen alone (not if he wants to preserve what's left of his eyesight, at least)... so, if you're on XBox360 with a "gold" account, I'll say that you could do worse than to check out Ascend: Hand of Kul.  It's a free-to-play beat-em-up, so the mechanics are fairly simple... and, unlike some free-to-play games, it's quite playable without ponying up cash, if you don't mind being a scavenger (which is how I tend to play this sort of game anyways).

The premise behind the game, in a nutshell:  the old gods are mostly gone, except for one that entered the mortal realm, got corrupted, and is now a mindless Titan, feeding on the populace and spawning unpleasant children like trolls, ogres and such.  Three new gods have arisen, each of which wants to dominate the world, each of which wants to eliminate the Titan in furtherance of that goal.  Since they don't want to suffer the same fate as the Titan, they employ beings called Caos, 5-story-tall humanoid things that fight with over-sized weaponry to eliminate the Titan's children, claim territory for their god by desecrating altars and destroying shrines, and occasionally fight among themselves to try and take what others have earned... in case it wasn't clear, you play as one of those Caos.

Two mechanics are in play that make this slightly more than just an average beat-em-up.  First, taking a page from Demon Souls/Dark Souls, while you're playing in your own world, you get to see, as color-coded ghost-forms, other people online playing the same area you are now... handy, since, if you see them getting rag-dolled around, you can guess there's something large an nasty about to show up, but you can also target them for "blessings" and "curses", items you can find or buy to, for example, boost their run speed, or have them beset by giant wolves.  Second, there's Ascension, the reason behind the name of the game... basically, you have a level cap, and a level at which you can Ascend.  When you Ascend, you basically cast off your current form (after possibly saving some items for your successor), which goes off to eternally serve the god you were working for by trying to take over territory from other players... in the meantime, you decide whether you want to keep working for your current god or choose one of the others (and of course, they'll all try to bribe you to get/keep you on their side), then you re-incarnate, with higher Ascension and cap levels.

It's really a pretty simple game, but it's got that "just a little more" factor that's the mark of a truly good game... plus, it forces you to make choices, whether that's "I'd really like to have that sword, but I want to improve this spell first" (which, for those so inclined, you could assuage with a little cash transaction), or "I'm halfway through this dungeon, and somebody's attacking one of my sites, but if I leave now I'll have to start the dungeon over from scratch, without the treasure chests resetting!"  If you've already got XBox Live Gold, it's a free game... at the price, it's easily worth giving a shot.