My original plan was to put up a review today as per my normal schedule, but the developers of the game in question got in touch last night and told me that they’re going to try to fix up some things before release, which means knocking that review back a few days to be sure that it reflects the quality of the release version. This gives me a chance to instead talk about oOo: Ascension, an Xbox One-exclusive masochism simulator which I’ve been playing in small chunks over the past couple of days. This is one of those games where you die and restart quickly, making it possible to slowly piece together a way of making it through chaotic levels without ever becoming too frustrated. Of course, your fingers have to translate what your brain is telling them while careening around obstacles at a high rate of speed, so there’s still plenty of rage to be experienced; stages are merely short enough that you’re constantly oscillating between frustrated anger and moments of triumph.

Early gameplay

One of the first things you learn is that the left trigger slows you down for more precise maneuvering while the right trigger speeds you up. Stages are timed, with you getting a grade (in the form of circles/Os) based on how quickly you made it to the end portal, so the right trigger sees far more usage than the left. Touching anything other than a floor destroys you and sends you back to the beginning, whether that be a wall, moving hazard, or pit, and success can look incredibly impressive because of that. Most of the time, though, you’ll be dying dozens (if not hundreds) of times, fumbling your way to the ending like an uncoordinated buffoon.

Something you might notice is that there’s a “ghost” replay of your last attempt that plays as you try again. This can sometimes become a distracting element, but for the most part, watching your replay splat against an obstacle while you deftly maneuver around that same obstacle adds a welcome sense of forward progress.

New elements are constantly being introduced, including moving platforms and conveyor belts that mess with your speed, and they all seem to be pretty well designed. The only thing I’m not entirely sold on are the buttons you occasionally have to hit before doubling back the way you came, as this effectively doubles the length of stages and forces you to continually repeat a series of steps before you get another crack at the part you died at. I could see this becoming really annoying later.

Enjoyable trickiness

One of the more interesting things about the stages is when you finish and realize how much better you have to do to get the best rating. In the above case, I was almost four full seconds off of the required time, and while I could probably shave one or two off with cleaner movement, the platform moves at a constant speed. Mysteries like this can be entertaining to piece together in the pursuit of better times.

Or, if you’re like me, you could speed through as quickly as possible on your first try until a combination of luck and memorization allows you to reach the end. This is probably my favorite level thus far, as you have to hit a button (which isn’t out of the way, nor does it require backtracking through a significant portion of the stage) that causes a phantom thing to show up and chase you using your previous movements against you. That means that going fast and then stopping suddenly will cause it to smash into you, whereas slowing down gives you a little time to wait for an obstacle to move in a certain way so that you can get past it. This is a pretty interesting series of combined mechanics, and the way they’re presented and explained through gameplay rather than lengthy tutorial prompts is one of several things about oOo: Ascension that reminds me more of a puzzle game than a twitchy action game.

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