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Playing The Ascent on my internet browser with Xcloud Beta Game Pass - Awesome!

VAL0R

Banned
I haven't been a PC gamer since the old days of point-and-click adventures when I was a kid. My computer is a 5-ish year old very basic Dell. No graphics cards, whistles and bells or anything like that. I pay a little extra monthly for a good internet package because my son is a competitive Halo tournament player. So my internet is decent.

My son had been hogging the Series X in the basement during the Halo flight beta, while I was itching to try The Ascent. So I decided to give it a whirl on the Xcloud beta from my bedroom PC. I went to the website and I logged in with my Microsoft account. My son came up to help his old man out and I asked how to get the controller working. He tells me to just plug the Series X controller into my PC tower's USB port. I said, "that's it!?" Sure enough, my controller is immediately recognized in seconds and I just start using it. I d-pad over to Ascent's game tile and press A. It starts loading in seconds. No download. No menus. This is all totally brainless and just works. I'm expecting that I'll play for a few minutes, but the lag will force me to move to console. But it wasn't bad at all! 100% playable.

I've heard from some gaming press talking heads that the game was too difficult. So I thought streaming might prove unacceptable for twitchy twin-stick shooting. On the contrary, I'm loving the challenge, even when playing through two of the more difficult encounters in the game that others were complaining about. The game feels very satisfying and responsive.

Can I notice some lag, some visual artifacts and other occasional issues that give away the fact that I'm streaming the game from some server rack 100 miles away? Yes. But despite that, I'm having a great time and am very impressed. And it's a free additional feature to the already stupidly good Game Pass Ultimate sub. Xbox is just crushing it with this tech. This is the future, I now have no doubt.

TLDR: Having fun. Tech works great and is caveman simple. This is the future.
 
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Kuranghi

Member
Does the game freeze for a few hundreds ms when you blow up barrels? I had to stop playing locally partly due to that but wondering if it affects the streaming version.
 

Mr.ODST

Member
I was on a work PC and played some Dragon Quest XI on my break through the browser, just brought my controller in and was ready to go, xCloud is great for small stints of playing single player games especially RPG's
 

Fredrik

Member
XCloud is not working well at my area, lots of stutter and latency. But I played The Ascent on the iPad Pro streamed in house from the Xbox Series X when the kids had occupied the TV. Worked well enough!
 

VAL0R

Banned
Does the game freeze for a few hundreds ms when you blow up barrels? I had to stop playing locally partly due to that but wondering if it affects the streaming version.
I dont remember any slow down tied to barrels, but I can't be sure it didn't happen.
 

elliot5

Member
I would recommend trying out Stadia (Destiny 2 is free on it, no sub or anything needed) just for comparison! xCloud works well for me, but Stadia is just that extra level of polish and input latency is noticeably lower (though xCloud isn't unplayable by any means). Cloud gaming is quite interesting and definitely has its uses!
 
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Schmick

Member
I was playing The Ascent on xCloud PC last night. It was pretty much flawless! I also tried Geforce Now and that was superb however for me the library isn't as extensive as GP. I'm also a subscriber to PS Now for PC and through that I've played a lot of the Sony first party big hitters so I strongly recommend that too (ever more so with a DS4 controller).
 
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MachRc

Member
Xbox streaming to PC app works really well too. I havent used xcloud in a long time as Ive been just streaming my series x to my phone or pc.
getting an hour in for lunch is sweet on my work pc
HyPjys1.jpg
 

SafeOrAlone

Banned
My friend only has a keyboard but we are trying so hard to play the Halo campaigns together.

He downloaded "reWASD", but said he was overwhelmed when it came to mapping the controls and couldn't figure it out. He's a pretty smart guy. Anyone have tips?
 

Kuranghi

Member
Btw, if I just wanted to skip all the RPG elements of this by using a trainer would that break the game in any way? Like progression wise. I just want to make the mans go boom and skip all the levelling and shite. I'm really only interested in going exploring to find the weapons, and using them at their max power immediately and not having to find mats and such.

I don't want to worry about level checks or the like, but I also don't want to completely make it trivial/broken ofc. I realise this is a weird question, but recently I've found I enjoy certain games a lot more if I cut out (what I see as) the drudgery. WeMod has a great trainer out for it already where you can modify many values which is what gave me the idea to do this, I wouldn't just play with god mode on, thats obviously boring.

If you are thinking of replying "Whats the point in even playing then! Why don't you just watch the game being played on youtube instead, lolz!" then please promptly insert your head into your anus instead of wasting time replying to me:

kisser GIF
 

THE DUCK

voted poster of the decade by bots
I haven't been a PC gamer since the old days of point-and-click adventures when I was a kid. My computer is a 5-ish year old very basic Dell. No graphics cards, whistles and bells or anything like that. I pay a little extra monthly for a good internet package because my son is a competitive Halo tournament player. So my internet is decent.

My son had been hogging the Series X in the basement during the Halo flight beta, while I was itching to try The Ascent. So I decided to give it a whirl on the Xcloud beta from my bedroom PC. I went to the website and I logged in with my Microsoft account. My son came up to help his old man out and I asked how to get the controller working. He tells me to just plug the Series X controller into my PC tower's USB port. I said, "that's it!?" Sure enough, my controller is immediately recognized in seconds and I just start using it. I d-pad over to Ascent's game tile and press A. It starts loading in seconds. No download. No menus. This is all totally brainless and just works. I'm expecting that I'll play for a few minutes, but the lag will force me to move to console. But it wasn't bad at all! 100% playable.

I've heard from some gaming press talking heads that the game was too difficult. So I thought streaming might prove unacceptable for twitchy twin-stick shooting. On the contrary, I'm loving the challenge, even when playing through two of the more difficult encounters in the game that others were complaining about. The game feels very satisfying and responsive.

Can I notice some lag, some visual artifacts and other occasional issues that give away the fact that I'm streaming the game from some server rack 100 miles away? Yes. But despite that, I'm having a great time and am very impressed. And it's a free additional feature to the already stupidly good Game Pass Ultimate sub. Xbox is just crushing it with this tech. This is the future, I now have no doubt.

TLDR: Having fun. Tech works great and is caveman simple. This is the future.

How dare you have a good cloud experience! There are some on this very board that will deny you this as they can't seem to accept that cloud gaming could have it's place.
Should it replace all gaming? Of course not. Can it co-exist ? Absolutely.
 
Btw, if I just wanted to skip all the RPG elements of this by using a trainer would that break the game in any way? Like progression wise. I just want to make the mans go boom and skip all the levelling and shite. I'm really only interested in going exploring to find the weapons, and using them at their max power immediately and not having to find mats and such.

I don't want to worry about level checks or the like, but I also don't want to completely make it trivial/broken ofc. I realise this is a weird question, but recently I've found I enjoy certain games a lot more if I cut out (what I see as) the drudgery. WeMod has a great trainer out for it already where you can modify many values which is what gave me the idea to do this, I wouldn't just play with god mode on, thats obviously boring.

If you are thinking of replying "Whats the point in even playing then! Why don't you just watch the game being played on youtube instead, lolz!" then please promptly insert your head into your anus instead of wasting time replying to me:

kisser GIF
Don't overthink the RPG elements. Keep 1 piece of every armor, and 1 type of every gun. Sell all doubles.

RPG elements are literally just aiming, health, energy meter for moves, evasion frequency, etc. Just pump points in a few things and roll with it.

The "attributes" go up automatically when you spend points on skills. So if you pick a couple skills to max that use the same attribute, then they do a little better. Or don't bother with that and spread it all out however you want.

Use EMPs and energy ammo type guns on machines.

That's it. There's not much loot management. There's not a lot of diablo style stuff. It's more of an action game with a huge world and side quests.
 
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Kuranghi

Member
Don't overthink the RPG elements. Keep 1 piece of every armor, and 1 type of every gun. Sell all doubles.

RPG elements are literally just aiming, health, energy meter for moves, evasion frequency, etc. Just pump points in a few things and roll with it.

The "attributes" go up automatically when you spend points on skills. So if you pick a couple skills to max that use the same attribute, then they do a little better. Or don't bother with that and spread it all out however you want.

Use EMPs and energy ammo type guns on machines.

Thanks pal, appreciated.

When I played for a bit the other day before I stopped to wait for patches I was just a bit turned off by all the tutorial popups on the gear page, my health hasn't been great recently and I just wanted to dive in but that all sounds easy to keep track of.
 
Thanks pal, appreciated.

When I played for a bit the other day before I stopped to wait for patches I was just a bit turned off by all the tutorial popups on the gear page, my health hasn't been great recently and I just wanted to dive in but that all sounds easy to keep track of.
No problem. It's honestly not that bad.

You also have a "Cyberdeck" that is your little computer buddy. If you highlight that on the menu it tells you if you can hack doors or chests, etc. and what "ICE" level you are (basically your hacking level). This has no RPG element either, and just upgrades when you find some upgrades in the world (usually on main story missions).

Only other main thing in the tutorial was that later in the game some people can try to hack you with that yellow bubble, and you can hit hack quickly to block it.

Also, if you die a bunch on enemies that use fire - you can put on some fire resistant armor, then take it off after you beat them.

It's more intimidating than it actually is. You'll get the hang of it.
 
I've posted before, but I'm in the same boat, I've had mixed experience on a 4g phone or cheap fire 10 tablet, but using Edge on windows 10, on a laptop onnected via powerline ethernet, it's been flawless, Now it runs the series version of the games as well it's not as much of a compromise.

I've recently been stuck in bed a lot, due to a back issue, unable to game on the main TV, and Playing the Ascent and Like A dragon over the Browser has been great for me. The only drawback was when I got a phone call during a Like a Dragon Dungeon, and due to the length of it, the session timed out, because it was a dungeon there was no auto save... so I lost an hour or so. But that one is on me.
 
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THEAP99

Banned
Totally agree. I've tried out stadia and xcloud a lot in recent weeks and it's so convenient and is the future. Yesterday I tested it out on the lake in a kayak and it literally worked fine on 4g data. I'll have a video up at some point showing the test
 
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