Along with thousands of other intergalactic immigrants, your character in "Ascent" pays a small fortune for a ticket to the planet Veles in search of a better life. But the moment you step off the ship, the price of your ticket will become an astronomical debt, and you will probably die before you can pay it off. Yet the Ascent Group, the company that owns the huge city you now live in, wants its pound of flesh. You are now an indentured laborer (indent-slang for indentured laborer), engaged in dirty and dangerous work to pay off your debt. It is far from a better life. The advertising airships in "Blade Runner" were full of crap.

The setting for "Ascent" is epic, a mix of 80s neon-lit cyberpunk and seedy sci-fi. The story takes place in Arcology, a self-contained city crammed into massive skyscrapers, and the details are obscene. It is a cross between Hong Kong's infamous Kowloon Walled City and Akira's neo-Tokyo, inhabited by the creepy aliens of Mos Eisley's Cantina. It's a dizzying urban maelstrom of crowded markets, bustling squares, cavernous concrete valleys bustling with streams of flying cars, and giant neon billboards throwing colorful lights on the chaotic hustle and bustle.

But what makes this setting truly special is the level of detail, even on a micro level: a place called Coder's Cove, a hacker's lair hidden in a flooded corner of the city, is a perfect example. Piles of dilapidated computer monitors, tangled cables snaking across the floor, hackers pounding on keyboards, graffiti-covered walls, and battered leather couches. Every convenience store, casino, nightclub, and gun store you visit is packed with such meticulous and painstaking detail.

It's one hell of a setting and one of the most compelling cyberpunk worlds on the PC, and The Ascent is an action RPG with a strong emphasis on action, which can be played alone or co-op with up to three friends. Circling and rolling through gorgeous city streets, you blast enemies with shotguns, explode them with grenades, and turn them into a bloody mist with machine guns. Occasionally, sparkling loot, money, or power-ups will pop out of the jelly-like limb corpses, and scooping them up releases a constant stream of tiny pleasurable dopamine.

Loot comes in the form of weapons and a variety of cyberpunk-themed armor that you can play dress-up with, including glowing visors and mechanical limbs. While you can create some pretty cool (and wild) looking characters, overall the variety of loot is not as great as in, say, Diablo; Ascent has a lot in common with Blizzard's action RPGs, specifically the crunch of the combat and the way characters constantly get stronger, isometric camera, and so on. It is, however, more orthodox. There are no random dungeons, and every nook and cranny of Arcology and everything you do there is hand-crafted.

If you play with a mouse and keyboard, use WASD to move and the mouse to aim. If you use a gamepad, you become a twin-stick shooter. Both work well, but the accuracy of aiming with the mouse was the deciding factor - especially late in the game, when a comical number of enemies attack you. Augmentation can also be fitted. With a hydraulic arm, you can hit them so hard that a cloud of humanoid dust is blown into the air. Another augmentation can be used to mark certain enemies and detonate them when they die.

Cover is another important factor. If you crouch behind something, you can hold your gun with the left trigger or the right mouse button and shoot over a mass of ultra-fine rubble that happens to be crouched nearby. Double-tapping the space bar (or the A button) allows you to evade enemies with a fast roll that works on a cooldown timer. These elements combine to create a truly pleasing shooter that is more than just pointing and shooting. Enemies come at you one after another, and figuring out where to move in a dense, awkward environment is just as important as aiming.

Don't be fooled by the cover system; The Ascent's relentless rhythm of combat means that you must keep moving almost constantly. The gun-toting enemy is accompanied by hordes of melee soldiers wielding katanas, pipes, knives, and other painful-looking weapons. They advance aggressively and don't give you a chance to calm down and take cover. I spent most of the game running backwards and kiting the enemy. Then things get more complicated when enemies drop offensive gadgets, including mortars.

At the start of the game, your lowly indentee (create your own from a fairly limited selection of faces, hairstyles, and tattoos) is working in Deep Stink, the lowest part of the city. It is dark, claustrophobic, and crawling with bulky creatures called ferals. But as you make a name for yourself working as a mercenary for a powerful crime boss, you literally rise through the ranks. The story takes you from the stinking depths of alcology to increasingly higher and more opulent levels.

The game is basically a game of shooting a lot of people: gangsters, corporate soldiers, augmented aliens, and giant mechs. There are quiet moments, however. In crowded social hubs, you can shop, talk to NPCs, and take side quests without fear of attack. The combat is great, but exploring these areas makes me wish "The Ascent" was more RPG-like. A setting this rich would be perfect for a classic "Fallout" style game with deep quests and dialogue. But these safe zone visits, evocative as they are, are ultimately only a temporary detour before the action picks up again.

The game also suffered from sudden and abrupt increases in difficulty, some of which forced me to step away from the story and do side quests to level up. I would not mind if the side quests were consistently good, but they were hit or miss. Some stories are good and engrossing, such as the one about a soft drink company conducting sinister experiments on citizens addicted to its products. Others, however, seem a little too busy, often involving long-distance walks between districts to perform fairly mundane tasks. The ability to hail a cab or hop on the subway to get around different parts of Arcology alleviates some of this tedium, but it is still quite grueling because there is a fair amount of backtracking and enemies respawning.

But every time "Ascent" disappoints me, the world always gets me back. From the opulent casino "Golden Satori" to the desolate, dilapidated slums of "Black Lake," the game is first rate in creating a sense of place and establishing an atmosphere. Just note that while the screenshots may look like a CRPG like "Shadowrun," the game is a fast-paced, challenging, almost arcade-like shooter. A city so well recreated might be worth more than that, and I hope future games will expand on the role-playing aspect of the game. However, I can enjoy "The Ascent" for what it is. It's a great action RPG, elevated by an outstanding setting.