Extreme sports games are not the hot commodity they once were.
Legends like Tony Hawk and SSX have sadly lost their luster.
So we were thrilled when we saw Ubisoft bringing their open-world sensibilities
on a winter vacation to the Swiss Alps,
accommodating skiers, snowboarders, paragliders, and wing-suiters.
Steep is an ambitious project full of thrilling discovery,
but it stumbles and falls too many times.
The freedom Steep allows in exploring its natural environments is remarkable.
As you complete challenges, you open points higher and higher on the map.
Unless you’re competing in an event focused on a specific discipline,
you can stop to switch to any of four methods of travel.
You can also make your way through the snow on foot
if you just missed an objective or starting point,
or want to check out a spot that’s tough to get to otherwise.
With the press of a button you can instantly retry whatever you’re attempting,
or zoom back out to the map and pick another spot to drop in.
The speed at which you can try out Steep's varied activities
is its best quality.
You unlock drop zones by reaching their locations,
or getting close enough to mark them with your binoculars.
Hunting down these zones is fun,
and the way they branch into multiple challenges
separates Steep from others in the genre.
We enjoy wingsuiting into uncharted territory,
then scanning the horizon for new places to jump from.
After you label each zone and event,
the only way you can revisit them is via the massive, 3D map.
There’s sadly no list of events in the menu,
or means to organize events by score or sport.
If you’re looking for bronze medals you’d like to turn into gold,
you'll have to rotate and zoom a lot.
We’ve spent most of our time on a snowboard and in a wingsuit.
Board tricks are limited to flips and grabs, no rail-grinding or ubers here.
Tricks can still be flashy, controlled primarily with the left analog stick,
but the right analog stick is assigned to small course corrections
instead of camera control.
The only way to move the camera out is to hold L1,
which is uncomfortable to do for an entire run.
With the default camera sitting right behind your rider,
and the courses extremely wild and hostile,
it’s frustrating that Steep puts so little priority
on being able to see where you’re going.
This limited perspective is scary because riders are extremely fragile.
It’s difficult to gauge what will or will not make your character crash.
We’ve fallen straight down a rocky canyon,
smacking our head on every step, and coasted away in one piece,
but later we scrape our feet on some ice and get KO’d.
They encourage you to get big air and take risks,
but there’s only so far you can drop and survive a landing,
even if you’re lined up comfortably.
Wingsuits control well, and their challenges are the most terrifying in the game.
We got gold in some wingsuit courses
that felt completely impossible on the first attempt.
Wingsuits are also the quickest way to get around the mountain,
making them ideal when you’re breaking new ground.
Skis can give you a bit more speed in races,
and help when traveling cross country or even going uphill.
It takes more concentration to land tricks on skis and still face forward,
so we only wear them on occasion.
Paragliding is not as much fun as we anticipated.
Gliding challenges involve finding invisible wind currents
and dodging trees at slow speeds.
Even when navigating each mountain,
it’s easier to scan the big map than bother to look around while gliding.
It’s fun to swap sports, but having to stop every time we want to is a drag.
We’d much rather open our parachute in mid-air
after a massive jump on our snowboard,
or release the chute and take a dive in the wingsuit.
Upon attempting each challenge,
you create replays that can be viewed from multiple angles,
including shots of the rider and their POV.
Steep is absolutely gorgeous in slow motion,
and we spent more time than expected going through our best runs
and making them as pretty as possible.
The extreme close-ups even sound like the speakers on a GoPro.
Along with home movies,
you can create your own challenges based on runs you’ve completed,
and bait others online to beat your score.
As you rack up experience and points of interest,
you'll bump into other riders online, making their way across the Alps.
You can emote positively or negatively,
and team up with three others to tackle challenges together.
To separate yourself from the competition you can adjust your outfit for each sport,
purchasing boards, skis, and clothing with in-game or real-world currency.
There are also eight riders you can choose from,
which leads us to one of Steep’s most surprising and annoying problems.
The tone of Steep is all over the place.
Every time a rider hollers something, or a mountain talks to us about itself,
or our cheesy promoter yells at us
about how this run is going to be huge for our channel, we wince.
The script is so bad, it’s distracting.
This world that should be about fun and freedom
is instead bogged down with fake attitude, unnecessary melodrama, and dumb jokes.
We could argue that it needs to be more “off the wall” like SSX,
but even Steep’s zaniest segments are not very funny.
The mountains are also lacking enough detail to simulate a believable slice of nature.
Church bells ring for villages with no roads, cars, or people,
bridges lead to closed off tunnels,
and although the game encourages you to find secrets hidden in its massive map,
we’ve discovered 70% of the world and it’s mostly snow, ice, and rocks.
The way some of the events wrap around the world’s geometry can be amusing,
but there’s only so much that can be done in shades of blue, grey, and white.
Parts of the Alps absolutely take our breath away,
and sky-hopping across the peaks in pursuit of sweet rides
is sometimes as gnarly as its riders
like Billy Romero or Ruben Bosman love to claim.
But Steep is a repetitive climb through a vacant landscape.
If you’re hungry for fresh powder, there are miles of it,
sprinkled across some of the longest courses we’ve ever conquered in a video game,
but Steep is going to have to figure out who it is
before it can make a name for itself.
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