Steep Reviews
It’s an ambitious passion project that I wish I could love, but Steep's reach ultimately exceeds its grasp.
Steep is a triumph at merging gameplay and presentation to deliver players a sense of place in its beautiful open world. Controlling each sport feels simple yet laser precise, and the diversity in sports and challenges encouraged me to stay in the game even when challenges became too frustrating or uninteresting. Add to this a solid layer of social functionality, albeit shallow when playing with strangers, and you have a game that reaches the great heights it endeavors to recreate.
For all its enthusiasm, openness, and Red Bull product placement, Steep can’t overcome a mountain of small problems.
The recreation of the mountains looks fantastic and it is a lot of fun to traverse them using the four different sport options, but unreliable input controls and many buggy moments are a steep hill to overcome to classify Steep as a great game.
Whether you want to go on a relaxed stroll or rattle down a death trap of a mountain, the fundamental extreme sports aspect of Steep is fun. However, a flood of bewildering, infuriating and simply pointless design decisions distract from that.
Steep is an enormously addictive, challenging and massive game. However, the control scheme and some technical problems overshadow the gaming experience offered by the virtual Alps.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Steep still has a few drawbacks with controls and balance, but in its way it's a fascinating and enjoyable experience of extreme sports.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Steep wants to impart a sense of freedom, but it lacks the courage to offer true openness and underwhelms as a result.
Once you've seen one slope, you've more or less seen them all. Characters don't have much of a sense of personality, and the entire thing feels more like a surface-level experimental photo mode than a fully-formed video game. But, I plan to invest a few more hours into it for the sake of attempting to get a better sense of it before issuing a final verdict.
Steep is a remarkable title thanks to its four sports disciplines, but the open world isn't well implemented to explore. The best thing about Steep is the creation of challenges.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
The game works best in how it empowers you to toggle between idle exploration and obsessive score chasing whenever it suits you. However, as time drags on, if that drive to make headway begins to wane, there’s little else to keep players hooked. Then, of course, there’s the ridiculous online-only policy that is bound to frustrate, adding a completely expendable layer to the year’s best winter sports game.
These also aren't things I found myself thinking about when I was hellbent on earning a gold medal in yet another event. In those moments, Steep is a simple yet functional form of escapism. It's afterward, when unsure where to go and what to do next, that it hits you: Steep really isn't what it aims to be.
Ubisoft deserves a round of applause for addressing the industry’s severe lack of snow sport games with something bold and ambitious. Steep might suffer from play value issues, but there’s nothing comparable. For the more than 10 million skiers and snowboarders around the world, this is a moment of liberation that should go recognized.
Steep brings a lot of really good ideas and reasonably strong snowboarding action to the table, but it's held back by a lot of little problems with the physics, the UI, and the course design. The final result is ambitious and often entertaining, but also unpolished and frustrating. Hopefully Ubisoft gives the series another chance, because I'd really like to see some of Steep's better ideas fully realized in a sequel. Alas, the initial outing doesn't quite meet expectations.
Steep never holds players back or slows them down
Steep is an enjoyable open-world game that excels in exploration but suffers from finicky controls and repetitive challenges.
You won’t have to look hard to find what this game has to offer, from its extreme situations to its more subtle pleasures
The best snowboarding game for a long time, with an excellent open world environment… and some very odd, and unnecessary, flaws.
Steep looks stunning and offers plenty to do and see, but unfortunately gets repetitive too quickly.