Steep Reviews
For all its enthusiasm, openness, and Red Bull product placement, Steep can’t overcome a mountain of small problems.
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.
It’s an ambitious passion project that I wish I could love, but Steep's reach ultimately exceeds its grasp.
Steep is very successful at capturing the breakneck exhilaration of Alpine extreme sports, and with an atmospheric open world that's packed full of enjoyable challenges it picks up the mantel dropped by the likes of SSX well. While it doesn't quite hit the lofty peaks it's aiming for – mainly due to some poorly explained mechanics and the underwhelming multiplayer – you won't be piste-off if you decide to take the plunge.
Steep refines the winter sports template in a way that no other title has managed to this extent; skillfully marrying open-world and social aspects to create one of the freshest genre entries around. Steep is the most fun I’ve had on the digital slopes in a long time.
Steep is a great game marred by odd design decisions that drag it down a few notches. With some tweaks and band-aids this could easily be one of the better games of 2016, but the nagging issues found here are enough to make me not want to play it for more than an hour or so at a time.
Steep is a great accomplishment, but it feels like it was rushed. I expected this game to be a 2017 title, and having it now, faults and all, makes me wish they'd have held off on releasing this game until it received a bit more polish and gameplay refinements. In its current state, it's a frustrating game to play with occasional flashes of brilliance.
Steep delivers great fun for winter sports game fans, although it can be a little difficult to find amongst a huge map and confusing tutorial/interface. What Ubisoft has tried to accomplish is mostly successful, and fans of winter sports games will find a lot that they recognize and a lot that improves on the genre in this mountain range.
Graphically, there’s no argument that Steep is gorgeous.
It's a beautiful extreme sports game, but oddly forgettable.
Steep is an original game, proud of its own uniqueness. It has many great ideas as well as evident weak spots, but it's a great debut for a new franchise.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Steep is pretty to look at it, but it’s also pretty awful to play as breath-taking visuals alone aren't enough to help this extreme sports game from going downhill.
One more year Ubisoft surprises us with a great game, Steep. We can practice many risk sports that we usually play in the snow, such as snowboarding or skiing, all mixed with a great open world that we can explore as we want. Despite the wide variety of events and risky sports available, Steep is a repetitive title, and it has some technical issues that make it not perfect at all.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Steep is an action sports game that features snowboarding, skiing, wingsuits, and paragliding courses. There are several games that try to recreate Shaun White’s Snowboarding, SSX, and even the Tony Hawk games. Most of those games fail, but I wouldn’t say that about Steep. Steep definitely has its flaws and downsides, but I enjoyed most of the time I spent with it. I still find myself picking up the controller to enjoy the view and get a little competitive frustration out.
Steep crams the Alps full of activities, but its systems are either poorly explained or poorly implemented, or both.
The multiplayer and replay ideas that Ubisoft implemented in Steep were great, and the game looks terrific. It’s held back as a whole, though, by listless controls, a directionless world, and an always-online requirement that brings everything crashing down like an avalanche when the servers decide to act up.
Whether you're speeding across the Monte Rosa in a wing-suit, or casually riding down the Ortles, Steep is an enjoyable winter playground. And, with a few tweaks and fixes, both minor and major, from Ubisoft Annecy, it could eventually develop into a great one.
There are some people that want/expect to do straight up silly tricks, and will find themselves disappointed with Steep. Even those that know what they are getting themselves into might get bored or frustrated with some of Steep’s design choices.
Ubisoft Annecy has crafted a gorgeous-looking winter sports game with a strong foundation of exploration, enjoyable gameplay and a feast of events to unlock. What it hasn’t done is create a pathway through that game that will keep you playing through to the end. Despite the variety of events and sports the action and scenery grows repetitive, while some minor issues keep on cropping up. The result is a game that’s close to brilliance, but not quite close enough.
It is hard to evaluate a title like Steep without comparing it to the promise of its premise. The sheer idea of a gigantic extreme winter sports sandbox is extremely compelling. While the game manages to live up to some of its potential by offering up an expansive, beautifully detailed map and an extensive collection of modes, it falls short on several fundamental elements, critical to the success of a new franchise. Odd storytelling, inconsistent controls, practically non-existent tutorials and imprecise collision detection all combine to derail what should have been a new premier franchise for Ubisoft. Though it still has plenty of redeeming qualities, Steep proves to be an interesting new framework in serious need of polishing. Player beware. Your mileage may vary.