Steep Reviews
As an open world sports title, Steep triumphs on nearly every single level. Unfortunately, the often-boring gameplay makes it an inconsistently fun title.
Steep is a bit like being taught how to ski by an imbecile masquerading as a qualified instructor. Someone like your mate Dave, who has seen snow once in 28 years, but instils a false sense of sensible education. You’ll be fascinated by the beauty, and grow to crave the thrill; but eventually the spiral of incompetence will threaten to kill you, so you’ll throw down your hired polls in frustration and return to the solace of the bar, a more natural environment, and vow never to return.
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.
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.
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.
It’s an ambitious passion project that I wish I could love, but Steep's reach ultimately exceeds its grasp.
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.
Steep crams the Alps full of activities, but its systems are either poorly explained or poorly implemented, or both.
Fun in short bursts, but incredibly confused
Steep is only worth bothering with if you’re really itching for some extreme sports flavoured gaming on the PS4, Xbox One, or PC. For everyone else, your patience might be rewarded with a better (and likely cheaper) game months later.
This is not a game for Winter sports fans only. It could attract anyone to participate in its challenges, explore its vast virtual world, and enjoy its various sports whether it's flying freely with a wingsuit or skiing off it's high cliffs. Unfortunately however, the game doesn't give the same attention to all sports in the game, and focuses on visual upgrades for players rather than skills and abilities that affects gameplay.
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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.
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.
At the end of the day STEEP is bogged down by its surprisingly rigid progression, limited gameplay variety and lack of incentives to explore.
The only thing steeper than the mountains is the full price they’re asking for a uninspired, boring and buggy game.
Featuring systems that focus on community engagement and competition among friends, there are some clever new ideas that haven’t been seen in games before. Still, Steep falls short where it matters most, offering you more moments of anger than adrenaline. If you have plenty of patience then this might be the game for you, though most will end up pissed off rather than going off-piste.
Ubisoft's wayward winter sports game is at its best in moments of solitude and exploration.
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.