Steep (BETA)

Steep is an upcoming extreme winter sports game set in the Alps, represented in game as an open world you are free to explore. You can switch on the fly between four different activities – skiing, snowboarding, wingsuit flying and paragliding. The world is always online and very much multiplayer/social focused.

The core gameplay ‘loop’ is essentially this – you start at the top of one of several mountain peaks. You then go down that mountain either by land, by air or by a combination of the two. When you reach the bottom, you then fast travel back to the top and do it all again.

And that’s kind of fun, for a little while. There’s a nice sense of speed and freedom as you throw yourself off a platform onto a near vertical drop, before gliding, skiing or snowboarding your way to the bottom, pulling off all manner of cool tricks and jumps as you go. At times, you’ll wipe out, hitting the snow or rocks and ragdolling your way rather hilariously down the mountain. Which is also kind of fun, at least for a little while.

The scenery is certainly pretty, with some lovely views from the mountain peaks. Graphically though, it must be said that the game isn’t that fantastic. The snow is handled well, but rocks, trees and the few buildings that exist on the map are all a little shoddy. The music isn’t that great either, and rather irritating when it loops every time you want to restart a particular challenge or run.

There’s an emphasis on community content, with the ability to create your own runs and share them with other players, or by recording your runs and editing the footage into a slick video replay. You can customise your character with a variety of unlockable clothes and equipment, although it’s all apparently cosmetic in nature, rather than stat based.

But there is a ‘level’ system in the game, which you can increase by exploring the world, completing ‘mission’ objectives and participating in challenge runs – in which you’re scored by time and tricks and awarded medals based on your performance.

The real problem Steep has though, is that there’s just not much to it. There’s not much game here to get stuck into. Sure, it’s a large open world you can explore – but it’s a world of snow, rocks and trees. Once you’ve traversed one mountain slope, you’ve pretty much traversed them all. Whilst it’s fun throwing yourself down a mountain a few times, there’s nothing new or interesting to see.

To make matters worse, the world doesn’t feel hand crafted or tailored for the gameplay. There’s a few obvious ‘trails’ to follow in the snow, but there’s no carefully placed jumps or trick opportunities. In fact, you’ll often hit patches of hard rock or inexplicably placed wooden barriers which impede your descent, which makes the free roam less enjoyable and fluid than it should be.

And the same problem applies to the challenge runs – set courses to follow with checkpoints. But these feel randomly put together too, with no thought put into providing an enjoyable and challenging custom designed course. The entire world feels like it was procedurally generated, with no consideration to the core gameplay.

That’s what really kills Steep for me. If the game had a selection of varied, challenging courses, with multiple routes of varying difficulty and abundant trick opportunities – I’d be far more positive about it. But it doesn’t. So I can’t.

And unfortunately, the environments aren’t the only issue. Whilst snowboarding and the wingsuit are fun, and skiing is okay, the gliding is dull as f**k. It’s terrible. And that’s a quarter of your available gameplay down the drain right away. The trick system is also rather poor. You never really feel ‘in control’ of what you’re doing, as it’s more a matter of timing to stop performing tricks before you crash to the ground, rather than actively using combos to string different tricks together.

Speaking of controls, they feel too loose and nowhere near as responsive as they should be. And hit detection in the game is a bit of a mess as you’ll sometimes pass near a tree or rock and then go flying head over ass as if you clipped it.

All that said, I still had some fun with Steep. There are moments when you do find a good run in the open world and it’s a cool rush as you slide and trick your way to the bottom. But there’s just not enough game here to make it worth a purchase, especially not at full price.

Hell, even half its release price would feel a little steep (huh huh) as the entire game feels more like a tech demo with a few features tacked on and an over reliance on player created content to prop everything up.