Steep

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.

Without the pure granular gratification of its tricks, Steep's feast resides in its many moments. Enjoying a beautiful vista, surviving a suicidal bombing run down the side of a mountain, or uncovering a new area and being rewarded for it – this is what keeps me coming back.

There’s a different kind of emergent gameplay that surrounds Steep, and it’s the game’s strongest component, and it falls back into that freedom gameplay pillar I mentioned earlier. You couldn’t possibly have this playspace with linear, game-directed objectives. And while Challenges offer you pathways to complete them, and obviously have finish lines, the freedom you have to just do all of the things, as you please, is the game’s number one strength.

The missions are as varied as they are challenging, while the mountain panoramas are just beautiful. Nonetheless a lot of potential remains untapped.

Steep is the most realistic extreme sports simulator we've ever played. It shows four different ways of exploring The Alps, lots of time and score challenges and big customization options. The point is that maybe it's too realistic for people that have never stepped into a couple of ski boots, who may seek another kind of fantastic sport experience.

Gorgeous, but disjointed. Despite the bumps, Steep's winter thrills are well worth riding out. [Jan 2016, p.66]

Steep is a solid experience that accomplishes what the developers set out to do. They have a created an impressive world that is both fun to explore and addictive to conquer. The multiplayer feels like a bit of a letdown due to a lack of variety but it is still fun exploring the world with friends.

As a free playground for winter extreme sports lovers, Steep is a good experiment with fun challenges and a lot to explore, on the other side the game probably should have been more explicit on its objectives and include a limited offline mode.

Steep is not a game for gamers, but it is a game for mountain lovers. With gameplay that's easy to learn but hard to master, immerses players in a huge environment full of challenges. Great first contact waiting for a more refined second chapter.

The Alps in Steep are both exciting and relaxing. It is so much fun to spend hours and hours on your snowboard in these amazing looking mountains. There is not a lot to complain about, apart from the paragliding which is just not the same as going skiing or snowboarding.

Steep sets itself apart by never holding players back and never slowing down. Across hours spent with the game, I was free to throw myself down the mountain as many times and in as many ways as I wanted. As it turns out, that made for a damn good time.

With huge and beautiful summits to explore, varied locations and events and the best snowboard and ski free riding any game has offered yet, Steep is a welcomed and satisfying extreme sports experience.

If you fancy spending some time flying around craggy mountains or crashing down snowy slopes… Steep is your best choice. Whether played alone or with friends, it’ll meet your extreme sports needs and more without the risk of breaking an arm or a leg.

Steep is a fresh breath. Fun, frantic and innovative, manages to combine the thrills of illustrious predecessors in the genre, like the SSX series, with more modern formulas.

Steep is a fun game, with open world features and extreme sports where players can exploring and completing challenges in the stunning panorama of the Alps.

Well executed and a breath of fresh air into the world of digital winter sports, even though it would have been nice with a more solid feeling of meaningful character development.

I enjoyed just about every minute I spent playing Steep. Grandiose, attractive environments serving as the backdrop to varied, intense challenges are enough on their own to make this wintry playground somewhere I was always delighted to go back to and spend more time in - a feeling I still have even after finishing the bulk of the content, though the lack of mechanical customization and progression makes it harder to find reasons to return.

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.

Steep still has a few drawbacks with controls and balance, but in its way it’s a fascinating and enjoyable experience of extreme sports.

Steep isn't perfect, but it's a great experience. Doing challenges or just navigating the maps, it's easy to enjoy the game. If you like the genre, give it a try.

It does show that Steep is a game born of passion in a studio located at the feet of Alps, so it is easier to turn a blind eye to some of its flaws, like faulty collision detection. It’s not a perfect game, it will not have a following as strong as SSX 3 did, but if you’re looking for a game that will let you hit the slopes, there’s a chance you’ll be returning to Steep often. [02/2017, p.50]

STEEP is a decent game that takes a huge risk in this genre, but makes it with a properly general idea. The control is far from being comfortable and easy to adapt, but after 10 or so hours it becomes a great experience. The main problem is the execution of its main ideas.

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.

A jarring contrast between epic beauty and controller destroying frustration.

Steep is big and fun in the early hours, but it is very simple in the long run. You will want to challenge other players and repeat these missions over and over again. Always better with skis, snowboard or wingsuit. The paraglider bores. The technical aspect is very solid.

Have you ever dreamed about going down Mont Blanc at ridiculous speeds, while navigating through tough terrain and avoiding avalanches, but don't want to risk your life doing it? Steep might be something for you.

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.

The gorgeous open world and excellent skiing and snowboarding of Steep outweigh some problematic design elements and less enjoyable air-based activities.

It turns out the mountain really does have something to say, but it's only when the noise is gone that its message can really be heard. [Feb 2017, p.116]

A flawed experiment, Steep is revolutionary in the most laid-back fashion and full of those charming Ubisoft follies.

Taking “Steep” as just a fine foundation for eventual sequel would be a little unfair, but in some way, it fits. Yet the free riding in a huge open world can entertain you for a few hours, if you can turn a blind eye to a handful of nonsense and bugs.

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 is a game that offers an amazing sense of freedom, and even though not every activity is as great as the others, the feeling of skiing and snowboarding in these beautiful environments is a thrill.

A huge open world to engage in various extreme sports in... sounds wonderful, but in reality a lack of variation and truly memorable disciplines keep it from reaching the lofty heights it aims for.

Steep could've been a much better game if it had developed a little further. It's still playable but after a little while, things start to get repetitive and therefore it turns into an annoying grindfest.

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.

Steep has a great potential, but does not take advantage of it. Is funny and exciting, but a bit repetitive and simple too.

Steep has both strong qualities and strong flaws. It offers a gigantic and beautiful open-world, where you can teleport everywhere without a single loading screen, excellent board-sport sensations, nice tricks system... but the UI is a mess, the progression is muddled and repetitive, and the multiplayer really lacks ideas and polish.

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.

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.

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.

Steep gets nearly everything right – it looks great, plays well and has the sort of depth and exploration you'd expect from one of Ubi's open world games. It has some really irritating foibles, but nothing you can't live with. What it lacks is that special something that keeps the action fresh and the kind of compulsive, obsessive hook that would have you coming back for more. It's a beautiful extreme sports game, but oddly forgettable.

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.

The developers deserve credit for trying something different instead of just being another SSX clone. If you are willing to fully embrace and appreciate what makes Steep unique, namely its take on group play, the ability to create your own authentic looking videos, and freedom to explore a mountain at your own pace, your trip to the Alps will have been one worth taking.

While Steep looks stunning and has plenty to explore, the game also lacks diversity. Without a clear goal for players, you are more or less left alone to do what you please. Find some friends to play with you, because that is how the game is meant to be played.

Dropping a cliff into a steep pillow line is an entirely different feeling to snapping off a groomed park feature, yet in Steep, it all blends into the same thing.

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.

Individual elements can delight and there's potential for greatness, but Steep suffers from not being able to make them work together. It's worth playing at least once just for the new effects, mind. [Feb 2017, p.94]

Having a plethora of events is all for nothing if it’s just a blizzard of deja vu. If you can’t keep the grind compelling, you’ll freeze players out in no time. [February 2016, p80]

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.

The sandbox approach in the winter extreme sports genre is quite a fresh and bold idea, but Steep, at the time being, is really rough around the edges. The sequel will surely be a great game, as long as it sets a goal for the player, more diversity in the challenges and less microtransactions.

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 crams the Alps full of activities, but its systems are either poorly explained or poorly implemented, or both.

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.

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 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.

Steep looks good, and offers a lot to do, but does not provide good reasons to keep on playing.

Steep is a gorgeous game that was never able to keep my attention. On paper it seems to have everything it needs to succeed — multiplayer, a big world to explore, lots of things to do, different ways to play — but wandering the mountain and taking part in generic events lacks excitement and personality. I doubt I’ll remember it exists in a year, which is a shame because that moonlit landscape is just breathtaking.