Originally reviewed on May 19, 2016
I’m terrified of heights…seriously terrified. I’ll lock the car doors driving on a narrow mountain road just in case the door flies open, and I somehow manage to eject over the guardrail. Obviously, I have no desire to rock climb despite several places nearby I could try if I wanted, but I don’t mind putting other people’s lives at risk; people like Lara Croft, Nathan Drake, and a certain Persian Prince who has mysteriously gone missing. But after a few hours with The Climb I will never take those characters’ acrobatic feats lightly again.
When Crytek announced they were doing rock climbing simulation I was intrigued. I had previously enjoyed the rock-climbing game on Kinect Sports Rivals for Xbox One that tracked your open and closed palms to grasp handholds to make your ascent, but the distant third-person view was less than thrilling. From the moment I slipped on my Oculus Rift and started The Climb my stomach started to churn, my heart skipped a beat, and my palms began to sweat profusely…and that was just the tutorial and a flat-shaded polygonal cliff wall.
The core gameplay mechanics are simple enough. You look around to spot the nearest handhold in reach then use either the left or right trigger on the gamepad to grasp the rock then repeat…a few hundred times to reach the top. Actually, it’s much more complicated than that. Finding the proper path up the rocky surface is only a part of the puzzle, especially when some handhelds need to be cleared of debris first and others will break off it you hang on too long.
Physicality is simulated with endurance meters built into the wristbands of your climbing gloves. You can only hang by one hand for so long before your strength gives out and you plummet to your virtual death. Endurance is also affected by sweaty palms – yes even the in-game character gets sweaty palms, so you need to regularly chalk-up to maintain your grip efficiency. From time to time you’ll need to make daring jumps to otherwise unreachable surfaces – sometimes straight up and sometimes to a new rock surface; even behind you. Lara Croft made it look so easy but wait until you are flying toward a rock wall scrambling for a handhold 300’ above certain death – or at least a forgiving carabineer checkpoint restart.
The Climb offers three exhilarating locations to explore starting at a tropical Bay, then moving to a Canyon environment, and finally the Alps. Each location has multiple modes and difficulty levels that are slowly unlocked as your rise up in rank. Moving to medium and hard levels unlock new routes up the mountain with new secrets to uncover and new challenges to conquer. An endless training wall will let you Practice whenever and as long as you like, or you can tackle six bouldering environments for the ultimate test of your freestyle climbing abilities.
The Tourist mode for each mountain lets you explore and enjoy the scenery with relaxed rules and game mechanics while the Free Solo Climbing mode tracks your time and flow so you can improve with each new climb. Bouldering requires perfect technique and familiarity with the mountains to post the fast times on the leaderboards. Asynchronous multiplayer allows you to record or play against other climbers’ ghosts in a race to the top. There are also 99 achievements to unlock as well as numerous rewards like watches, gloves, and wristbands to customize your climber.
Crytek is known for their outstanding visuals in their other games and The Climb is no exception. Bordering on photo-realism, the sense of height and overall immersion is unparalleled to anything I have done on the Oculus Rift since owning one. Hanging off a wall hundreds of feet up a mountain, you can look around and enjoy the sights which may include some guy in a squirrel suit flying past or maybe a rushing waterfall or a family of deer near a lake or hot air balloons floating by. Insects crawl around the rock surfaces and large birds soar past. You can even change the time of day for the ultimate challenge of climbing a mountain at night.
Everyone I know who has played this game (including myself) all exhibit the same level of intensity with every climb. It’s the kind of game where when you reach one of the two checkpoint platforms before the top you collapse in the nearest chair to catch your breath and maybe look around. Fingers get dangerous sweaty and sore, because even though it’s a game your find yourself gripping the triggers with the same level of intensity as you would if you were gripping actual rock.
Speaking of triggers; therein lies my only real complaint with The Climb. This game desperately needs hand controllers for the ultimate immersive experience. There is just something off when you are looking at a pair of disembodied hands floating in space against a rock wall. Hopefully when the Oculus Touch arrives, they will model a pair of arms to go with those hands and really put me in the game.
I cannot recommend The Climb highly enough. It is the single best reason to own and Oculus Rift at this point, and even if you don’t think you like rock climbing, you are going to become totally addicted to the way it works in virtual reality. It is so rewarding, as you gain the confidence and familiarity with the various walls. At first you are hunting for each new handhold as you cautiously ascend the mountain, but all too soon you will find your rhythm and that flow score is going to shoot to an all-time record.
The Climb hasn’t completely conquered my fear of heights in the real world, but I’m a regular Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible 2 when it comes to climbing any of the majestic peaks found in The Climb for Oculus Rift. If this is what virtual reality has to offer us at launch, I can only imagine where it’s going to take us in the future.
Follow-up review on January 13, 2017
As I mentioned in my review last year, the only thing holding The Climb back from true greatness was hand controllers and with the recent release of the Oculus Touch that obstacle has just been conquered. You can now experience all the dizzying rock climbing gameplay using your hands and arms to make realistic motions as you scale all the existing content in the game as well as a new arctic North expansion provided for FREE in the most recent update. That’s right…a whole new mountain fraught with icy dangers awaits.
The new Oculus controllers truly adds the ultimate “touch” of reality and immersion to what was already an impressive rock-climbing simulation. Not only are you more physically connected to the virtual mountain, you actually start to feel a bit of strain on your arms and shoulders after prolonged game sessions. It also changes some of the game mechanics as far as chalking up your grip and making those daring leaps from one rock face to another. Skip the gym and cancel that trip to Colorado. Rock climbing in your home has never been this real.
