Steep is an action sports game from Ubisoft that looks to bring together various winter sports into one complete package. Built around the concept of exploration, the game offers a massive mountain to roam in any way you want. Whether you’re skiing, snowboarding, or even flying down the mountain, the gorgeous scenery will help provide an incredible experience. Sadly, this experience is brought down due to the lack of content to keep you interested.

Steep is an action sports exploration game from Ubisoft that places the player in a gorgeous, and massive, mountain terrain with your choice on what to do. Giving players the option to snowboard, ski, fly in a wingsuit, and even including parachute racing, Steep provides enough ways to explore the mountains and complete various events spread out across the mountain. One look at the map, and you’ll notice that there is a great deal of challenges on the mountain to keep player occupied. Completing these challenges and events will unlock new gear, and even more challenges to complete. Though it may seem great on paper, you’ll find it gets repetitive over time. Much of the events and challenges in Steep revolve around freestyle tracks where you perform tricks to reach a certain score, racing, or time trials the game does tend to get rather stale after a short period. While the snowboarding and skiing events are fun to play, the wingsuit and parachute races feel longer than they should be with controls that make what should be an intense event very frustrating. Luckily, you get to choose which events you want to compete; if you prefer the rush of snowboarding and pulling off tricks, you can do that.

[wpdevart_youtube]UeHfwHLY8sA[/wpdevart_youtube]

Exploration is where Steep shines, and there is more than enough mountain to roam. While this may seem like a difficult challenge, Steep allows you to use tools such as binoculars to scope out far away locations and fast travel to them through the map view. This allows you to easily traverse the mountainous terrain without making it too difficult, and taking the fun away.

Though the fast travel through the map is a nice feature, it is rather enjoyable going across the snowy terrain as it looks immaculate. Steep is a gorgeous game to look at, though overtime look loses its luster as there isn’t much to make any one area stand out. Add in constant glitches where you’ll see your character model stuck in the sky after spawning, and the occasional game crash, and you’ll notice that the game needs some cleaning up. Luckily, Steep allows for you to join with three others to make the exploration not so lonely. While this is a nice touch, four people on a massive mountain seems too small.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Steep is a great first step in what I hope to be a long-term franchise. With various ways to play, a giant mountain to explore, and enough challenges to last for days, Steep delivers the potential to give you days of enjoyable playtime. Sadly the game doesn’t provide a lasting effect, creating an experience that gets bland only after a few hours. While this game isn’t worth the $60 price tag now, we could see Steep being a franchise that only gets better in future games.

The Breakdown

Pro’s

• Various ways to play allows for everyone to play the way they desire.
• Massive mountain gives you a sizeable terrain to explore, and traverse as you please.

Con’s

• Gameplay gets boring very fast.
• Numerous bugs either take away from the experience, or crash the game altogether.
• Only allowing four player online makes the massive mountain seem very empty compared to what it could be.