With The Climb, Crytek has taken a throwaway traversal mechanic from games like Uncharted and masterfully turned that into its own compelling and complete experience. [Tested with Oculus Rift]
The Climb is the perfect example of excellent VR design. The controller and headset work together perfectly, so it really feels like you are rock climbing.
I don't see what the other people are complaining about. This is a fantastic VR game. The graphics are some of the best I've seen in a VR game. This is one of my favorites and I have played many VR games since 2016. One guy said in his review that there is only 1-2 hours of game play? That's ridiculous. There are 12 different mountain climbing levels. 4 environments and 3 levels of difficulty per environment. Each level of difficulty is a different climb. I doubt you could do all the easy levels in 2 hours. I only have 1 complaint about the game. In certain parts the game thinks your head is intersecting with objects but it isn't. It blanks out the screen when this happens. This might be because I'm playing with HTC Vive and Revive. I'm not sure. I highly recommend you play this game. Oh, and I got this game on sale for $20.00. It was a steal. Its probably still worth it even at $40.00.
Crytek's launch title for Oculus isn't only an AAA game is a VR essential. The Climb is the Tony Hawk Pro Skater of VR. It translates the fun part of climbing into an immersive gameplay, which fits perfect the touch controllers and let you come back for more.
Forget Crysis, The Climb is Crytek's best achievement in a long while. Is it worth $50? That depends entirely on how sold you are on VR. [Tested with Oculus Rift]
You need to provide a seriously great experience to make it worth the strain and The Climb simply doesn’t manage to provide compelling gameplay for even the most die-hard virtual reality fans.
I played the Climb at a conference with a Xbox controller, then later bought it to use with the 3D tracked Touch controllers at home. It's safe to say that the controllers completely change the experience of the game.
I would go as far as to say that the Climb showcases probably the best use case to date of full-body immersion in VR - You literally reach out and grab rocks with your hands just like you would in the real world. It's a rewarding, tiring, even hypnotic, experience as you hustle your way through utterly gorgeous environments.
I'm a climber with moderate experience with both outdoor and indoor climbing. I can say that the game captures the feeling of the thing reasonably well. I found my palms sweating from the heights, my face from the constant (real life) leaning and crouching. The soothing immersive nature of real climbing is there, where you focus only on the wall in front of you and quickly lose track of everything else, including the ground below. Some mechanics are a bit arbitrary, like chalking/stamina, and all holds are more or less equally good - crimps and slopers exist, but the difference is mostly aesthetic.
The game certainly felt familiar to me, but one of the most important aspects of climbing is missing: balance. A lot of holds in real life are untenable unless you approach them from the right angle, but here anything you can reach is fair game, and stretching up or crouching down will expand your reach. (Could be balance is introduced later, I've only played the first two levels.)
All in all, $50 is a bit steep for a game that includes only one relatively shallow gameplay mechanic. It's an impressive experience, and probably something you'll want to break out for friends, but I don't see a whole lot of depth or replayability. But this really is the new generation of VR, with games built to be experienced rather than with VR support thrown in as a gimmick (I'm looking at you, Lucky's Tale).
Cool visuals. Good sense of height. Not much depth. My neck hurt after 10 minutes of playing and totally got VR headache from too much lateral movement within the game.
Not worth it. I wanted to like the gameplay, but even with 3D controllers, it's just not an enjoyable experience. Constantly glitching inside a mountain, sharp difficulty spikes, and graphics that have been surpassed already don't make for a good contemporary game.
50 Dollars for 1-2 hour gameplay. After that you already saw everything and it gets repitive and boring fast. Its also much to easy, they should at least have some challenging gameplay included. Also your neck hurts very fast after some minutes gameplay. Maybe it will be better with the 3d controllers releasing in the future, but it still wont be worth 50 dollars. It looks like the "real" games wont release in the next future...
SummaryThe Climb brings alive the excitement and thrill of rock climbing in virtual reality. Players will scale new heights and explore environments in a new gaming experience developed exclusively for VR, using the power of CRYENGINE.