We didn’t have a thread for this before as far as I can tell.
Unfortunately, it looks like I’m going to have to kick this off with some really tragic news.
Skier Matilda Rapaport died in an avalanche during a promo shoot for Steep.
http://www.redbull.com/en/snow/stories/1331806831410/matilda-rapaport-passes-away
I’m really looking forward to this one. Wish EA would resurrect the “skate” franchise and also have it on PC/moddable.
I really hope its similar to the Crew where Crazy Trick Skills aren’t essential to actually progress in the game. Generally I suck with sports games that require real precision, but I’ve been having lots of fun with the Crew. I remember trying a few snowboard games in the past and frequently I couldn’t get very far, as I struggled to do all the required combos!
Play with your friends during the Early Beta Access. Forward the email or send the 3 codes below to your friends. They can redeem their code on:
http://steepgame.com/beta-redeem
Friend 1: D49QUJH6WYCP
Friend 2: JKBWPV2JL3CA
Friend 3: MHVXGPJ92N9P
December 2nd? Wow. Man, I hope this has long legs because I think it’s going to get buried with that launch date.
Thanks for the codes!
(Took the 3rd one btw)
Thank you! I took this one.
Horrible to hear that news…tragic. I claimed the first one, as I love snow sports games, cheers.
I’m in the beta this weekend, too. Add me on PSN if you want to compare scores: BradGrenz. Although using all these white UI elements against a snow covered landscape was a pretty insane choice by the devs:
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm. I’ve got about 6 hours in this… I really want to like this…but…I don’t actually lol.
Maybe it’s just me. I find games where ‘you can do anything!’, to not really hold my interest as well as games that have a well designed progression to them, and various skill levels you have to pass to progress/unlock. There is a form of that in this game, as starting locations are gated behind level, but there is really no focus for what you are suppose to do (and that seems to be one of their major design points)…it just doesn’t really work for me.
I find the landscape, and the freedom to go wherever, awesome in concept, but kind of frustrating in practice. There is some fun to be had just tooling down the mountain, but even that is hampered by some weird design choices. Your avatar is almost always in the way of exactly your line of sight…that’s crucial to not running into things and/or lining up a jump etc…I find it really maddening. The jumping is underwhelming, and the timing of it feels off to me (you always have to jump too early, and sometimes it seems to work, and sometimes not). They are going for a “realistic” application, while once again good in theory, doesn’t make for very satisfying gaming.
SSX Tricky has always been the high point for snow games for me, partially because it was absurd, and launching yourself 1/2 mile into the sky and doing 17flips is FUN…but also because the progression was awesome in that game. It really kept you moving forward to unlock the next race/map/event. I don’t actually care if I unlock something new in Steep, because it’s just more undefined pathing with a ton of trees and rocks.
One the one hand, if you’re going to give me a simulation, do that. This illusion is completely destroyed in Steep, because there are giant pop ups all over the place, that make the game look incredibly video-gamey, while at the same time everything else is suppose to be “realistic”. I just wish the game would have picked one or the other approach, as together they just end up being kind of …not great.
I may plunk a few more hours into this for kicks, but I was actually pretty bored with it within the first hour or two.
This got me very excited for this game. As a skateboarder/snowboarder I much prefer games that veer towards semi-realism. Usually this makes them appeal less to “outsiders”, but I can play open ended games like this for years and years.
Played a nice dollop of the Beta this weekend and I wasn’t super into it in the end.
First the good stuff. The open mountain environments are really impressive and he sound design is spot on. The clink of the ski gear and the lovely crunch of snow is pitch perfect. The sound design alone had me pining for my ski bum days. The camera angle does an impressive job of conveying the a real sense of pitch. Something I’ve not seen in one of these type of games before and Steep really lives up to it’s namesake here.
Now on to the issues. First the skiers form. I admit this probably not much of an issue if you haven’t spent the last 20 years as a ski instructor, but there is no way someone with that form could ski that terrain. The skier habitually drops his uphill hand, and squats into his turns completely in the back seat. There is no upper and lower body separation and next to no angulation. Basically you have a low level intermediate skiers form. No Bueno and it constantly drove me nuts.
Now on to more pertinent issues. The gameplay just isn’t that “fun” (sorry Tom). It lacks the satisfaction of execution that something like Skate has. You find yourself in a winter wonderland, but interacting with it is very flat. I’m not sure what the solution is. Maybe a more dynamic control system, or maybe up the speeds dramatically so that more input is required to maintain control.
The latter might be interesting since that is the nature of really skiing steeps. In order to maintain control a huge amount of input is required to stay out over your skis and maintain control. Maybe making it a bit more “sim” like would have engaged the player more in what’s happening and added more interest to just traversal of the terrain. After all that’s the true joy of skiing.
Then again, maybe I am completely wrong and gamers will love just repeatedly hucking themselves off cliffs. For me that got dull pretty quick.
I concur with all of that. I actually just un-installed this. It went from boring to actively annoying for me after playing a bit more. There was one really maddening thing towards the end, that actually was the proverbial straw for me. There is this weird thing in Steep, where you are traversing randomish terrain, and the design goal of the game is that you are suppose to deal with things ‘on the fly’ as it were. The problem I had, was that almost every time, without fail, I’d be approaching something, especially a jump, and right before the jump, there would be something to take most of your speed away…whether it was a mogul, a tree, a rock, whatever…it’s ALWAYS something. This is probably the single most frustrating element of the game…it seems like it’s actively trying to stop you from having fun.
The open world aspect of it is a great idea, and had the mechanics been better it would have been great. I’m sure some people will probably love this as I think there is going to be a lot of personal taste involved. In a weird way this reminds me of NMS, 1000000 miles wide, and 2 inches deep.
Agreed. An open world is only as interesting as your ability to interact with it.
Tried the open beta yesterday. I gave it about an hour with high hopes for capturing even a sliver of the thrill of SSX Tricky (by all accounts, the greatest video game in the history of forever and always, obviously, duh) but those hopes were quickly dashed. Some nice graphics and sound but I agree with previous posts in here… something just isn’t clicking. Too bad! Every console generation deserves a brilliant snowboarding game.
I’m absolutely loving this. It’s obviously not based on tricks, but more exploring the mountain and just enjoying riding. Reminds me really well of going skiing in real life. It’s also much improved from the alpha, they really took a lot of the feedback to heart. I don’t purchase basically any $60 AAA games any more but this is becoming a day one purchase for me.
I spent some more time shushing down the mountain last night and decided I was needlessly harsh in my previous post. It’s a good game. Not an A+ but certainly not worth writing off entirely. I’m thinking I’ll hold off due to the glut of games right now, but maybe it’s a good one for the Steam summer sale.
I downloaded the beta when it showed up as an ad on the front page on Xbox One yesterday. I tried it out today, and it refuses to log into their server. It just keeps kicking be back out to the main menu saying it can’t connect to the server.
Uninstalled.
Yeah, I think the beta ended Sunday.
