Hands on with Steep: Ubisoft’s answer to SSX

We have not had a good snow sports game in a long time. It has been that genre developers have avoided, as SSX last released in 2012 on PS3 and Xbox 360.

Well, Ubisoft have been hard at work on their answer to this problem, an open-world snow sports game called Steep.

I got to try it out, and what I thought would be an over-complicated simulation experience turned out to be the complete opposite.

Steep revolves around 4 modes of snow sports: parachuting, wingsuit flight, snowboarding, and skiing.

While exploring the vast, snowy open world, you can switch between the various available equipment with a press of a button.

I started at the top of a hill, jumped off and wing suited down the side of the mountain, to open my parachute and manoeuvre through the power pylons.

I then landed on the ground, switched to my snowboard, and snowboarded down the hill, performing tricks and crashing into trees along the way.

Controls were as simple as ever. Not need to adjust weight while skiing, fine-tune my parachute, or anything of the sort.

I held down L2 to speed up, and moved the analogue around in the air to perform tricks.

The only time I felt the game was relentless  was during the wingsuit challenges, as perfecting the dips and dives required to stay in the air was relatively tough.

The game required me to follow a specific path, and I often hit the ground.

The various sports available to play meant that each one had to utilize a score system of sorts. Snowboarding’s score system saw me timing a perfect jump over a ramp to flip around in the air and earn points.

The tougher races took place in abandoned resorts covered in snow.

I sped down the hill, ramping over broken benches, through abandoned buildings, all to get to the bottom of the resort. During this all, I had to find the best objects to ramp over and use as trick opportunities to max out a set score and obtain gold in the challenge.

The parachute was much a slower time-based race, as I swerved through rings to gain checkpoints and made my way around a mountain to the final spot.

There was not much to these challenges other than trying to manoeuvre through the area as fast as possible. A simple cut above a hill to the other side saved time by not having to go all the way around it.

The parachute challenges were relaxing to say the least, and even the soundtrack the came with them was not as upbeat as the others.

The star of the game has to be the snowboarding and skiing, as they are extremely fun to do.

Nothing like ramping off a rock 20 meters in the air and praying that you land on your two skis to get your heart racing. Or aiming for a small little piece of wood sticking out of the snow, hoping that it launches you high enough in the air so you can spin around for points.

Every challenge you complete grants you new gear like jackets, parachute skins, and other cool items.

Although the beta was limited to these, there were enough around to make sure I stood out amongst the rest of the online community. As I levelled up by getting golds and XP, more challenges unlocked, but it was the feature that let me create my own challenges for online players that made the beta worthwhile.

As you find some cool areas in the vast open world, you can run a challenge and then share your findings with the online community.

This means that the open world would soon be filled with various new races and modes that other players have created. Speaking about the open world, it is surprisingly gorgeous.

Considering the world is just a bunch of snowy hills, the game looks fantastic and runs like a charm.

The fast travel system also loads instantly, as soon as I chose a new area to move to, the camera zoomed in and I was there, no fuss at all.

Where Steep shines the most is in its freedom to do anything you want, wherever you want to do it.

You can mess around by heading up a hill, and gliding down in style, only to then share your path with friends so they can do the same.

Everything is also recorded for you to watch, edit, and share your best clips. It is so easy to play, with no complicated controls, pitch and height, or anything of the sort. You press a button, and go.

Steep releases on 2 December 2016 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

Has Steep been on your radar? Let us know in the comments and forum.

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