The Climb 2 Oculus Quest

A climber ascends the side of a building

The Climb 2 review: Getting high by yourself

More than to climb, more to fall off

By Mar 4, 2021, 9:00am EST

It's quiet on the side of the mountain, and I'm alone. I too know ameliorate than to look downwardly. From the quickly depleting stamina bar on my wrist, though, I know I need to move, and movement soon. Otherwise, the drop I'm trying to avert looking at volition become a bigger problem than but something to fear.

The Climb two on Oculus Quest ii is Crytek's second laissez passer at bringing solo climbing to virtual reality, and it's a doozy. The first game focused on natural features located in a more often than not static environment, but the sequel introduces cityscapes and livens upwardly the experience with interactive animals and other distractions, surprises, or delights. During i peculiarly surprising moment, I plant myself face to face with a rattlesnake, which promptly bit me, causing me to lose my grip and autumn to my virtual death.

That at-home from being and so far up, and so far away from other people and the distractions of modern life, combined with the sweat-inducing fear of falling, creates an appealing escape if you accept the tum for information technology.

Climbing in VR is by and large a simple process of looking around for handholds — which are usually marked past the difference in color from their firsthand surroundings — and so moving from one to the next, e'er making certain you have at to the lowest degree i hand keeping you from falling.

Unless you're trying to spring from one group of handholds to the next, of class, which is a distressingly common requirement during most runs, and when I felt the near vulnerable. It doesn't assistance that one button on your controller causes y'all to bound, and another shows you the best route, or routes, forward.

You'll want to practice which is which, to avoid my first hour of unexpectedly flinging myself into oblivion when I thought I was merely looking for the next step. I sometimes had to figure out where I needed to become side by side and achieve out as far as I could with one manus, getting fix to catch on, while property onto my current perch with the other hand before taking the jump.

Hanging on with but one hand takes away stamina, though, and you also autumn if y'all run out of it. You replenish your supply past holding on with two hands; by making sure y'all keep your hands chalked, which entails shaking the controller with the right button held downward; or by learning how to only press downwards on the grip button halfway.

A climber on the side of a building gets ready to jump to a new perch

This one-half-grip technique requires a fair amount of muscle retentivity to get correct if you don't desire to be looking at the indicator on your hands the entire time. But putting the effort in is worth it if you lot're chasing high scores and depression completion time.

Finding your rhythm in the climb is crucial if y'all're hoping to practice either, considering the only thing that will kill you lot as ofttimes as rushing a climb is existence indecisive. Watching your stamina; knowing where to go next; learning how to spot shortcuts, branching paths, or secrets — all of that is key to doing your best, merely y'all'll take to proceed moving. Learning how to move at the correct cadence, where you lot're always a few steps alee of your stamina judge without being reckless about your choices, is a joy, and brings with it that coveted country of menstruum where time and "existent life" disappear. While the risk of doing this sort of matter in real life seems bonkers to me, The Climb 2 showed me a bit of what I imagine to be the draw of the sport: When you succeed, you have no one to give thanks only yourself. When y'all fail, y'all besides have no one else to blame. Information technology's only you, whatever you're trying to climb, and the view.

Which is fine, because the view is nearly always spectacular. Looking down is a bad idea if y'all're scared of heights, and if y'all desire to avoid as much vertigo as possible, the game is still playable by focusing only on the climbing surface directly alee of yous and your next movement. But getting to the very summit of each challenge rewards you with an astonishing view, and I often find myself prophylactic somewhere halfway up the mountain or edifice, hanging on for honey life with both hands, only looking around and enjoying the danger and confinement, two feelings that The Climb series helped me realize are frequently just two sides of the same coin.

The Climb ii is also a surprisingly capable conditioning, specially if you put weights on your wrists. The downside to the game's design is that information technology's a nightmare for accessibility. Y'all tin can play sitting down, sure, just you lot're going to be at a huge disadvantage if you don't have the total range of motility of both artillery, and I often found myself straining to accomplish a handhold that was just out of reach. If you have joint or back pain, I would be very conscientious with this i; y'all need to exist even more ready to move and react than in the beginning game.

The improver of human-made environments and a need for Crytek to upward the stakes from the last game have led to a few additions: ziplines to aid you zoom from one cliff face to some other, ropes and hanging structures that react to your weight and momentum when you lot grab them, and angled handholds to slide down. Moving from a secure perch to one of those slides is a commitment; in one case yous're moving, your choices are either to notice the adjacent handhold to jump to before you reach the end of the support, or fall to your death.

Developers frequently tell me that the tragedy of game development is that you only know how to make the game yous desire to make after it's washed; that the deed of development itself is the manner yous figure out how to achieve your goals. This is why the second game in a series is frequently so stiff: The development squad learned its lessons from the creation of the outset game, knows what to build on and what to cut, and how to make the player experience the desired emotions. The Climb two is certainly an iteration of the offset game, but and then many of these additions work together to elevate the entire experience, making it easier to believe that you're really upwardly there, trying like hell to figure out how to stay alive.

Or you tin can remove the stress birthday and play on the lowest difficulty setting, which eliminates the stamina meter, allowing the actor to zoom upward the side of each surroundings and focus on enjoying the view and the experience. You practise have to play the climbs in each environment in order of difficulty to unlock them in the scored modes where you unlock new gear. But every single climb is bachelor to attempt on the casual setting from the jump, a welcome characteristic for anyone who only wants to be a virtual tourist on these mountains and structures.

The Climb 2 will no doubt be too intense for many people, regardless of the difficulty options. But information technology's a smart, well-crafted update to the starting time game that feels much more alive and "real," even if yous are playing every bit 2 disembodied hands. Crytek realized that rock climbing was just one facet of the sport, and tapped into popular civilization's collective beloved of high-flight Hollywood stunts and viral videos of urban free climbers to expand on the fantasies that it can offering to players. The outcome is a game that delivers stillness and a racing heartbeat in equal measures, where the histrion is always their own best friend, or their own worst enemy.

The Climb ii is out now on Oculus Quest 2. The game was reviewed using a download code provided by Crytek. Vocalisation Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vocalisation Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. Y'all can observe additional information about Polygon's ethics policy here .