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The Climb is one of the buggiest games that I have ever played. Constant crashes, glitches, and pop-ins galore. These are a few of my least favorite things. I stopped counting at twelve crashes while doing this video review. That may not sound like a lot… but I played the game for only nine days. That’s more crashes than Days of playing! The game was developed by Crytek in partnership with Oculus, so how poorly it runs boggles my mind. What blows my mind as well is that I still like the game!
[Intro]
The Climb is all about a single activity… running! Just kidding, it’s all about climbing up and down and all-around beautiful terrain. You start in this great tutorial to teach you the controls and then explore the world in three very different environments. It’s an incredibly basic premise that is sold very well in VR. All this comes wrapped up for thirty bucks. I heard it was a great shoulder exercise and decided to pick it up and play it for thirty days to see how good it was.
Right away, let’s get to the gameplay. You hold both controllers in each arm and grab onto a ledge with the grip button. You then pull yourself in whatever direction you need to go and grab another ledge. While you have one of your hands-free, your energy meter drains. The gameplay comes in when you must decide what branching path you will go. That is based on how much of your energy you have left and how fast you want to get there to beat the timer. From there, different types of ledges, such as crumbling ones or spiked ones that drain your energy, make the game challenging. There are also challenges from wide spaces that force you to jump. The core mechanic of climbing in Virtual Reality is just great and this game turns it amazing.
You better hurry through each level though. Your completion time for the level dictates your score which can then reach up to three stars. Get enough stars and you start unlocking new levels and gloves. The challenge comes from the balance of moving fast while keeping your hand meter empty enough not to fall. As you play through the level you eventually learn each of the short cuts and how to optimize your path to three stars. Each level of The Climb is around ten minutes, allowing you to feel a workout on your shoulders. While not anywhere as much of a workout as actual rock climbing, it still burns in a way most VR games don’t. Most VRs focus on cardio or boxing, which gets those shoulders burning from horizontal movement. This game gets you going from vertical movements. I honestly did feel a bit sore from playing The Climb after each day.
The three environments you climb in are all very beautiful. As a side note, I am playing this on a Meta Quest 3. If you have a powerful enough gaming rig to run PCVR then you are in for a visual treat. For the three environments you will climb in the winter wonderland of the Alps, swing around in Southeast Asia, and Die a lot in the American Desert. As I mentioned, my family is originally from the Phoenix, Arizona, area, so I get to visit locations like in the canyon section each year. This game does bring back some fond memories of me jumping around different areas in Sonoma and Cave Creek with my parents, wife and siblings.
I’m stating that because this sentimental value might color my vision of this game more favorably. In reality, three environments with three main levels each leave only ninety minutes of gameplay. Most of the levels due blend in with each level but the three environments are distinct enough. Sure, there are super short and challenging levels after unlocking enough stars, but there are only two per environment. There are hidden Gnomes to find and cameras to locate but it just needs more core content. I’ve been expecting to play this game for thirty days but beat it in nine. It’s just such a short game for the thirty-dollar asking price. Heck, my highest reviewed Virtual Reality game, Swarm, was just fifteen bucks. That provided me with way more content and entertainment than The Climb ever could.
The lack of content isn’t even my main problem with the game. Like I said previously, this thing is buggy, and I mean it. Constantly falling through the geometry. Texture pop-ins while I am just a little bit away. And the before-mentioned crashes… oh, the crashes. I’ve had this game crash during the start-up screen with the company’s logo. That is crazy. This is something literally promoted by Oculus Studios. Imagine if Nintendo put out a buggy as hell Pokémon game! That would never happen in a million years. Imagine if Sony released a PC game that forced an update to require PSN, which isn’t in most countries? That would also never happen. All these things are impossible and yet what does happen is Meta releases a buggy game that is impossible to play.
However, what kept me going was how good the gameplay was. The triumph of reaching the top of a difficult level with barely enough health left is just so rewarding. I loved getting my shoulders all sore from hanging there. I loved trying to tackle all the side quests and get all of the gloves. It just needs a bit more content and a ton of polish and I would give it a thumbs up. Maybe a ten dollar decrease couldn’t hurt as well.s
Overall, I can’t recommend The Climb. Despite the decent reviews and the mechanics’ engagement, it’s just a slog. There is a Sequel, The Climb 2, that I plan on reviewing. I will see if that checks out, as it was made for the Meta Quest 2, whereas this is made for the Quest 1. While it’s time to put away my gloves, I hope to bring them out in the future.
So, guys, that is for today’s review of The Climb. If you have any suggested challenges for me, please leave them below. I try to do new challenges weekly, so I need you guys to give me some ideas. While you are down there, please subscribe to my YouTube channel. I am hoping to hit 1k subscribers by the end of the year. Visit my website jack-jenkins.com. Follow me on X and Instagram @truejackjenk. Lastly, I want you guys to have an amazing day. If you are wondering how to improve yourself, know you can’t do it alone. You can improve yourself together!