The Climb 2 has continued to refine what made the first game in the franchise so much fun. It serves up more interesting and challenging climbs across more exotic locales, and it does it with a few new flourishes over the original that will have you revisiting levels and leaving little to dislike about Crytek’s acrophobia-inducing sequel.

The Climb 2 Details:

Available On: Oculus Quest
Release Date: March 4th, 2021
Price: $30
Developer: Crytek
Reviewed On: Quest 2

Gameplay

Here’s some ancient history: I first played The Climb after it launched on Oculus Rift in 2016; it was a technically impressive game but suffered from the lack of motion controls, which really hampered the whole experience. That was before Oculus released Touch to consumers, and they were still bundling original Rifts with an Xbox One controller. It’s amazing to see how far we’ve come with standalone VR headsets in the meantime, and as a result The Climb 2 feels miles away from my first experience with its predecessor.

Of course, I’ve since played The Climb the way it was meant to be experienced, namely with full motion controls so you can  physically stretch and grab your way through the winding handholds through each level, and wirelessly so you can really go wild. And The Climb 2 follows very much the same recipe as the first, although there are a few notable differences between the two that make the sequel a more enjoyable experience overall.

Image courtesy Crytek

On the outside, The Climb 2 may feel very similar, however it actually offers a more diverse collection of climbing possibilities that go beyond the original. That’s not to say I wish it didn’t go conceptually farther in some areas, but it’s a worthy successor just the same.

Level design shines in The Climb 2, giving you a host of options to amble up each of the game’s separate mountain formations. Harder and easier routes present themselves along the way, so you can climb however you feel most comfortable. Far jumps with crumbling handholds make for great shortcuts, but also pretty obvious deathtraps. You can choose to venture through even more annoying handholds, like the ones you have to dust off first, or the ones with spikes that sap your virtual stamina. Things like unsafe ladders and loose monkey bars are everywhere, so you have to choose wisely.

Image courtesy Crytek

It’s easy to throw caution to the wind though since the periodic checkpoint system allows for automatic restarts. Like in the original, you also have two supernatural gifts too (outside of incredible arm strength) that I never really used. You can rewind to your last checkpoint once per climb if you need to backtrack, and you can magically reveal available pathways if you’re lost. I tended to look around first for obvious pathways, so I never really ended up using either.

The number of levels are the same as the first—15 in both—but there’s a greater diversification of areas to climb around in the new game. In The Climb 2, you return to the first three areas (Alps, Bay, Canyon), which feel very much like rejiggered versions from the first game, but then you’re offered two entirely new areas: City, a very Mirror’s Edge-looking assortment of contemporary buildings and skyscrapers, and North, basically rural Iceland, replete with polar bears and puffins.

My favorite by far was the City area, which offered a bunch of unique gadgets and one-off climbing experiences. Shimmying from exposed brick to a crane ladder, and then to a zipline through the building tops is simply a thrilling experience.

Image courtesy Crytek

On the other side, I find construction scaffolding that makes you slip down a level if you’re not careful which pipe you grip. My only wish is Crytek spent more time building unique cityscapes, since they offered such a fun and weird mix of climbing possibilities. Basically, I’d play the hell out of a hypothetical The Climb: City Edition.

One of the most puzzling gadgets is the many flipping billboard walls that offer temporary handholds, making it a timed exercise. I would do everything I could to launch myself past these if I could.

All areas offer three distinct difficulty levels, each of which took me around 15 minutes to complete on the first run, making for a little under four hours of gameplay. That’s with only playing each level once, and not challenging other users on the leaderboard, which superimposes a ghostly pair of hands into your run up the cliff.

One minor thing that’s worth mentioning is that chalking has changed for the better. Although you still need to depress the secondary trigger and shake your hands for chalk, it feels about 50 percent faster, which makes the process less annoying. Just like the game’s predecessor, you don’t really need chalk if you can manage the ‘just right’ grip strategy, but it’s nice to know that it’s a slightly less cumbersome action.

Lastly, my least favorite discussion is about leaderboards. I think the game is engaging enough not to even need to focus on leaderboards, although some may differ in that opinion. Just the same, you can accrue points by comboing grips, which is done my moving fast enough to not break the combo chain. The faster your run, the higher your score. The more challenging grips, the higher the score. If you’re into obsessing over points, The Climb 2 will accommodate.

Immersion

The Climb 2 can be breathtakingly beautiful. That said, at least in my prerelease version, it feels like the game is knocking up against Quest 2’s modest compute overhead, which necessitates some lower res textures, and also what I assume is a very strong use of FFR (fixed foveated rendering), as you can clearly see the border between higher resolution sections in the middle of your field of view and those ‘feathered out’ in the periphery.

That may just be that the game needs more optimizing, because even with these minor niggles in mind, it’s ultimately well executed when it comes to not only the static visuals, but also its moving parts, like the world’s wildlife.

Image courtesy Crytek

It’s pretty often that you’ll look over your shoulder and see a curious little beast curiously peering down at you, making you feel a little less alone in the whole pursuit. Some aren’t so friendly though.

You’ll also run into physics-based things like dangling bags, ropes, and climber tents that you can use as grips, which makes the world feel more alive. The Climb 2 also does a much better job of integrating hand grips into the climbing environment, so they aren’t nearly as glaring as the stark white lines from the original.

Comfort

Climbing in VR is a surprisingly immersive way of moving around, but also really comfortable. There’s something about artificially shifting your point of view with a direct 1:1 hand movement that keeps you feeling in control. I played for hours at a time, and I never felt wobbly or nauseous.

Image courtesy Crytek

Here’s some advice from a VR old timer: make sure to keep an eye on your neck.

The Climb 2 is best played standing up or in a chair that can recline somewhat. It’s not because you’ll need your full body to play, because you really only need enough space in front of you to swing your arms. Rather, having regularly played VR games for the past six years, I can say with confidence that the strain your VR headset can put on your neck isn’t inconsequential. Inclining your head using only your neck as the fulcrum at a 90-degree angle and not compensating with your body’s physical posture (standing or sitting) is a recipe for strains and stiffness, which can linger well after you’re done playing.

REVIEW OVERVIEW
Overall
8.5
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Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 3,500 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • wowgivemeabreak

    I wonder how many (if any) out there are like me and preferred The Climb with the xbox controller over the touch controllers. My issue is that moving your hands while holding on made it seem like the mountain was moving and it was completely immersion breaking and weird. You could be holding on then moving your arms all around and the mountain would be doing that. Jumping was also really weird and glitchy with the touch controllers.

    These are two things that can be fixed as there is/was a SideQuest climbing game that fixed it by putting in a limit to how much things moved if you moved your hands but looking at videos of The Climb 2, it seemed they didn’t do the same thing.

    • I was going to make this same comment. I personally preferred the older version of playing the game where you had to awkwardly utilize your head position and the trigger buttons on the Xbox controller to really stretch to reach the next grip. It was obvious that the game was supposed to use the Touch controllers, but when I tried it with the intended control scheme it felt like it lost a lot of the danger, deliberation and struggle that made it such a tense experience in the first place. It just felt like the game was moving way too fast now because I could move as quickly as I could see ledges to grab onto, basically. With the “crappier” control scheme, I was moving very carefully because it was HARD to get to each next ledge. It felt like it matched the cadence of actual mountain climbing more accurately instead of just feeling like a superhero like you always tend to feel in VR.
      It became somewhat trivial when switching to Touch controllers. I was dying all the time and it didn’t really matter. I would FEEL it if I fell before.
      All that being said, I loved the game and had no idea they were working on a sequel, so I can’t wait to play it.

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  • User_Name_24601

    North is also a bunch of reused assets from the Climb 1’s PC version. I remember those puffins and polar bears. There were also wolves and a volcano.

  • FrankB

    Are the graphics on the video representative of what you see in the headset or is it rendered on PC as per previous promotional material?

    • Rudl Za Vedno

      rendered on PC unfortunately

      • FrankB

        Wonder why they’re not releasing a PC version? They clearly have the code and I’m sure plenty quest owners would rather have the option of using link or Virtual Desktop for upgraded graphics.

        • shadow9d9

          I imagine they want to build their standalone brand.

    • Adrian Meredith

      The video above is from the quest version (you can see the low Res textures and the flat distance environment) but obviously it’s drawn on pc to remove the pixelisation. Early trailers seemed to be an actual pcvr version that we’ll never see

  • MasterElwood

    From now on – a quest 2 review should always include the supported framerate (72/90/120).

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  • Amazing review, thanks for sharing it!

  • neodraig

    Can’t you take your own screenshots ?
    Are you too lazy or are you paid by facebook ?
    It is misleading to use those PC/photoshopped screenshots :-/

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  • franksid

    this was a great read. very thorough! I do look forward to giving this a play.

  • MadMax1998

    So they made one new area, the city, and brought the old north area from PCVR Climb over to Quest. Other than that it’s the same game. Feels more like a mission pack and not like it’s worth 30€.

  • Ratm

    Cant believe they continued this idea..
    Why would anyone want to move hands upwards all the time..