Bear Grylls Gear

Survive in the Wild With the Latest Gear

Oculus Quest 2 The Climb 2

8 min read

Hanging on with only one hand takes away stamina, though, and you also fall if you run out of it. You replenish your supply by holding on with two hands; by making sure you keep your hands chalked, which entails shaking the controller with the right button held down; or by learning how to only press down on the grip button halfway. Polygon Recommends is our way of endorsing our favorite games. When we award a game the Polygon Recommends badge, it’s because we believe the title is uniquely thought-provoking, entertaining, inventive, or fun — and worth fitting into your schedule. If you want to see the very best of the best for your platform of choice, check out Polygon Essentials. Since you don’t need to worry about chalk on ‘Easy’ it just totally changes the dynamic of the whole game, but like I said before, it’s still handy for learning layouts.

The climb 2 is set in some of the same locations but all the “maps” are completely different from the first game. I enjoyed the first one and second one enough I would recommend both, other people seem to hate these games so it’s obviously not for everyone. However, I’m not sure if the second game is simply an upgrade over the first or a completely different experience.

The sequel adds 15 additional maps, including a new urban location that has you dangling above traffic as you navigate between towering skyscrapers. You can also find dynamic objects such as ladders, ropes, and hanging containers scattered throughout certain maps which add a bit of variety to your climbs. Climbing is one of those things that works really well in VR with motion controls, but rarely gets more than a moment to shine. This is developer Crytek’s second iteration on the idea of scaling large, vertical obstacles, and it’s a major improvement over the original Oculus Rift launch game in terms of controls and level design. Which is fine, because the view is almost always spectacular.

Oculus Quest 2 : On A Testé The Climb 2, Le Retour De Lescalade En Réalité Virtuelle

Plus, even if the city levels didn’t look as good up close as the mountain regions, the diversity of levels here is fantastic. There are five total regions and each region has three climbs with two difficulty modes each. However, things get interesting once you master the art of half-gripping and jumping, or what I like to call ‘throwing yourself’ across levels. For a half-grip you simply only press down the trigger partially and it won’t decrease your maximum stamina, which means you can can go longer without re-applying chalk, but it’s tricky to get the pressure of your squeeze just right. Now the sequel, the aptly named The Climb 2, is out exclusively for the standalone Quest platform.

The Climb 2 is a convincing experience, if for no reason other than how good it looks. I played with a fan pointed at my body most of the time to simulate a nice cool breeze and that really helped a lot too. After just two or three climbs, each of which usually take minutes depending on familiarity, my arms were already getting sore. The Climb 2 has continued to refine what made the first game in the franchise so much fun.

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. The Climb 2 is also a surprisingly capable workout, especially if you put weights on your wrists. The downside to the game’s design is that it’s a nightmare for accessibility. You can play sitting down, sure, but you’re going to be at a huge disadvantage if you don’t have the full range of motion of both arms, and I often found myself straining to reach a handhold that was just out of reach. If you have joint or back pain, I would be very careful with this one; you need to be even more ready to move and react than in the first game.

Case Study: The Design Behind cubisms Hand

You’ve got to throw and leap all over the place to make that kind of blistering pace happen. I would suggest buying the second and if you enjoy it maybe get the first one when it goes on sale, if you want more of the same experience with different climbing routes. However, in the end I went for 1 because it has crossbuy with the PC version. It sounds like this one has all the same maps as the first one but with updated graphics. Why would anyone want to move hands upwards all the time..

In the game, the player needs to climb different cliffs and skyscrapers. The game received generally positive reviews upon launch. The Climb 2 is held back visually by its target platform, but it more than makes up for it with some thrilling climbs, incredible vistas, and excellent new game mechanics to really help keep you grounded. I don’t have a fear of heights or anything like that, but I absolutely did feel my stomach fall in fear when peeking out over the ledge a few times. It may not be as pretty as it could be with some poor texture quality here and there, but my arms are sore and I had a blast so it’s hard to say that affected my experience all that much overall.

Jumping was also really weird and glitchy with the touch controllers. The Climb 2is 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 is a recipe for strains and stiffness, which can linger well after you’re done playing. 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.

The moment-to-moment gameplay of The Climb 2 is meditative in its simplicity. I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns. And I guess I can only imagine what real rock climbers like Mark Serrels do all the time. That calm from being 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 have the stomach for it. The game received generally “generally positive” reviews upon release according to review aggregator Metacritic.

Climb 2 Install Failed

The new game has ziplines, sliding grips, ropes you dangle over, ledges and even some city maps to grapple through. I’ve only just started, but my mountain experiences were already more varied than the original’s maps. Each location has several checkpoints to head toward. Figuring out the best way there is part of the puzzle. The feeling of being high up is surprisingly effective, even for me as a VR veteran. Losing my grip and falling still freaks me out a bit.

Despite the fact that the visuals are clearly held back by the mobile processing power of the Oculus Quest, The Climb 2 still manages to look absolutely breathtaking at times. When you’re in the thick of things, clinging on for dear life, desperately scanning the side of a cliff trying to find the next handhold, you don’t tend to notice the muddy up close textures, but they’re still there. Or when you’re standing at the top of a mountain and looking out at the gorgeous landscape you don’t usually notice that the water isn’t moving or that the natural landmarks are a tad blurry, even though they are. The original Climb is my favorite VR game of all the ones I’ve played and I’ve gotten many, many hours of fun out of it on both my Rift and Quest. Obviously it’s up to you and your wallet, but there are different climbing locations in the games, so you aren’t duplicating anything if you get both.

The Climb was my favorite ‘gen 1’ VR game so I’m excited to see an update, but the trailer they showed in Sept had lots of footage that sure looked like it was from the first Climb game . That would be a sign that it still has a ways to go. Game looks fun, honestly I just want Climbey to come to Quest properly as that multiplayer mod supported game has unlimited content.

The design of the city was inspired by Miami, and the team wanted to capture the city’s vibrant colors and its “sunny, bright vacation feeling”. However, the team believed that a direct replication of Miami’s highrise buildings would be “too dull to climb on”. To make climbing in a city landscape exciting, each level incorporated different surfaces for players to climb on and horizontal traversals. For instance, players are sometimes tasked to scale three skyscrapers in one level, with each of them having their gameplay mechanics. The levels featuring natural environments were inspired by Maya Bay, the Grand Canyon, the Alps and Iceland.

I wasn’t a fan of the visual style in the city environment, all of the buildings looked like they were made of plastic rather than actually feeling realistic. 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. Finally, if the intensity of managing your stamina or infrequently chalking up your hands is too much, there’s a Casual mode that does away with these things. It’s a great way to jump into a level and start climbing, and I found it a helpful way to scope out a level and get a sense of direction before climbing it for real in Professional mode.

en_USEnglish