The name is not ambiguous it’s a rock-climbing game where you travel from A to B. Yet once expanded and built out, The Climb becomes one of the most visceral and enjoyable VR experiences I’ve tried to date. The result is what looks, on the surface, like a mini-game you’d find in the new Tomb Raider. Bowman, who joined Crytek last year as director of production, says Oculus helped steer them toward a better approach: focus on one thing, and nail it. "‘We’re Crytek,’" he remembers the team saying, "‘let’s do this huge thing.’" The studio known for building the most blisteringly realistic-looking shooting games set in huge, detailed worlds wanted to be ambitious. But compared with the company’s more expansive and mysterious adventure game, Robinson: The Journey, The Climb is a no-frills competitive experience that can be played in a group setting.īowman says Crytek first approached virtual reality with eyes bigger than its stomach. Crytek is developing The Climb as a launch title for the Rift, due out some time next year.
This is The Climb, a new virtual reality game from German development studio and graphics powerhouse Crytek, the company behind first-person franchises Ryse and Crysis. I’m wearing the latest Oculus Rift headset and holding an Xbox One controller, but as I tap A and watch my character leap in the air, I can feel the sweat form on my temples. I tried a second earlier to reach a section high above me, but my fingers fell short. The sun is shining, and scatterings of blue-roofed villages sit what has to be hundreds of feet below me between patches of blinding blue water. He’s standing next to me while I cling to a jutting rock in what he describes as an idealistic virtual recreation of a Southeast Asian mountain range. “You’re going to have to jump,” says David Bowman.