PEAK

PEAK was provided by Aggro Crab & Landfall for review. Thank you!

At first glance, you might think that PEAK is yet another VR climbing simulator, which are a dime a dozen, but don't worry, it's designed to be played with regular controls, and it plays well. Avoiding the obvious puns about the game being "peak", the game is very solid. There's no backstory to the game, merely that you are scouts who go on a flight that crash-lands on an island with some ridiculously tall mountains on it, and it's your job to climb to the top!

The climbing mechanics are the key here. The developers have opted for a "fun" vibe rather than a realistic one. Yes, you do have stamina that depletes whenever you're climbing, and yes, there are somewhat realistic physics, but climbing itself is as simple as holding down the right trigger (or a mouse button) and moving in the direction you wish to go. It's a beautiful balance between the realistic dangers of free climbing and the easily accessible nature of an arcade-style game.

However, the game goes beyond simply climbing. If you're in a co-op game with friends, you can help each other up ledges by pulling. You can also "lunge" near a ledge to give you that extra boost, but if it isn't enough, be prepared for some dire consequences. You can also collect various items to give you an advantage, such as ropes, rope guns, chain cannons to fire a climbable chain, and items to increase your stamina or heal in case you've taken a tumble.

You can play the game solo or offline, but I recommend playing it in co-op with friends. The element of cooperation enhances the experience, and the in-game proximity voice chat really adds to the immersion and tension, with voice effects such as echo and muffling adding to the experience.

It all combines to make PEAK a game that's great to play in short bursts. This isn't the kind of game you spend hours playing, but periodically hopping in for an hour or two session with friends is the way to play this game. The map changes every 24 hours, using a random map generator. This doesn't change everything; the biomes, for example, remain the same, but you will have to find new ways up the mountain and deal with different item locations.

This neat mechanic helps to expand the replayability of the game. If you get on a good "run", you'll be able to "finish" the game in under 2 hours, but with the map changing every day, you can always go back and try to beat future maps. Plus, there are scout badges to collect for doing specific tasks in the game, and you're unlikely to get them all on your first set of runs.

The biomes, too, are varied. While the map is randomly generated, there are certain environmental features that each biome sticks to, the Shore that you start on, for example, is always flat at first, leading to a rather sheer cliff, before entering the Tropics, where you'll be confronted with dangerous flora, vines, and rain which can make climbing more difficult. There are 5 biomes in all, each presenting unique challenges requiring different approaches, which helps to vary the game up, rather than constantly being about climbing sheer cliffs and finding resting points along the way.

All this while, you're being chased by "the fog", which, if you don't climb fast enough, will catch you and give you a stamina debuff (and eventually kill you) if you remain in it.

Is PEAK a perfect game? By no means. I had difficulties with controller support in the options menu, requiring me to use the Steam Deck's touchscreen to choose any options. The physics can also be a little finicky. Dropping a backpack against a wall caused it to ping off into oblivion, for example. The servers also had some issues while playing, sometimes refusing to connect me to the Steam servers until I restarted the game.

These should be easily fixable issues, or at least mitigated by being careful where you put your backpack down, so they don't ruin the experience. PEAK is a great game, although it's perhaps best enjoyed with friends.

PEAK - Steam Deck Performance

PEAK runs reasonably well on the Steam Deck. The controller support works fine in the game, but it has issues in the options menu when I played. We also had issues with the in-game voice chat not working with the Steam Deck's microphone, which is a real shame. There are some graphical options to choose from, and to get a nice 60 FPS experience, which you will want in PEAK, we had to lower the graphics options to "Low", which seemed to work well in our testing.

You can also choose to boot in DX12 or Vulkan mode; however, I found Vulkan to have more stable performance on the Steam Deck, so I recommend using that.

We could run "Medium", but as you enter later biomes, it causes drops into the 40s, whereas "Low" settings kept us at, or close to, a solid 60 FPS throughout, with some areas dropping into the 50s on occasion.

Power draw varies depending on your current location on the map; some biomes are easier to run than others, but on average, expect around 16W, with lows of 13W and highs of around 20W. Temperatures were about 60 °C - 65 °C. You can expect around 3 hours of battery life from a Steam Deck OLED and around 2 hours from a Steam Deck LCD.

Accessibility:

PEAK allows you to adjust the Field of View (FoV) and play on a lower difficulty, decreasing stamina drain and removing the time limit.

Conclusion:

PEAK is the first "climbing simulator" that has caught my attention. With a mix of realistic consequences/physics and arcade-style climbing mechanics, it's both tense and accessible for your average player. The fact that you can embark on this adventure with your friends is just a cherry on top. For the modest price tag, I would say it's very worth checking out.

There are some issues with PEAK on the Steam Deck, namely, the controller support isn't fully there yet, and the microphone issues for the voice chat are a real shame. Hopefully, these can be fixed easily. But don't let that stop you from trying the game out on your Steam Deck, because it runs great on lower settings and is still fun.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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