Peak

I got roped into playing Peak. It's a bit earlier after its release than I usually play games, but a good few months have still passed, allowing it to get in some updates. It's been a bit of a fad recently, and tauted as being a very good co-op game. Well, I'm perhaps a bit less enthusiastic about it.

Peak is a game about climbing a series of cliffs with various hazards. You're hurried on by a timer that slowly creeps up each cliff, but also by your hunger steadily rising. But going too fast might lead you into contact with one of the several hazards, inflicting you with heat, cold, poison, or worst of all, injury from falling. See, the challenge comes from having a limited stamina bar that drains while climbing and recharges if you have solid ground to stand on. But every problem that ails you detracts from that stamina bar. Injuries are a permanent penalty (though they can be healed with items), items have a weight, which also reduces your stamina, and most other status effects slowly or quickly go away, but for the duration still reduce your stamina. If you run out of stamina, you fall down, and if your maximum stamina goes negative, you pass out, causing you to die unless you recover on your own or with help from a friend. Aside from that, friends can help with an initial boost or pull you up the last stretch of a cliff. On the flipside, they can also steal your food or waste your items.

With how much hype the game got, especially on the co-op side, I was expecting a bit more. The game doesn't take itself very seriously, but it's also difficult enough that you can't really goof off unless you want to end your run very soon. Depending on your speed, a run can be 2-3 hours (why is the no pause button for such a long game?), and mistakes made early on may still have lasting consequences later, if you fail to find enough items to recover from them and also stay stocked up for the last and hardest levels. I was really hoping for both more cooperation and more use of items. Items may be powerful, but are rare and one-time use only, so aside from food, you're almost always just doing raw climbing, which isn't very varied or exciting. I guess I was expecting the cliffs to be more difficult, but have more aspects of using ropes or whatever and helping each other to reach the top. Instead, while having at least two players helps, the game is perfectly doable solo, and often with little to no items if you can plan your path well and keep your stamina up.

Did I like Peak? Would I recommend it? Not really. I didn't get the hype. It's an okay semi-casual party game, but I find it quite bare-bones on features, and not having enough real cooperation.