UKH

Has there ever been a good climbing video game? 

I've just spotted this PC game https://www.greenmangaming.com/games/insurmountable-pc/ 

the graphics look really nice but I just can't imagine doing virtual climbing? even with a VR set....

'Death always climbs with you' and 'conquer' ....

What do you think?

No

That's about it really

I've not seen anything I'd consider good yet. There's the one you linked, that annoying VR one (I hate VR), and some first person, low-res 3D platformer type one where you're a weird alien explorer who picks up a couple of ice axes, and eventually grapple hooks etc and climbs. 

I suppose technically this is a climbing game, horribly frustrating and quite entertaining:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/240720/Getting_Over_It_with_Bennett_Fodd...

If I were to make one I'd go the way of a Tony Hawks/Fifa-esque sport type game. I can see the whole thing pretty clearly in my mind. Big hurdles are the control scheme and avoiding it ending up like a vertical version of QWOP with better graphics (though actually a climbing QWOP clone could be quite fun).

I reckon you could probably make quite a fun RTS / resource-management type game that simulates big mid 20th century-style Himalayan expeditions. A Dwarf Fortress meets Age of Empires meet Annapurna sort of idea. Do you want a couple of climbers to start fixing lines above camp 3, or do you need more bodies ferrying gear up to camp 2? The weather's looking dodgy - have the climbers at camp 3 got enough supplies to sit out a storm? Where do you want to put your camps anyway? Should you have brought an extra high-altitude porter at the cost of a bit less food and gear? Do you make a summit push tomorrow, or do you let your best climbers rest and recover for a day and risk the conditions deteriorating?

this looks more promising..

youtube.com/watch?v=1tvFxjlpb-k&

All you could ever ask for:

https://bbcmicro.co.uk/game.php?id=2059

I got this game for Christmas in the early 60s

https://tomsk3000.com/product/1961-merit-everest-agility-dexterity-game-eng...

I seem to remember that it took a fair bit of skill and accidents were frequent to ropes of 3

This is an amazing idea and I'd love this, but I suspect the pool of people this would appeal to would be rather small...

doesn't stop other random video games popping up with niches. Farming simulator for instance is a top seller on Green Man Gaming and Steam! 

I love the retro game idea. Maybe add some kind of crafting element to survive the cold! and make more ropes. 

OMG that game looks terrible! haha 

Tony hawks now that was a class game. I think because climbing is quite a slow sport even to watch, it makes playing a game of it that much more boring. It'd need to be speeded up loads! 

I've just bought an Oculus Quest, and once in a while this pops up as a suggestion: https://www.ign.com/articles/the-climb-2-review

Looks like it might be mildly amusing, but an accurate climbing simulator it certainly isn't.  I have not yet been tempted to part with £18 for it.

Mind you, that's mainly because I am spending every spare minute I have in the lightsaber dojo in Vader Immortal, which is amazingly good fun!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/327890/I_Am_Bread/

<runs away/>

Surprised nobody has mentioned the call of duty game that has the short section where it gives you two ice axes to swing.  You're approaching a mountain air base in a storm to sabotage it.  Modern Warfare II iirc, or it might have been the first one.

Turns farcical pretty quickly.  Had to change the mindset from "I'm playing a bit of climbing" to "I'm playing an action film" in order to not hate it.

Making it into a Hollywood action segment is a pretty big trap for the developer to fall into. Can see it being quite difficult to make something that's true to life while also being exciting/challenging.

I really like the rts idea above!

There's a fair bit of chalk bothering with ice axes in the modern Tomb raider installments.

Some of the parkour-style building climbing in the Assassin's Creed games is quite satisfying. Not the main focus of the game but definitely a significant and enjoyable mechanic. Sort of a spiritual successor to Tomb Raider in some ways, before the Tomb Raider franchise got reanimated.

One of the things I hope they do better in GTA 6 and RDO 3 is model the character's climbing ability. Right now they are total beasts at doing pull ups but have absolutely no footwork.  The games have got a map with some great mountains and cliffs and with a little more realism about what was climbable and what was not rather than just 'you slip if it looks wet or the angle > X degrees' it would be an interesting extra aspect to the game to find routes up them.

Not a climbing game I know but, I’ve done all of the Farcry games and pretty much walked everywhere in the mountainous landscapes so is great for a walker. You can climb loads of steep valleys and grass ridges and some fairly steep slabs. There are lots of huge vertical faces and overhangs but you either have to use a grappling iron or take running jumps between ledges. All included in an excellent FPS.

I picked up Insurmountable free on the Epic Games store last week. If I ever get round to playing it I might drop some thoughts in here.

Celeste is an indie platformer that came out a couple of years ago to critical acclaim, and is about reaching the top of a mountain. The mechanics are not about tryng to recreate the motions of mountainering, but if you include it in your definition of "climbing video game" it's definitly a good one.

Finally the last third of Journey (https://store.steampowered.com/app/638230/Journey/) is spent trying to climb this utterly hostile, snow covered mountain in a blizzard to (spoilers) eventually break through the clouds into an gorgeous mountain panorama. Again doesn't really replicate the actions of mountaineering (mainly just press stick to go forward, with a few light puzzles), but the atmosphere of desparation and grimness it creates as you fight against the wind and snow is the closest replication of Scottish winter I've found in a video game.

Like jonzza, I grabbed a copy of  _Insurmountable_ when it was going for free on Steam.  It's more a mountaineering game than a climbing one : the challenge is in route finding and managing your limited resources to keep your climber on the move - energy, internal temp, oxygen (at higher altitudes), and sanity (not going off the rails from being alone and in permanent danger for so long).  The climbing is simply a way for your climber to get about, no more exciting than the walking (though, TBF, running out a vertical section against rapidly dropping energy is kind of tense!).

I'm looking froward to _A Highland Song_ : though, again, the climbing looks just to be a way of getting around a platforme, in manner of early Lara Croft (holds either are perfect or totally unusable), the environment looks like it'll be very pretty (and, since the developers are from Scotland, might even look like the Highlands rather than Generic Hilly Wilderness #412)

_Celeste_ is wonderful and fun but the mountain's more there as a metaphor.  I love playing it but climbing it is not!

Cheers for the pointer to _Journey_ - I'll look that up, as that last third sounds atmospheric, and rather like my experience of being in the Alps!

The Climb is probably as good as a climbing video game is going to get....it's quite good fun. If you can pick it up in a sale it's worth playing.

It's not a sport that lends itself to video game adaptations really though, same as gymnastics simulator has never taken off! 

There's probably some fun abstraction you could come up with, but it'll have little to do with actual climbing.

That seems to be true for most 'sport' type games. They bear little relation to the actual sport, as all you're doing is fiddling with joysticks and buttons, rather than, say, kicking a ball, or riding a skateboard or snowboard (pretty like gymnastics, really).

​​​​​​​ps. Hello Adders; long time, no see.

Yeah highly recomended. Only takes a couple of hours to play through. The way your character moves combines perfectly with the environments, visuals and music to make a really beautiful game.

Though valid criticisms would be the gameplay isn't massively challenging, there's not much in the way of story and it's possibly a bit pricey for the runtime.

You could give this one a go, ends with a gunfight too

youtube.com/watch?v=Va3XSrPmk4U&