If you've been following COGconnected's coverage of Steep you'll know that I enjoyed my time with the short beta that was released. I was eager to see how the game stood up after having more time to delve deeper into the full experience.

great visuals; deep mechanics; huge summits; varied events

minor collision issues; no offline mode; para gliding events boring

Steep brings a lot of really good ideas and reasonably strong snowboarding action to the table, but it's held back by a lot of little problems with the physics, the UI, and the course design. The final result is ambitious and often entertaining, but also unpolished and frustrating.

The simplicity of Steep is its biggest advantage – and initially, its biggest deterrent. Letting players loose in a giant playground seemingly has its limitations if you're not intrinsically interested in the four available sports: skiing, snowboarding, paragliding, and wingsuiting.

Sponsored by Red Bull…

I was a bit skeptical at first with this game, though I might end up getting bored after awhile. I was definitely wrong! Played this game for 5 hours when I first put the disc in. If you even remotely have an interest in snow sports this is definitely a game worth having.

Taking the spot as the first fully fledged open-world snowsports title to be released this generation, Ubisoft's latest IP Steep has been released this month, and although it delivers a seamless multiplayer experience filled with brisk adrenaline-fuelled events, not everything about it was spotless.

Snow Joke.

Snowboarding; skiing and wingsuiting is fun; Lots to do; Instant restarts

Simply bewildering design decisions; Pointless open world; Umpteen annoyances

Steep is a fresh extreme sports journey through a huge map, slowed only by dull paragliding and a lack of progression.

Not bad at all for a first ever attempt at a winter sports game with a sandbox setting. The snowboarding aspect is likely the reason most people would consider checking this game out, but the other modes are also fun, especially the wingsuit challenges.

The National Sporting Goods Association reported in 2011 that more than 6.9 million people around the world ski, while more than 5.1 million snowboard. With this in mind you'd think that snow sport video games would be more popular than they are; the last significant snowboarding or skiing game...

Photo perfect presentation; Tight controls across all four disciplines; Great sense of freedom; Well implemented multiplayer

Disappointingly low level variety; Tags