Steep

Steep is an open winter-sports game from studio Ubisoft Annecy that drops the player into a vast Alpine landscape and lets them choose for themselves where and how to ride down. Snowboard, skis, wingsuit, and paraglider are all available, and you can switch between them practically at any time, so a single run might start as a descent through the woods, continue with a cliff jump in a wingsuit, and end with soaring above the valley. The mountains aren't divided into separate tracks; it's one continuous world that unlocks as you climb or fly to new starting points.

The structure is deliberately loose. Challenges of various kinds are scattered across the map, from time-based races through trick contests to precise landings inside a target circle, and completing them gradually unlocks further areas and gear. The game places heavy emphasis on sharing, since every run can be recorded, viewed from different cameras, and sent to others as a challenge, and while moving freely you'll encounter other players' ghosts. The physics sits somewhere between realism and arcade; falls look dramatic and painful, but getting back on the slope is instant.

On PlayStation 4 the game feels strongest thanks to the sheer size of the terrain and its handling of weather and fog, when peaks disappear into the clouds and a descent into the valley brings a gradual change of surroundings. Snow reacts to your riding, tracks form in it, and avalanches are among the most striking moments. The sound design works with silence and the rush of wind, which is the only accompaniment during fast riding, with music kicking in more during free roaming. Reviews praised the atmosphere and the sense of freedom, with criticism aimed at repetitive tasks. Later expansions added further areas as well as an Olympic-discipline layer, so there ends up being considerably more content than at launch. To this day it's one of the few games that convincingly conveys the calm and scale of high mountains, and many players come back to it more for the free riding than for completing challenges. Steep also pointed the way other open-world sports games would later follow, an emphasis on freedom of movement rather than fixed set tracks.