The name of the game "Extreme Lands" is very interesting, its English name and Chinese translation reflect two different aspects of the game: one side is the inheritance, the other side is the focus of the game's content.
Chinese "Extreme Country" is reminiscent of Ubisoft's 2016 sports game steep, and the two can indeed be regarded as a real and nameless sequel relationship. The English names "riders republic" and "steep", although they are completely invisible to the connection contained in the translated names of the Chinese, reflect their respective points well: a very important addition to "Extreme Country" is cycling.
The entanglement between "Extreme Country" and "Extreme Peak" is much more than just the name. The same extreme sports theme, almost half of the content is similar, "Extreme Country" but in the spiritual temperament of the "Extreme Peak" to show a lively American party atmosphere - yes, "Extreme Country" is an online multiplayer game, which is what it should look like. But at the same time, like Extreme Peak, it's still a lonely game, and even many of the game's "multiplayer atmosphere" is for single-player play.
The subtle transition between hilarity and emptiness is what appeals to me most about this game.
How can you not talk about "Extreme Peak" before talking about "Extreme Country"? After all, two of the three major sports currently featured in "Extreme Country" are cycling, skiing and air sports, which have already appeared in "Extreme Peak".
In simple terms, Extreme Peak is set in the Alps, and the original version of the game focuses on snow sports such as racing skiing and stunt skiing, as well as aerial sports such as flying squirrel suits and paragliding. By the standards of a sports game, it feels pretty well polished, the signature skiing is needless to say, and the flying squirrel challenge is also very fun, enough to challenge oneself in the process of constantly falling to death.
The "Flying Squirrel Suit", better known as "Wingsuit Flying", is a rather dangerous sport, and even the top athletes often have news of their deaths (image from the Internet)
The atmosphere of "Extreme Peak" is also very unique, sometimes even unique to the point of weirdness, for example, in some plots, it is completely a mountain talking to you, yes, the mountain is not only there, but also talking to you. It tells stories from ancient religions to recent feelings, telling cool but completely unattractive stories.
To a large extent, the spiritual temperament shown in "Extreme Peak" is a sense of loneliness. Most of its stories are full of self-challenges, but at the same time they are calm, like a slow slide down a soothing and winding snow track. It's played alone, leisurely or nervously through the trails, gliding low in the air. Of course, the game also has a multiplayer mode, but in retrospect, I always feel that the feeling of being online is no different from a single-player game, and all I can remember is the sound of the cold wind whistling, and the heavy heartbeat sound effect in the game when the center of gravity is lowered and ready to take a leap.
Skiing and related stunts have also been brought to Extreme Lands
Stunts and racing are modes with considerable differences in gameplay
"Extreme Peak" chooses a rather niche theme, and exudes a "raw people do not approach" temperament, so although it has a production level that can be called "3a", sales may not be too ideal. I did not find the specific data, but I have seen a Ubisoft promotional material, which introduced the data of each series, "Assassin's Creed" is a hundred million sales, most of the others also have tens of millions of sales or the number of players, the same 2016 launch of "Drag Race" has more than 20 million players, but when it is the turn of "Extreme Peak", Ubisoft did not write about sales or the number of players, only mentioned some players in the game "how many hundreds of millions of jumps" and other data.
Fortunately, unlike the attitude towards "Hero Invincible", Ubisoft did not give up this route, in addition to constantly launching updates for "Extreme Peak", "Extreme Country", which can be called a "sequel", also officially arrived on October 28.
However, the lonely height of "Extreme Peak" has become the madness of "Extreme Country" in a new attempt.
Sometimes I think, there are so many people in Extreme Country!
After coming from the snowy mountains of the Alps to the surface of a National Park in the United States, I saw a huge number of people, wearing the name of the player id, passing through or falling in front of my eyes. Such a scene is very miso-like.
People who come and go have more diverse ways of moving, and props such as skiing and snowmobiling in "Extreme Peak" have been retained, and the change in feel is not large; the flying squirrel suit and the rocket flying squirrel suit added to the dlc also appear in "Extreme Country", but the feel is very different and needs to be re-adapted.
The biggest difference is the bicycle. As the first sport in "Extreme Country", bicycles are divided into downhill, highway, stunts, fun objects and other different categories, which are suitable for different terrain or competitions, and there are also deceptive props such as takeaway bicycles.
Ride your bike beyond the speed of a car
If the ski and flying squirrel suits are reminiscent of Extreme Peak, the race part of the bike may be reminiscent of "Rampage Mountain Bike" on ps2. A typical scenario is when the player starts from a towering ridge and descends along a winding mountain path, getting faster and faster, sometimes even the brakes won't save you. Fortunately, the game has added a common backtracking function in racing games, and players can reverse the time and return to the track when the car is destroyed.
A slightly special design is that the retrospective is only for yourself, even in single-player play, other contestants will not pause. So in general, backtracking means falling behind. However, the flying squirrel suit in the game is a risk-seeking mode, you need to be as close to the ground as possible to score points, but also to ensure safety, so backtracking is especially useful in this mode
If Extreme Peak initially had a soothing experience for quite some time, Extreme Country replaces all the relief with excitement. No matter which project, the player is either in the cool stunt or in the high-speed gallop, the overall rhythm is very fast, and the adrenaline is soaring.
In the multiplayer mode, the excitement of "Extreme Country" and the combination of the two characteristics of more people have become the biggest selling point of this game. You may have an impression of the scene in the promo where dozens of people ride down the ridge together, which is the game's massive competition mode. At the moment, this mode is the largest gathering in the game, held every hour on the hour and at half-point, each time a 64-player brawl.
In mass-scale competition mode, you don't think of Extreme Peak, you don't think of Stormy Mountain Bike, but you probably think of Violent Motorcycle. This event allows players to collide with each other, and because there are so many people and the venue is often not wide, collisions are almost inevitable. It's fun, of course, but sometimes it's also angry, and I've been knocked off the checkpoint during the game and instantly dropped from the lead to the tail. All in all, it's hard to say which of the faster spikes in blood pressure or adrenaline.
The scene is often very chaotic, and the ranking changes are also very frequent
Large-scale competitions are all in a triathlon-like mixed format, where you might ride until you're halfway through and suddenly don a rocket flying squirrel outfit and fly
There are many more multiplayer modes: there are 6v6 show-off stunts, which are stunt battles to see who is best at violating the laws of physics, and a free mode for 12-player confrontation, and a confrontation mode with friends or passers-by. Coupled with the players running around the world that can be seen as soon as you enter the game (if there is no one in a place, the game will even generate the shadow of the player, creating the feeling of having a lot of people), almost all the cutscenes in the "we are cool" and "let's have a party" almost too hard carnival atmosphere... You can feel Ubisoft's cry for a change from Extreme Peak, and this time, they want to tell the world: "We're multiplayer!" ”
But at other times I wonder, is it really necessary for so many people?
Unlike Sea of Thieves, which focuses on multiplayer cooperation, in fact, unless you are interested in finding someone to play online, Extreme Country can be played alone throughout the whole process, and when you play alone, the sea of people in front of you has no need to exist except for the "atmosphere group".
The content is rich. Compared to Extreme Peak, Extreme Country adds a large number of collectible elements, as well as many challenges outside of the competition mode. There's a collection of quirky items, punch cards for scenic spots, and lots of special challenge levels (some of which are very difficult) for hardcore platform hopping on a bike.
Some background information will also be given to the punch card areas
Extreme Realm also adds cultivation elements. There are two types of achievements in the game, one is the star, which represents the overall progress in the game, and each behavior will receive stars, and the other is the class level, which represents the player's achievements in different competitive fields. As the class level increases, players will continue to get better equipment (such as better performance bicycles), although the difference between different equipment is not large, far less than the difference brought about by the operation, but this system makes repeated play more or less rewarding.
In the case of comparable technology, the impact of the device is still obvious
All of the above can be played by one person. Arguably, this content, combined with the most common track mode in sports games, takes up the vast majority of players' time, and all of this is actually irrelevant to "multiplayer."< and bounds. As far as my subjective experience is concerned, although the experience of entering the game is very different from that of Extreme Peak, as the play time rises, you will find more commonalities in feeling: when you listen to the wind and ski across the mountain trail, or focus on repeatedly challenging the same level to surpass yourself, the players who come and go around become part of the background.
Paragliding in Extreme Peak is also back, but perhaps Ubisoft has found the mode completely uninteresting, as It is no longer a formal project in Extreme Country, but only occasionally accompanied by soothing music in a tense competition
To a large extent, Extreme Country deliberately creates a sense of liveliness in the cyberspace, and many things are artificially created. In reality, you don't see this kind of hilarity — 64 people huddled together, messing across the cliffs, and the real extreme sports have never been like this.
In reality, extreme sports are a matter of life and death, and often require patience and extreme loneliness. Cycling often requires a squad to travel to almost no-man wilderness, it takes much longer to climb the downhill spot than it takes to slide down; the challenge of flying squirrel suits is also extremely long, and 200 skydiving jumps can only be counted as an introductory experience...
In 2015, Tommy Caldwell, who lost his index finger, and partner Kevin Jorgeson challenged their bare hands to climb the Dawn Wall, known as the "world's hardest cliff to climb," and the two lived on top of it during weeks of climbing. This extremely difficult climbing attracted the attention of the whole world, and many media went to the scene to report and broadcast live under the cliff. But the heat of the outside world contrasts sharply with the silence inside the duo's tent and the long-standing motion above the rock wall, as if they are in two different worlds.
In contrast, stunt races in a well-built venue are particularly safe sports
Games are different from reality, and there is no way or need to make games like reality. Not to mention the details of a sport, how many people who play extreme sports games have the courage and conditions to try these sports? The unreal hilarity of "Extreme Lands" is interesting and doesn't happen in reality, but that's what it's worth, it puts the "impossible" in front of your eyes.
Moreover, we can also pursue "god-like", and the sense of loneliness of "Extreme Peak" has done this to some extent, and you will feel withdrawn from real life. And Extreme Country, although Ubisoft almost completely does the opposite, doing everything possible to create a "hilarious" atmosphere contrary to Extreme Peak, when you focus on these extreme sports themselves, you will find that in the bones, they are still the same category.
Turn on the Zen mode, the atmosphere of "Extreme Land" will instantly become empty, indeed very "Zen"
Extreme Lands is a game of thousands of faces. It is suitable for many people, those who want to play social games, those who want to see the scenery, those who want to experience extreme sports... Different people will see very different things in it.
For me, Extreme Nation lacks the sense of surprise that Extreme Peak brought to me back then — don't get me wrong, after all, Extreme Peak is my favorite Ubisoft game in recent years. Extreme Country did a great job, but I already had expectations, and I appreciated the spirit of Extreme Peak even more. From the perspective of the game alone, "Extreme Country" is definitely a much more mature work than "Extreme Peak", it is more refreshing, has more rich gameplay, and more diverse sports types. Moreover, compared with the Alps, which are always white, the terrain in "Extreme Country" is more diverse, and there will be no aesthetic fatigue, whether it is playing or hanging out, it can be called a visual enjoyment.
Of course, it also has shortcomings, the feel is not perfect, and the big world still looks a little hollow. And, as a Ubisoft game, sometimes I do ride a car and suddenly find that the car is welded into the rock... But so what? In this day and age, perhaps no other manufacturer would choose to present this genre at this level of production — frankly, this is definitely a moment when I would not be weird about the Ubisoft-style open world.
(The game experience code is provided by the publisher Ubisoft, and the experience in this article is based on the PC platform.) ）