Before officially entering Extreme Country, I always thought it would be a remake of Extreme Peak, maybe with some system tweaks due to the addition of sports, but overall it should be a hardcore and niche work like its predecessor. However, the actual situation in the game hit me hard, compared to "Extreme Peak", "Extreme Country" this work game mode is more like "Drag Racing God 2", the original "Extreme Peak" some of the realistic settings have also been thrown away, into a bunch of "open world canned" things.
But don't worry, this work does not inherit the shortcomings of "Racing Car God 2", but the strengths of "Racing Car God 2" and "Extreme Peak" are benignly combined in this work, moderately reducing the difficulty of operation and strengthening online social elements, plus excellent gameplay design for bicycle projects (worthy of rider's republic), compared to its predecessor "Extreme Peak", this game is really "cool" to play. Players like me who entered Extreme Country with the help of a new issue of "Ubisoft Travel" have gradually been attracted by the charming sports gameplay and become a member of this extreme sports "country".
As for the reason why I tried this game as a travel game in the first place, on the one hand, it was because of the style of Ubisoft games all along, especially after the launch of the new Assassin's Creed trilogy of special "Exploration Mode" (Ashoka gradually understood the essence of his own game), and on the other hand, it was also because of my own selfishness in the field of "Extreme Sports", which needed to start from before I first entered the game of Extreme Country.
Originally released in the fall of 2020, Extreme Lands was originally scheduled to be released in February 2021 and postponed to October. In the more than a year before the game's official release, Ubisoft did not do much marketing for this game, and the launch of the trailer was not too frequent compared to blockbuster works such as "Assassin's Creed", and the news was relatively small, but a new trailer released in August 2021 revealed a lot of information about the stage of the game - Mammoth Mountain, Sequoia Park, Canyonland, etc., are famous national parks in central North America, with well-known natural scenery. The appearance of Yosemite National Park is even more eye-catching, and the reason for this is only because this national park has a very important site , el capitain.
I don't know if you have seen the film "Free Solo", a documentary filmed in 2018 and released in Chinese mainland in June 2019, with a duration of 100 minutes. The film follows American rock climber Alex Honnold as he climbs one of the world's most dangerous rocks, the 3,000-foot-high Chieftain Rock, on June 3, 2017, unashamed and unprotected, on the western foothills of Mount Nevada.
The film shows a lot of the struggle and preparation that Alex has made on the road of challenge, with clever narrative and excellent mirroring, let the audience see Alex's entanglement and confusion in family, love, career and dreams from an ordinary perspective, telling the audience that a person who has completed extraordinary achievements is also a person like us, and it is such a person who is constantly pursuing the faith of challenging the limit. In the final part of the film, the production team shows the audience the most shocking part of the whole film in an amazing lens language, condensing the steepness, height, danger of the cliffs and Alex's feat of challenging the human psychological and physical limits in 3 hours and 56 minutes in a ten-minute video. The film ends with Alex's successful ascent to the top, and in just the ten minutes at the end, it is likely to be called the most thrilling and amazing extreme sports documentary, coupled with a large number of narrative parts in the front, it can be regarded as an extraordinary gift to everyone who believes that the human limit is far from reaching, which is not only about extreme sports, but also about life and human nature.
Like many viewers, I was deeply struck by this incredible documentary, and I was impressed by the light of faith that constantly pushed the limits, but at the same time, as a gamer, I couldn't help but think of the extreme sports in the game - especially rock climbing as the theme of the film. Probably The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a good choice, especially the setting of going down when climbing the rock wall with your bare hands on a rainy day, and the challenge is simply not too difficult. Maybe some later climbing system and Breath of the Wild Game were too similar to each other, but after all, none of these games featured extreme sports.
How nice it would be to have an extreme sports-themed game that would allow me to try a similar challenge.
The announcement of "Extreme Land" and the appearance of "Chieftain Rock" in it gave me a small surprise. Of course, there must be no climbing project in this work (because the introduction is very clear), but Ubisoft has always been quite good at and careful about the construction of human elements in the open world, such as the restoration of the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx of Giza in Assassin's Creed: Origins, and the modeling in Assassin's Creed: Revolution that can help the post-disaster restoration of notre dame in the real world, which is enough to see its deep skill and meticulous care in this regard. If "Extreme Country" is a sequel to "Extreme Peak", the story behind Chieftain Rock and "Unarmed Climbing", Ubisoft will still take advantage of such a good humanistic element.
After being able to enter the game and experience a few simple teaching and exciting enough events, I excitedly found the location of el capitain on the big map, rode my bike and used various terrain and artificial obstacles on the way to do stunts to this huge rock with legendary stories, to tour the holy land, and to take a detour with the online players I met in a wave of improvised road races When you're almost at your destination, you'll play stunts with passers-by players dressed in weird costumes in a stunt park on the side of the road. Counting the natural scenery along the way, the whole process is full and interesting, accompanied by some refreshing excitement, but the end of the journey is a bit tedious and disappointing. The scenery of Chieftain Rock is a bit rough due to the not-so-detailed modeling of the mountains, and the neighborhood doesn't look like any Easter eggs or special events.
This is indeed to be expected. As early as the early stages of the game, the visual sense of "Drag Racing God 2" came to the fore: the background of the TV Star Game, the gameplay that can switch sports equipment anytime and anywhere, the large map stitched together from multiple reality areas, the sports equipment with clear numerical attributes, and various funny hip-hop style costumes and liveries, of course, the telescope setting in the disappeared "Extreme Peak" and the realistic setting of carrying equipment such as sleds on their backs, all of which seem to hint to players: Do you think it is the sequel to "Extreme Peak"? In fact, it is "Cool 3"! A large degree of roughening of environmental details due to the large extent of the map in "Drag Racing 2" reappeared in "Extreme Lands", and in this way, a chieftain rock full of regrets appeared in front of my eyes.
But let's be honest, The Ultimate Nation's map is far less than That of The Cool Rider 2, where the former's map is a combination of several national parks and the latter's range is the entire U.S. mainland. Because of this difference, the detailed performance of "Extreme Country" is actually much stronger than that of "Drag Racing God 2", and the forests, snowy mountains, lakes, and skies on the road are also very beautiful, and there will be no obvious roughness without purposefully comparing reality to find a specific location.
In terms of results, I didn't find what I wanted to see in Extreme Country, either the use of the relevant humanistic elements of Unarmed Rock Climbing or the shocking representation of the dangers of extreme sports and the challenge of limits. Of course, in a game without climbing, the desire to see the relevant elements is indeed a bit reluctant to achieve, and some gameplay performance in the game can be regarded as a balance for gameplay. There are regrets, but that doesn't stop me from finding new joys beyond my initial expectations.
As mentioned earlier, the enriching time I experienced on the first trip to Chieftain Rock is also the reason why "Extreme Land" absorbed the "open world canning" of "Drag Racing God 2" but did not look like a disadvantage at all, its map is not as large and empty as "Soaring 2", nor is it crammed into many highly repetitive events and events, and some terrain and artificial facilities suitable for skiing and cycling are placed tightly but naturally on the map, combined with excellent operating feel (especially cycling) and exciting first-person perspective , players can easily enjoy this game world, unrestrained, no rules and regulations, coupled with a similar mmo style social/online game system, completely belongs to the world of virtual extreme sportsmen, free to unfold. I think the biggest charm of "Extreme Country" lies in this, players can find content that can be played and enjoyed in any place in this virtual world (except for the water part that cannot be accessed, do you not consider adding a kayak to fill it in the future?). ), and with a large number of online players filling the map, it is more like a "country".
Nature wasn't born for human athletic challenges, but everything in Extreme Lands serves the player's sports gaming experience, and almost every natural terrain, every obstacle and facility has its meaning in extreme sports, and the whole world can be seen to have been carefully designed. This certainly can't be said to be a disadvantage, but under the premise of the lack of realistic elements such as telescopes and sleigh storage in the previous game, and my personal search for a corresponding location in the real world, the beautiful world of "Extreme Country" has become more illusory, there are almost no NPCs, everyone in the world is an extreme athlete, which is a smooth world that belongs only to our group of virtual athletes.
The theme of this issue may deviate from the core experience of the game, not as a review to show the reader, but it is also my real feelings during and outside the game. Finding realism in the game world is completely unnecessary, as long as it's fun? This may be true for most of the players of Extreme Realm, and Extreme Realm has not disappointed players at all. The game's excellent gameplay, good optimization and presence of a very strong sense of mmo social and online game system have greatly increased the game's playing experience, compared to "Extreme Peak", the player audience of this game will definitely be greatly improved.
If you want to try, I personally recommend teaming up with friends/savages to participate in the event, or have fun playing some stunts, exploring the world, if you are a lone wolf player, all kinds of cycling downhill events are also quite exciting, which is the most elite category of many events in this game! Don't panic if you open the highest difficulty directly, believe that you have no problem, it's very easy to get started! As for the first-person perspective, you can try it on a daily or road race, feel the excitement of high-speed riding, formal stunts or downhill competitions, or close it, I'm afraid I can't grasp it!
Postscript: A little bit of broken thoughts?
The above article has read a lot about the Chieftain Rock and "Freehand Climbing" to find a sense of reality in the game world, which is probably a very unreliable and strange gameplay, but I also noticed during the game that every time I go to the Chieftain Rock in the game, I can see some players riding bicycles, sledding or paragliding down from the top of the mountain (the previous screenshot also shows this). While I'm not entirely sure if this is on the route of some special events, with a few days of gaming experience – most likely not. Due to the game's system settings, the appearance and id of these too far away online players are mostly impossible to see, they are like me, themselves as a layman of extreme sports, and it is very likely that they will not really contact these "unreasonable" crazy actions in their lifetime, because of contact with a documentary about extreme sports and began to understand the ordinary "reasonable" side behind extreme sports, come to the corresponding places in the game to do some holy land tour and other things to express their love for life, I think back to how the original movie brought me.
Is this really the case? Can't confirm, but I hope so. The introduction to Extreme Realm reads: "Enter this vast multiplayer world!" Bring a motorbike, sled, snowboard or glider and enjoy this open sports paradise. "Since you are free to ride, wouldn't it be nice to satisfy your own wishes?" There are no climbing-related operations in the game, I went all the way up the hill next to me to the top of Chieftain Rock, stood in different worlds where Alex was, and forcibly made a wave of holy land tours, although it was just a game, but to pay tribute to the love of human beings for life, as well as the pursuit of the ultimate, challenging the limit! This rushed down the hill to find someone to have a refreshing race!
"Extreme Country" is currently on the shelves of Shanguo Mall, when purchasing, you can reduce 15 yuan with coupon discounts, and you can reduce 25 yuan by two yuan, and interested players can go to Shanguo Mall