Peak (Game) Review.

 

I am sitting with three of the people who I love the most in the world after a depressive dip has sent my evening down a slightly tumbly spiral. I'm out of it from a series of days that have left my sleep in shambles and myself unable to function. One year has given way to the next and I feel, consequently, that I am struggling as much as I did before. It feels to a degree a little hopeless, in a headspace and spot in time where I'm unsure if I can do anything or contribute value.

And then, myself and my spouse are letting out a yelp as my wife spirals down the inside of a volcano with a brief 'oop' as our chances of finishing what we're doing now hang on a knife edge. My spouse dashes up rockface and I chug a lollipop, lose my mind and climb upward as if I am King Kong scaling the Empire State. I have a sugar crash, fall into the embrace of rock and have a nap. My spouse worries for me as the ghosts of my wife, who helped us get here and has gone to work and my wife who helped us climb up here, is a garden gnome and died due to slipping while setting rope, worry after me and I for them. I soon wake and we ascend in a panic on tiny rock. My spouse turns into a chicken. I do not eat xem. We climb to the Peak and suddenly, the day is filled with joy.

There's a beauty to co-op games. When I was younger, I would lose myself in immersive worlds of fiction and fantasy and push aside time with my loved ones, my family and it'd be pretty much frustration as it made others felt I didn't want to play with them. I was getting lost in the world of fantastic places but losing my solidity to those who made those experience wonderous. I'd think of my Dad playing Diddy Kong Racing and winning against me and my siblings or helping me do Mario 64 bosses. I remember a profound joy, as I got older and realized how much I was missing these experiences, in finding games like Super Monkey Ball, experiences where playing together with my family remain rooted in my head. Even watching my siblings play games, like Harvest Moon or GTA San Andreas, gave me a lot to wonder on.

Peak is a co-op game. It's an online game about climbing a mountain together. You play as bizarre lil' bean people who can't talk but can toot a trumpet and help each other up rock. It's silly and frightening in equal measure as while it has proximity chat, it's the first time in a long time I felt fear in a controlled sense; a loved one goes spiralling off a ledge or meets some bizarre creature or something spooky or just drops their trumpet and I feel a lot of ache, worry and sad. But when someone I love carries us to victory, by reaching the Peak and restoring the dead back to life which is one of the many you're likely gathering, bizarre elements of this game, you find yourself cheering, hopeful or looking forward to achieving the potential goal of reaching the true Peak; the end of the mountain. It's not perfect; the game can have glitches that can be breaking, such as a certain spooky visual bug, certain levels feel incredibly intense and unbalanced levels of hard even on the easiest setting for the amount of stuff they throw at you and above all else, while a solo experience is feasible, it shines in its multiplayer. But it is exactly what it is meant to be; a peak social experience, a feeling of that shining joy I remembered from when I was young and get to feel again with the people I love the most in the world.

For this time, this feeling and for what it's given me and those that make those memories worth having, it's truly worthy of its name.