The potential is HUGE!!!!, but it's the equivelant of a technology demo at this stage. You put items in your pack, but never take them out. I was looking forward to trying to ice-pick up a wall but alas that time never came. There is very little interaction with the environment or with ladders, ropes, etc. Refunded! Those great reviews by Vice and others.... I'm one jaded consumer when I see anything positive from you folks now!

Very disappointed. It gives about an hours game play tops and when I mean game play, I use the term loosely. I went up one ladder, walked across a narrow ledge, used some hand grips and voila. I was at the top. game over.

I'm sorry but I need more than an hours entertainment for £20. I was expecting so much more of this game. very disappointed.

Good News! You can"Complete" this 6 times and still be eligible for a refund. Massively over hyped and over charged.

Unfortunately this isn't the experience I was hoping for. Each area you get to 'walk' around is only about the size of your play space (2.3x2.3m in my case) and that's it. The teleport ability isn't put to use which is a shame because it seems like there are large areas you should be able to explore.

There are five areas in total. So expect around 20-30 minutes of time in the game and that's with the flying movies you have to sit through and the annoying tutorial section. It does a good job of showing what is possible with VR but at this price, it isn't something worth while for a one time use at home. Definately more for show floors and selling the headsets in shops. Seems like a missed opportunity.

If I could sum this game up it’s basically, TheBlu meets Apollo 11 VR.

Back when the Vive was announced, Everest VR was the reason I dove into vr in the first place. I literally ordered my vive for the Everest experience and spent another almost $2000 on a pc that could eat up vr content with high fidelity. And yet here I am, with the experience that I’ve been waiting for, google-ing up every day for more info/release dates, completely underwhelmed – even if this is classified as an “Interactive Experience” rather than a game.

I’ll start with the good things. Visually, Everest VR is stunning, the model of the mountain and the surrounding range is accurate, beautiful and majestic. It is something to behold. The weather special effects are lovely and rich, graphicaly everything is very polished. On my GTX 1070 im able to crank all the sliders all the way to the right and it runs great. But that’s it - the good ends there.

While i appricate the amount of detail and work that went into the environment, the reality is that even tho the developers sculpted this breathtaking region in gorgeous detail - with over 300000 real photos used, and technology from Nvidia & RVX, well the scenery and model of the mountain never really gets put through much use…

What I mean by that is that even tho there is a teleportation system like other vr games, there is hardly and room to teleport to and move around. There is virtually no exploration at all. The only views we get are through standing at camp 4, near & at the summit, that’s it. No other regions get utilized. Even at basecamp. You limited to walking around the area the size of a large dining table! What’s the point of creating such an immense environment if we can’t even visit it and use it to explore! What a waste…

Another big blunder from the developers is the fact that they have been showcasing all the parts of the game we experience pretty much since late last year. There are so many youtube videos, news articles, photos, blogs about people getting to try a beta of Everest VR and pretty much the game they saw way back then is what we have got now with almost nothing new in it! I’m jealous, all these idiots who don’t give a flying **** about vr or Mt Everest got to do the whole experience that we are doing but paying for it. I did not see any single new content that I hadn’t already seen well before buying and playing the game.

And speaking of interactivity, there’s like nothing, the tutorial was the most action pack sequence. Majority of the game is just floating over the mountainside while a narrator talks! I wish I could have walked/teleported around the mountain myself! Here’s a rundown of the experience:

1. Basecamp - Stand in one tiny area, pick up a bag, put things in the bag, then pick up an apple and put it on a shrine. BREATHTAKING STUFF.
2. Khumbu Icefall - Walk across a horizontal ladder then climb up a vertical ladder. INTENSE!
3. Camp 4 - Look around a very small limited area and walk inside a tent, then open a zip to exit the tent. MUCH MOUNTAINEERING.
4. Hillary Step - This was not too bad but still just clip onto a rope (don’t even have to walk) then use ascenders to climb up a small rock face at the Hillary step.
5. Summit - Place a flag on the summit and watch a day night cycle. Can’t even explore the summit much – teleportation boundaries are limited and don’t even let me go to the corners of the mountain to get a view down the south face etc. IS THAT IT?

We packed an ice axe in the tutorial and also in the beginning of the game but never got to use it!

Maybe if they didn't spend so much time demoing the experience to so many different people, there would be something left to awe us when we played it. Looks like they spent too much time building hype almost like an advertising/marketing campaign. The downside of getting feedback from people who don’t care much about the mountain itself, and get to do play something so short is that they will all be WOW OMG during the demo, but the reality is if people who played the demos were told that the demo they are playing is the entire game (almost) the feedback might be different and the hype would have been a whole lot less I can assure the developers of that.

There is still hope tho, and that depends if the developers have an open mind. One thing is that more areas could be opened up to explore and do activities even if they are repetitive can be made more abundant. More climbing ladders, more use of ropes and traversing with them, more freedom to teleport and more areas along the route explore rather than having the narrator take you from not even Camp 1 all the way to Camp 4 through a 30 second flyover!

The other thing they can do and this would be easy to implement, is instead of having a lame miniature version of the mountain (god mode) have a mode where we can float around (just like the narrator) and literally place our room scale area anywhere within the mountain region (even if it’s floating on air). It will be a huge improvement, and allow people to explore the mountain, pretend to be at a location you want to be, and take in the view! Even maybe have control over time of day too. How amazing would that be - to have that ability at our fingertips! It wouldn’t even require much effort. It would just be a simple slew mode. (Something that is already used in the cut scenes but we have no control over.) This is what vr should be about. Greater freedom to explore and see things from different perspectives, not linear alleyways of disappointment! Atleast add more areas and bigger boundaries to teleport to!

In summary id suggest the following to the developers for the future:

- Improve and increase boundaries of teleportation to allow for greater exploration and movement.
- Add more points of interest to explore between Khumbu Icefall and Camp 4 even if there is no interaction apart from walking around a fixed boundary.
- Have more or make current rope and ladder sequences longer. Also add use of ice axe such as using it to help you walk/climb up steep areas of the Lohtse Face before Camp 4.
- Have a slew mode of the camera/play area so players can place their play area anywhere on and around the main mountain region. This would transform the experience to allow players to see the perspective of what its like to be on anywhere on Everest. (Modders maybe could add this function?)

So, to conclude, the words “Interactive Experience” comes to mind. Well where’s the interaction? Picking up an apple climbing up and across ladders once and planting a flag into the ground? An experience, what experience? The experience of having a narrator fly you 2 thirds up Everest in a minute? The experience of not being able to teleport around properly to explore and get a good view of your surroundings? I spent more time writing this review than it took me to play through the game. The challenge of writing this review far more demanding that completing Everest VR.

the bulk of the game is just standing and watching a bunch of everest video cutscenes. Very little gameplay/interaction involved. I was looking forward to this game and it wasn't what I expected at all.

Felt compelled to write a review for this like a few others. I had been looking forward to Everest VR since I first heard about it more than nearly all other VR games/experiences. But sadly I couldn't have been more disappointed.

When it released and I saw the price I thought great, this must be a full length, fleshed out VR experience/game. Sadly it is anything but. Instead they've made a VR experience which is barely 30 minutes in length, with some small sections of gameplay which are downright boring, that at most is worth around $5. If it had been at this price point I would not have refunded my purchase (it does have some nice views), but sadly I cannot support developers who are simply trying to rip off their customers.

Shame on you Sólfar Studios, I think you can see now most of us early VR adopters will not tolerate this blatant overpricing of VR games.

It looks nice, but it should be free as Destinations, because all you have is about 5 Destinations maps with some interactivity. All landscapes are dull (3d real panoram would be much more better) and sense of presence is quite poor.

Very disappointing - mainly because i had high hopes and also it was $25.00. If it was free or a couple of bucks fair enough, but at that price, too little conten andt no real gameplay of any note. A tech demo at best and even then i have many other demos that i would use to show off the vive before Everest VR.

TL/DR Version:
One of the most hyped experiances for VR.
One of the biggest letdowns in actual practice.

The Long Story not cut short: (Warning, it's probably gonna talk lots of philosophy not just a simple game scrub down.)

I wanted this to be a showcase to the world as to why VR should be a relevant platform for the future of gaming, and virtual explortation and experiances in general. I wanted to love this experiance. What we get instead, is a 30-45 minute chopped up highlight real, with out any of the real immersion anyone who has spent any more than an hour in VR is really looking for.

No one doubts that it looks good, but as we enter into an age where -this- sort of thing is going to become the standard, it's the gameplay / interaction / storyline / immersion that I believe are going to make all the difference and in all of those critical components Everest VR as an experiance fails. They could just as easily have taken you on a virtual tour of the entire climb where you simply had to sit tight and ride the roller coaster.

But this begs for more. So much more.

Climbing Everest is not about getting to look at pretty vistas. It's about human's putting themselves up against the most challenging of circumstances mother nature can conjur up. The Game Creator of DayZ Dean "Rocket" Hall, had an interview about a year ago talking about his idea to create a mountain climbing video game, based on some of his experiances on Everest. Here is to hoping that, at least where this game succeeds he and the team at Boheimia might find the prospect and possibility of making that dream come to reality within their grasp, and before anyone says that I am shamelessly plugging for him. Yes, I played DayZ. Yes, I also think that game in the end became a dismal failure because of it's inability to figure out the real core of it's game play mechanics. Maybe Solfar should reach out to Rocket, and Beoheimia in the future for joint projects where they can collaborate in order to create longer / more dynamic / more story driven experiences to resolve the glaring holes we now see staring us in the face with Everest VR.

As it stands right now however, when my wife can turn to look at me after climbing to the peak of a place that should make a game player feel as if they've been pushed to their limit and she can go ... "Meh." I fear for the future of VR.

As it stands right now, I can't recomend this to anyone other than -perhaps- first time users of VR upon whome the 'wow' of the VR experiance has not already worn off. Not worth the price, and after all the hype I generally just feel let down which is not the sort of review I had planned on giving this when I purchased it this morning.