Why does Peak not work?

This was going to be a genuine review of Peak, the latest friend-slop twitch bait game designed for streamers to laugh at each other at. Honestly, I went into the game knowing I’d dislike it, because I hate awkward platforming with low stamina, floppy physics and survival mechanics. And I came out of it hating it and getting a refund.

Honestly, my biggest turn offs were the awkward stamina, the wasting of your time when you’re dead (spectating someone else isn’t fun at all) and I had massive problems determining what was a walkable surface you could stand on. I also found the graphics pretty ugly.

My biggest annoyance was how everything was tied to your stamina. In theory, it works pretty well, but you can easily end up in a position where you might as well be dead, even if you’re not, because you simply are too hurt or too hungry or whatever to continue. And once you are dead, spectating is boring.

And before you go “but Medic, you play Warframe, parkour should be easy for you!”, Peak’s mobility, jumping and climbing system is completely different. And far, far more punishing than what Warframe offers.

The game also seems really stingy on food, but that seems to be RNG.

What annoys me more is that, at least, according to reviews, there’s no save points between levels (which are all ugly), meaning you need to put aside at least 2 hours straight to reach the peak. You have to do it in one session. That’d be fine if the game was stable and ran well.

My biggest grievance? Peak runs like shit. It’s 5Gb total in file size. The graphics are mid at best. Why the fuck am I barely managing 30FPS? Even on lowest settings, the game barely ran at all, textures and models popped in and out and the dithering on your player model was awful. And most objects in the game are barely textured in the first place. There is no reason what so ever that such a mid graphics game should run so badly.

After I quit multiplayer, I went offline to see if it was a server issue. Nope. Game ran like ass on single player too.

But why? Just how badly optimized is the game?

I wondered if it was just me, but turns out, any mid range computer could struggle. I checked out reviews for Peak and LOADS of people complained that the game was insanely demanding. And people complaining of crashes and disconnects.

Like, I get it, it’s a smallish team, but it’s a smallish game. It’s what, five maps tops? Ten if you have two versions of each level? With very basic graphics? Why does the game just not work?

And before you say “oh your computer sucks”, I’ve played way more demanding games at higher FPS. Sea of Thieves has hardly any optimization, the entire map is loaded at once, but I only drop below 30FPS in super intense battles with multiple players and ships, and the game sits at 60FPS on average. Palworld is just as big and runs better, and I can run Risk of Rain 2, which has maps of similar sizes, flawlessly and on higher settings. Even restricting my framerate and turning everything as low as possible, Peak just does not run in a good way.

It doesn’t make sense.

Yes, I know I went into Peak knowing I wouldn’t like it. I only got the game because my brothers insisted that I play it with them, because they love these popular flash in the pan streamer games. Maybe I didn’t give it a fair chance. But the performance issues alone are enough to make me not recommend the game.

Either way, I refunded the game. Wasn’t worth the money I spent on it.