• The Climb 2 delivers a genuinely physical VR experience — your arms, shoulders, and core will feel it after a session.
• Crytek’s sequel is a massive upgrade over the original, with better controls, sharper graphics, and more diverse environments.
• It’s one of the most beginner-friendly VR fitness games available on Meta Quest, making it easy to pick up and hard to put down.
• Motion sickness is a real concern for some players — there’s a specific setting combination you’ll want to know about before your first session.
• At $30, The Climb 2 punches well above its price point — but there are a few limitations worth knowing before you buy.

If you’ve ever wanted to scale a skyscraper or conquer a snow-capped mountain without leaving your living room, The Climb 2 makes that fantasy surprisingly real — and surprisingly sweaty.

This is Crytek’s follow-up to their original VR climbing simulator, and it builds on the foundation of the first game in almost every meaningful way. For anyone exploring VR fitness options, it’s one of the titles that keeps coming up — and for good reason. If you want a deeper look at how VR gaming and fitness intersect, this resource breaks it down well. The game is available on Meta Quest and Oculus Rift platforms, priced at $30, and it’s been turning heads since its March 4, 2021 release.

The Climb 2 Is One of the Best VR Fitness Games Right Now

VR fitness has a reputation problem. A lot of games claim to give you a workout but end up feeling more like a light stretch than actual exercise. The Climb 2 is different. The physical motion of reaching, gripping, and pulling yourself up virtual cliff faces and city buildings translates directly into real upper-body exertion. It’s not marketed as a fitness game — but it absolutely functions as one.

What makes it stand out in the fitness space is that the workout sneaks up on you. You’re so focused on not falling that the burn in your shoulders registers almost as an afterthought. That’s the hallmark of genuinely good active VR — exercise disguised as pure fun.

What Is The Climb 2?

The Climb 2 is a first-person VR climbing simulator developed by Crytek, the studio known for the Crysis franchise. It puts you in the role of a free solo climber — no ropes, no harness — scaling environments ranging from jagged mountain faces to towering urban skyscrapers.

Developer and Platform Details

Crytek released The Climb 2 on March 4, 2021, exclusively for Meta Quest (formerly Oculus Quest) and Oculus Rift. It was built with the Quest 2’s hardware capabilities in mind, and it shows. The game retails at $29.99 and does not require a PC to run on the standalone Quest headset — a significant advantage for accessibility.

How the Game Works

The core mechanic is deceptively simple. You use your motion controllers to reach out, grab a hold on the rock or wall surface, and pull yourself upward — exactly as you would in real climbing. Each hand is mapped to a trigger, and gripping too long without switching hands drains your stamina meter. Run out of stamina and your grip fails, sending you plummeting.

The primary game mode is called Professional mode, which challenges you to balance speed against stamina management. The faster you climb, the more stamina you burn. Choosing when to rest on a stable hold versus when to push hard through a difficult section creates a surprisingly deep layer of strategy for what looks like a straightforward game on the surface. For those interested in exploring other VR fitness options, consider checking out the PowerBeats VR fitness app for a different kind of workout challenge.

Gameplay: Is It Actually Fun?

Absolutely — and that’s not a throwaway answer. The tension of hanging hundreds of virtual feet above the ground, one slippery grip away from a fall, creates genuine adrenaline. The moment-to-moment gameplay has a meditative quality to it when things are flowing well, and an edge-of-your-seat intensity when you’re low on stamina mid-climb.

Multiple Pathways and Level Design

One of the smartest design decisions in The Climb 2 is that levels aren’t linear. Each climb offers multiple routes — easier paths with more frequent holds, and harder paths that demand precise technique and stamina management. This gives the game real replayability. You can complete a level on your first run taking the safe route, then come back and push yourself on the expert line for a better time on the leaderboard.

The environments themselves are genuinely diverse. You’ll climb through various landscapes, much like the immersive experiences offered by other VR fitness apps.

• Rocky alpine mountain formations with ice-slicked holds
• Tropical canyon environments with crumbling ledges
• Urban skyscrapers with glass panels and steel scaffolding
• Night-time stages with dramatically different navigation challenges

New Mechanics: Ziplines, Moving Platforms, and Physics

The Climb 2 introduces interactive environmental elements that weren’t in the original. Ziplines let you launch yourself across gaps, adding a burst of speed and spectacle to otherwise methodical climbs. Moving platforms and unstable holds — ones that physically shift or break away when you grab them — add unpredictability that keeps experienced players on their toes. One particularly memorable moment involves grabbing an overhead ladder rung that slides under your grip, making the whole structure feel genuinely unstable. For those interested in exploring more VR fitness games, check out this PowerBeats VR fitness app for an intense workout experience.

Difficulty Modes and Self-Imposed Challenges

Beyond the built-in route variations, The Climb 2 uses a leaderboard system to create competitive depth. Chasing a faster time on a route you’ve already completed is a powerful motivator, and seeing your name climb the rankings adds genuine stakes to every run. For players who want an even harder challenge, the stamina system itself becomes the difficulty slider — pushing faster routes while managing grip drain creates a self-imposed challenge loop that scales naturally with skill. If you’re interested in exploring more VR fitness games, check out the Pistol Whip VR Fitness Game for another exciting experience.

Graphics and Immersion on Quest 2

The visual presentation in The Climb 2 is genuinely impressive for a standalone VR headset. Crytek has always been a graphics-forward studio, and they brought that DNA into this release. What you get on the Quest 2 is a game that routinely makes you stop mid-climb just to take in the view — which, from a fitness standpoint, is both a blessing and a stamina hazard.

Visual Upgrades Over The Climb 1

Compared to the original Climb on Oculus Rift, The Climb 2 delivers noticeably sharper textures, improved lighting, and better draw distances. The horizon doesn’t dissolve into a blurry haze the way it did in the first game. Rock surfaces have convincing texture detail, water effects catch the light naturally, and the sense of scale — looking down from a hundred virtual meters up — is handled with enough visual fidelity to trigger a genuine gut response.

Running on the Quest 2 without a PC connection is where this becomes particularly remarkable. The fact that this level of graphical output is coming from a standalone wireless headset rather than a tethered gaming PC is a technical achievement worth acknowledging. The wireless freedom also matters physically — being able to move your arms fully without a cable pulling at your headset makes the climbing motion feel completely uninhibited.

Nighttime Levels and Navigation Improvements

The nighttime stages are a standout addition in the sequel. Climbing the same rock face in darkness — with only ambient moonlight and distant city glow to guide you — completely transforms the feel of a familiar route. Visibility limitations force you to slow down, read holds more carefully, and rely on spatial memory. It’s a clever way to add difficulty without changing the underlying mechanics. For those interested in integrating fitness with VR, exploring VR fitness and nutrition integration can offer additional insights into enhancing your experience.

Navigation between sections has also been cleaned up significantly. The original Climb occasionally left players confused about which direction to move next. The Climb 2 addresses this with subtle environmental cues — chalk marks, color-coded holds, and natural sight lines that guide your eye upward without feeling like hand-holding. It makes the experience feel more like real climbing intuition and less like following a video game prompt. For those interested in other VR fitness experiences, check out the Pistol Whip VR fitness game.

The Fitness Factor: Does It Give You a Real Workout?

Here’s the honest answer: yes, but it depends on how you play. A casual run through an easy route at a relaxed pace will get your arms moving but won’t leave you breathless. Push into harder routes, chase leaderboard times, and play multiple levels back-to-back, and you’ll feel it in your shoulders, forearms, and core the next morning. The physical motion of reaching up, gripping, and pulling is real upper-body work — your muscles don’t know the difference between a virtual rock hold and a real one. Players consistently report noticeable arm fatigue after 30 to 45 minute sessions, which puts it firmly in the category of legitimate light-to-moderate exercise for most adults.

Motion Sickness: What You Need to Know Before Playing

Motion sickness in The Climb 2 is real but manageable. The game’s design — where your body stays relatively stationary while your virtual self moves upward — is generally gentler than locomotion-based VR games. That said, the zipline sections and the sensation of looking down from extreme heights can trigger discomfort in sensitive players. The key setting to adjust is the comfort vignette, which narrows your field of view during fast movements. Turning this on significantly reduces nausea risk for most players. New VR users should start with shorter sessions of 10 to 15 minutes and build up tolerance gradually before attempting full level runs.

How The Climb 2 Compares to Its Predecessor

The original Climb was a launch title for the Oculus Rift, and it carried the rough edges you’d expect from a first-generation VR title. Controls felt stiff, route finding was occasionally frustrating, and the limited environments grew repetitive quickly. It was impressive as a tech demo but fell short as a sustained gaming experience.

The Climb 2 addresses nearly every major criticism of the first game. It’s not just an incremental update — it’s a fundamentally more confident and polished product. The environments are more varied, the mechanics are more refined, and the overall experience feels designed by a team that truly understood what worked and what didn’t in the original.

Where the two games remain similar is in their core philosophy: pure, focused climbing with leaderboard competition driving replayability. If you bounced off the first game due to control frustration, the sequel is absolutely worth revisiting. If you loved the original, the improvements here will feel immediately satisfying, similar to the enhancements seen in other VR fitness games like Ragnarock.

Controls Then vs. Now

The original game’s grip system required awkward hand positioning that broke immersion and caused frustration on tricky holds. The Climb 2 overhauled this completely. Grabbing holds now feels intuitive and responsive, with the motion controllers tracking your reach naturally. The recalibration system — which lets you reset your in-game hand position mid-climb — was also streamlined, removing a clunky process that interrupted flow in the first game.

Level Design Improvements

The first Climb offered alpine and canyon environments that, while visually impressive, started to blur together after a few hours. The Climb 2 expands the roster dramatically with urban environments — skyscrapers, construction sites, and city rooftops — that give the sequel a completely different identity. The addition of interactive elements like moving holds and ziplines adds variety that the static environments of the original simply couldn’t match.

Our Final Verdict on The Climb 2

The Climb 2 is one of the most well-crafted VR experiences available on Meta Quest right now. It nails the fundamentals — tight controls, stunning visuals, and a climbing mechanic that delivers real physical engagement — while adding enough new ideas to justify its existence as a true sequel rather than a reskin. At $29.99 for a wireless, standalone VR title that doubles as a legitimate upper-body workout, the value proposition is hard to argue with.

The short overall campaign length is the most legitimate criticism, and leaderboard-chasing can only hold attention for so long without regular content updates. But for VR beginners looking for an accessible entry point, fitness-focused players wanting something more engaging than a standard workout app, or climbing enthusiasts who want to experience the sport from impossible heights — The Climb 2 delivers on every count.

What We Loved

The control overhaul alone makes The Climb 2 worth the price of admission. Grabbing holds feels natural and responsive, the stamina system creates genuine tension without feeling punishing, and the variety of environments keeps every new level feeling fresh. The wireless freedom of the Quest 2 version deserves special mention — being able to throw your arms around without a cable getting in the way is a small thing that makes a massive difference to immersion.

The visual quality for a standalone headset is legitimately stunning. Crytek pushed the Quest 2 hardware hard, and the results speak for themselves. Standing at the top of a completed climb, looking out over a sprawling cityscape or a mountain range disappearing into clouds, delivers a sense of achievement that very few VR games match. The interactive environmental elements — sliding ladder rungs, crumbling holds, ziplines — add moments of pure delight that elevate what could have been a one-note experience into something genuinely memorable.

What Could Be Better

The campaign length is the most glaring issue. Experienced players can work through the available levels in a handful of hours, and while leaderboard competition adds replayability, it’s not a substitute for new content. Post-launch content updates have been limited, which means the game’s longevity depends heavily on your personal drive to beat your own times and climb every route variation. For those interested in exploring different VR fitness games, you might want to check out the Ragnarock VR fitness game for a fresh experience.

The multiplayer component, while a welcome addition, feels underdeveloped compared to the core solo experience. Matching with other climbers and competing in real time is fun in concept, but the implementation lacks the polish of the main game. A more robust social climbing experience — or a level creation tool — could have dramatically extended the game’s lifespan. These are real missed opportunities, but they don’t undermine the core experience enough to walk away from what is otherwise an exceptional VR title.

Who Should Buy The Climb 2

The Climb 2 is an easy recommendation for three specific types of players. First, anyone new to VR who wants an accessible, visually impressive introduction to what the medium can do. Second, fitness-focused players who want a workout that doesn’t feel like a workout — the upper-body engagement is real, and the fun factor keeps you going far longer than you would on a treadmill. Third, anyone who loved the original Climb and wants to see what the concept looks like with a full upgrade pass applied to every system.

If you’re a hardcore gamer looking for a deep narrative experience or an expansive open world, The Climb 2 isn’t your game. But if you want something that delivers genuine exhilaration, physical engagement, and some of the best visuals available on a standalone VR headset — all for $29.99 — it absolutely belongs in your Quest library.

Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions that come up most often from players considering The Climb 2, answered directly and without the fluff.

Is The Climb 2 available on PCVR?

Yes. The Climb 2 is available on both Meta Quest (standalone, no PC required) and Oculus Rift (PCVR). The standalone Quest version is the most popular and was the platform Crytek optimized the sequel for. If you’re playing on Quest 2, you’re getting the experience as intended — no PC connection needed.

How much does The Climb 2 cost?

The Climb 2 is priced at $29.99 on the Meta Quest store. There are no subscription fees, and the base game includes all available environments and modes. Considering it functions as both a quality VR game and a genuine fitness tool, the price point is strong value for most players. For those interested in other VR fitness options, check out the Dance Central VR fitness game for a unique experience.

Is The Climb 2 good for beginners in VR?

The Climb 2 is one of the best VR games for beginners available right now. The controls are intuitive, the movement style is gentle enough to avoid overwhelming new users, and the sense of progression — moving from easier routes to harder ones — gives newcomers a natural learning curve. It was widely credited as a gateway game that convinced many players to invest in VR headsets in the first place, and the sequel continues that tradition.

Does The Climb 2 cause motion sickness?

It can, particularly during zipline sequences and when looking down from extreme heights. However, The Climb 2 is generally considered one of the lower motion sickness risk VR titles because your virtual body stays relatively stationary — you’re pulling yourself up rather than walking or running through a space. Enabling the comfort vignette setting in the options menu reduces nausea significantly for sensitive players. Starting with shorter 10 to 15 minute sessions and building up gradually is the recommended approach for anyone new to VR. For more insights, you can check out this review of The Climb 2.

How long does it take to complete The Climb 2?

Most players complete the main content of The Climb 2 in approximately 3 to 5 hours depending on difficulty chosen and familiarity with VR climbing mechanics. Casual players taking the easier routes will land closer to the 5-hour mark, while experienced VR gamers pushing hard routes will move through the content faster.

That said, completion time is almost the wrong metric for this game. The real longevity comes from chasing personal bests and leaderboard rankings across every route variation on every level. Players who engage with the competitive side of the game regularly report 10 to 20 hours of total playtime before the experience starts to feel exhausted.

The fitness angle also changes the calculus — if you’re using The Climb 2 as part of a regular VR workout routine, replaying levels for the physical benefit rather than just score improvement gives the game an entirely different kind of staying power. Many players return to it weekly as a staple of their active VR session lineup rather than treating it as a game to be completed and shelved.

Whether you’re chasing leaderboard glory, breaking a sweat, or simply experiencing some of the most breathtaking virtual environments available on Meta Quest, The Climb 2 consistently delivers — and exploring more VR fitness content can help you build a full active VR routine around it.