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There has been an explosion of games that are co-op multiplayer and that the internet apparently has decided to call them “friendslop”. I really don’t know who had the idea to give such a harsh name to a very fun game genre, but apparently the term stuck, like a piece of gun on a shoe. There has been a number of these games come and go, like Among Us, Lethal Company, Phasmophobia, REPO and most recently PEAK. I think the game that I have played the most is probably Lethal Company, where the mods managed to make the game last longer in my friend circles then it would’ve been.

LC is pretty fun to be honest. There is a lot of fun mods that you can install and have fun with. There is also a bunch more mods that you can install that makes certain shitty mechanics that slightly less shitty. But mods can only do so much for a game that has some very strict mechanics, like every death feels like awful in LC. Monsters are almost always very hard to counter, and most often the only defense against an attacking monster is run and hope it doesn’t catch you. I swear I have been killed by the forest giant so many damn times, because the moment it sees you, you better fucking hope that the ship is nearby. And it gets tiring. Probably the most annoying enemy to face in LC is probably the coil-head. It is this shitty SCP knock-off creature that is a pain in the ass to avoid once it has showed up to ruin your run. The moment you start hearing the very fast footsteps and the boing-oing-oing of the coil, you know you’re fucked, since you have to keep your eye on it, and taking your eyes to see something else is a death wish, since the coil-head will kill you if that happens. The bracken used to be so fucking scary at first, but now he’s nothing more than a nuisance at this point, this annoying fucker that just kills you. When you played a game so much that even the most scariest monster doesn’t scare you anymore, I think it was time to finally find something else to play.

And that is where PEAK comes in. It is a co-op game that is just climbing up a mountain. There is nothing much to it. You have a stamina bar that depletes after you do stuff. You and your friends climb up a mountain, and the climb gets progressively harder and harder the more you climb up, but you have multiple items at your disposal to help you on your ascent. I only managed to beat the game once by myself. I often end up dead in the Caldera or in Mesa, two of my least favorite maps of the game. Also for some reason climbing in the game feels kinda satisfying somehow? It has in my opinion decent climbing mechanics that are easy to get your head around: just left click and point yourself to the wall, while using the WASD keys to move around. While holding on the wall, you can look around with the mouse. Once you get on a ledge, you can help your friends to climb up by right clicking. I also really like the character designs. I feel that they are so full of whimsy and are pretty silly™ (if that even makes sense, lmao), and you can pretty much dress and customize them however you’d like. You get cool skins that you can earn by playing the game (and thank fuck there is no stupid bullshit like in game purchases) and other items like hats and whatever else you can customize your character with.

The levels in PEAK are very good. The beach or the starting zone is very easy, a sorta smooth introduction to what PEAK has to offer, meanwhile Tropics is the level where the game is like “fuck you asshole, here is some real challenge!” and starts throwing you some curveballs: exploding plants, poison vines, the fucking rain, it is all meant to slow you down as much as possible. And the mountain itself is significantly harder to scale. Playing Tropics alone becomes very hard, and ends up being a game of “hope the stamina doesn’t deplete” and “oh god i hope this is a stand-able platform”, followed by “FUCK FUCK SHIT FUCK GOD FUCKING DAMMIT” once you misplace a step, brush against the exploding plants, or run out of stamina mid-climb. And if you play on any difficulty that is not tenderfoot (the easiest level), there is a wall of fog that will kill you if you take too long to climb a section.

Mesa and Alpine are different biomes that alternate every day, but are both equally awful. Mesa has tornados that can pick you up and send you flying to the nearest cactus, you get the “walking in Arizona during the summer” experience™ in Mesa since if you stand in the sunlight, your stamina starts to deplete (and you start to burn up). I should mention that Mesa’s mountain area is very painful. There is a ravine that you are somehow supposed to cross before getting to the mountain proper. Inside the mountain’s many caves there are risks like scorpions that want to kill you and fucking dynamite that wants to kill you and make your FPS go down the shitter. Another hazard that Mesa has is the lack of actual food, which means you would need to manage anything you get in luggage, and there is also the option of cooking a scorpion with a well timed dynamite throw.

Alpine, on the other hand, is visually very beautiful. And also pretty deadly: you have cold blizzard winds that give you freezing damage that reduces stamina, and the mountain itself is very unforgiving of any mistakes made. Pitons on ice break off, some rocks are frozen and will freeze you if you dare as much touch them; the whole level is very hostile yet it is probably the most beautiful out of all the levels inside PEAK.

The Caldera and Klin are two different levels that I will count as one. The Caldera is a pretty cool level, but it is pretty easy to get across. I like the fire effects, and the lava gives this feeling of like “oh fuck”, however there isn’t really much else to say. There are big ass eggs that you can cook that you can get from nests, and chain bridges to get across.

Klin, on the other hand is pretty much the game telling you that “oh yeah, those levels you played before, they were the warmup round, now time for the real test!”. You step into the volcano and you now need to climb up the fucking inside chimney (is that what it is called?) of the thing. Climbing now is significantly harder, the climbing paths are often not clear and require you to coordinate with your friends on how to proceed. You will need to use items that you collected during the gameplay, you start to remember that the game has gone for 2 hours and you are a mis-click away from certain death. There are magma blocks (blobs???) scattered on the walls inside the Klin, and if you try climbing close to those, you will receive fire damage. The Klin is pretty much the hardest level of PEAK, and it is very unforgiving. It does not forgive mistakes or tomfoolery.

After that, if you manage to get yourself out of the Klin, and towards the peak, the scenery changes into one that is very pretty and very green. The basalt rock is switched to a grassy ground, the lava is replaced with flowers and bushes, and in the distance you can see a flag, and the only thing that is left between you and victory is a small climb. You probably spent 2 hours climbing up the mountain, and there is this very satisfying feeling after reaching the peak. And the game rewards you with the prettiest area in the game.

The game is not perfect of course. Fall damage is very inconsistent, because I have fallen off short heights and got a lot of damage from that, and then other times I fall off a big ass climb where I forgot about my stamina and I somehow managed to walk away unharmed. A lot of the items are pretty useless in the game if you don’t know how to use them right. Energy drinks and that big ass lollipop item are very very useful to like, not die, especially in the Klin. I kinda wish there were more levels, because aside from Alpine/Mesa, the game stays the same, and it kinda gets tiring sometimes. At least the terrain is randomly generated every day.