Only Up Rush Review (Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5 & PC)

I’m on upward trajectory to the pinnacle of nowhere, grappling ledges and makeshift building materials with the intent to clamber to the highest heights before my shoes finally decide to fail me. Blindsided by the apex, I’m relentlessly pushing through the fiery pits of hell to reach an anchor point. Yet, like a frail mirage in a barren desert, I’m often find myself struggling to envision the summit. It doesn’t matter how far I go, or how many objects I conquer; the apex sweeps further and further away, and there’s little I can do to stop it. All I can do is climb. Climb, and pray that the checkered flag is a lot closer than the asphalt.

Only Up Rush is beginning to take its toll on me, more so now that I’m aware that it isn’t a peaceful climbing experience à la Peak, but a rigorous training montage that would push even the likes to Bear Grylls to the brink of exhaustion. It isn’t about soaking up the glorious vistas or capturing the essence of a floating world atop the highest clouds; it’s about proving a point. It’s about proving that you can muster up the courage to ascend the most ludicrous of heights and give yourself a spot on the leaderboard. It might not make such a task an easy feat to accomplish, but at least it gives you something to chase. That is, until you eventually plummet to your death and have to begin your journey from scratch. But I don’t like to dwell on that.

If you’re wondering whether or not there’s a point to Only Up Rush — there isn’t. If the game is anything at all, it’s an excuse to unleash your inner demons and put your fingers through the wringer for an hour or two. As a precision platforming game at heart, it more or less requires you to customize your own climber (this is entirely irrelevant, but stick with us) and launch a daring expedition to the highest summit of a floating cortex of makeshift obstacles. And that’s all that this is: a simple, yet ridiculously tedious speed climbing endeavor that forces you to adapt, overcome, and ultimately conquer a world with as little as your own two hands and your seemingly flexible rag doll body.

It starts off simple, with an industrial site, a series of building materials, and an interwoven network of vacant buildings and climbable concrete slabs. As you progress through the initial area, however, the world begins to transform into a hallucinatory garden of floating structures and nonsensical objects. The goal, of course, remains the same: climb to the top whilst battling against the clock. You don’t need to complete the ascent in an allotted time, but you can earn a spot on the leaderboard for beating the course in as little as thirty to forty minutes. But that’s hardly worth thinking about — especially if you’re a newcomer who simply wants to take it all in and calculate each step.

As far as gameplay goes, Only Up Rush condenses its mechanics into a limited number of actions, which primarily consists of jumping and climbing, naturally. Alas, you don’t need to be well versed in the art parkour to make headway in this world. You do, on the other hand, need to have a firm understanding of how to traverse unruly terrain and where to plant your feet. Luckily, it isn’t quite as painful as Getting Over It, though it is a taxing excursion that requires you to manually time your jumps and locate fitting positions to clasp your hands. But that’s a precision platforming game, in a nutshell. It’s frustrating, temperamental, and yet, even during the worse case scenarios, still a lot of fun to compete with.

If not for the frequent checkpoints and the simple fact that the game features a casual mode for the snail-like speed runner, Only Up Rush would be quite the tough game to crack. As luck would have it, though, it does allow for a gentler style of play, with map markers and save points available to help you navigate the world and document your ascent one step at a time. And that’s great, because honestly, I cannot even begin to tell you how many times I have abandoned an uphill battle due to a lack of autosave opportunities. This isn’t one of them, though, and I’m weirdly giddy about that fact. Eat your heart out, Bennett.

While I wouldn’t say that Only Up Rush is a brilliant climbing game, I can acknowledge the novelty behind it and happily call it for what it is: an annoyingly addictive physics-based platforming game with a good amount of world-building and structural complexity to it. It might not be anywhere near as memorable or as visually striking as a big-budget game, but with an oddly weighty character customization suite and a ton of interactive set pieces to call its own, it does make for a fitting tribute to the genre.

Verdict

Only Up Rush is as equally infuriating as it is bashful, yet still, even against the backdrop of a niche category, a surprisingly entertaining alternative to your average rage game. It isn’t glamorous, and it certainly doesn’t offer much outside of the initial ascent. That said, it gives you an objective to accomplish and, above all, finds various ways to keep you clambering on as you mindlessly battle the interwoven world of seemingly random objects. The leaderboard is a neat touch, too, even though it doesn’t add a great deal to the overall experience other than as a moral imperative to your own success, as few and far between as they might often seem.

Of course, if you’re a speed runner who loves the thrill of the chase and the competitive spirit of the local leaderboard, then I have no doubt in my mind that you’ll enjoy bolting your way through to the high heavens in Only Up Rush for an hour or two. It might not be the best way to scratch your itch for aviation or physics, but it ought to be able to help you get your foot on the ladder, nonetheless.