If you were trapped under the once-in-a-millennium heat dome earlier in the summer, or are just contending with ordinary July temperatures, you might be looking for a way to cool off. If your AC isn’t doing the job, distract yourself with video games. The ice level has been a mainstay of the designer’s toolkit for decades, letting them play with slippery physics and insulated enemies. While some ice levels are massively annoying, others are unforgettable. Here’s our picks for the 10 best virtual cold climates to chill in this summer.
Snowpeak Mountain, The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Although Twilight Princess isn’t most people’s favorite Zelda game, it does boast a really great ice area. Snowpeak Mountain is a massive peak that encompasses a number of distinct locations. Link heads up there to find a shard of the Mirror of Twilight, and the journey takes him all the way to the top, where he meets Yeto, the Beast of Snowpeak and then has to snowboard down to his mansion and defeat the ice creature Blizzeta that lurks there. It’s a captivating take on the ice level with lots of fun stuff to do.
Hoarfrost Reach, Monster Hunter World
As technology improves, the ability of video games to simulate the natural world gets better and better. Part of the cold-focused Iceborne expansion to Monster Hunter World, Hoarfrost Reach is one of the most impressive examples we’ve seen. This hostile region is blanketed with snow, and the deeper it gets the harder it is to move through. Tracking and taking down massive beasts gets even more challenging when you’re waist-deep in powder. The diversity of the region is also super cool, with hot springs, ice caves, and more.
Ice Cap Zone, Sonic 3
The Sonic the Hedgehog franchise is all about movement and momentum, so it’s surprising that it took three games before they started messing around with low-friction surfaces like ice. After Sonic and Tails are shot through a cannon, they wind up on a lovely snowy peak where Sonic gets to snowboard down before falling into a sequence of ice caverns. The second act in the Zone is equally cool, with gorgeous parallax scrolling effects moving ice floes in the background and springs, bumpers, and switches frozen in ice that need to be thawed before our animal heroes can use them.
The Himalayas, Uncharted 2
Navigating the environment is always the most pleasurable part of every Uncharted game—way more fun than shooting endless waves of generic goons—and the first sequel gave us one of the most immersive, chilling takes on ice levels ever when Nathan Drake hit the Himalayas. Hunting the mythical city of Shambala quickly becomes dangerous as the train Nathan is on is attacked by a helicopter and crashes. He needs to navigate the wrecked train and then venture into the mountains, spelunking through glittering ice caves and battling a ferocious yeti. It’s a great encapsulation of the majesty and danger of the frozen world.
Kamui, Okami
Capcom’s visually stunning 2006 action-adventure took place in a fantastic mythological Japan, where the goddess Amaterasu travels through various landscapes to remove the curse placed on the land. Her journey takes her to the wintry region of Kamui, where she must battle the twin demons Lechku and Nechku that keep the populace blanketed under sheets of snow and ice. The area has many of the classic ice level tropes—slippery surfaces and freezing pools, for example—but Okami’s unique art style makes them truly beautiful.
Winter, The Last Of Us
Naughty Dog’s generation-defining adventure doesn’t have “levels” per se, but the segment that takes place in the winter is possibly the best part of the game. With Joel injured, Ellie has to fend for herself. The chapter opens with Ellie hunting in a gorgeous snowy landscape, tracking a deer by its blood trail and getting confronted by a pair of survivors. Things, naturally, escalate into violence, but that opening bit, where it’s just you and the snow and an animal running for its life, is deeply compelling.
Great Glacier, Final Fantasy VII
The Final Fantasy series has a number of cool wintry locations, and we almost picked Narshe from FFVI instead, but the Great Glacier won out. On the trail of Sephiroth, Cloud Strife and crew have to cross the trackless wastes of ice north of the Icicle Inn. Depending on how you did in the snowboarding minigame prior to arriving, you’ll wake up in a different location. Unlike everywhere else in the game, Cloud can only handle the bitter temperatures for a set period of time (145 seconds of movement) before he passes out from exposure, so navigating the maze is a real challenge.
The Frozen Wilds, Horizon: Zero Dawn
This area is DLC, but it’s absolutely worth buying to see robo-dinosaur hunting heroine Aloy venture into the snowy mountains and leverage her skills against a whole new biome. It’s called the Cut, and it’s accessible by a mountain pass just north of the Grave-Hoard. Home of the Banuk people, the Cut occupies the land that used to be the Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. After the Zero Dawn system terraformed the world, the Cut was covered in permafrost, and vicious snowstorms blow through unexpectedly to chill Aloy to the bone as she battles to infiltrate a military facility and shut down a rogue AI.
Cool Cool Mountain, Super Mario 64
The fourth course of Nintendo’s first 3D Mario game put our high-jumping plumber up on the snowy peak of a massive mountain and gave him a huge ice slide to take to the bottom. The sheer glee that we first felt in slipping down that flume, trying to keep our hero on track—and then learning we needed to race a penguin down it to get another star—was generation-defining. Throw in some other snowy activities, like making a head for a snowman, and you have an all-time great ice level.
Phendrana Drifts, Metroid Prime
The Metroid series has always been about making your way through a variety of hostile environments with only your spacesuit to protect you, but the first 3D installment really nailed it with the Phendrana Drifts. This towering mountain area on Tallon IV features a deep and deadly crevasse and a research facility, and ice-adapted versions of many of the planet’s native species call it home. A totally great background music track just cements the bleak ambience of this region, where frozen death is just around the corner.
