Growing up as a 90s kid, I’ve been around for some of the most significant leaps forward that the video game industry has seen. I remember going from TV games like Circus Charlie to playing Spyro the Dragon on my PlayStation 1 to living in a world where Aloy has visible facial hair when playing Horizon Forbidden West on my PlayStation 5.
But throughout this improvement and all these changes, the one thing that’s managed to creep under my skin and captive me, unlike anything else, continues to be improvements to VR.
I still have vivid memories of being a child and having my dad take me to some or other 4D experience where the wind was blown on you, and your chair would move so that it felt like you were riding a rollercoaster when in reality you were just at an activation in the middle of a Magic Kingdom.
Since that day, I’ve been looking to recapture that immersive sense of playing a game and being a part of it, precisely what the PSVR 2 brings into my life and home.
I’ve reviewed other PSVR 2 games here at NAG, but I’ve not reviewed anything on the same level as Horizon: Call of the Mountain. Before I even get into the review, I will tell you why this game, in particular, is magic.
When you take someone who plays games every single day, getting a great review from them is easy. Many of the mechanical roadblocks that stop a game from being accessible to those who don’t often play games just don’t apply to them or even really stand out just because of how familiar they are with the mechanics required.
However, something special happens when you introduce VR to someone who does not play games, yet they fall in love with the game experience. Even though Horizon: Call of the Mountain has a million different mechanics to master and remember, it delivers a memorable game experience and, dare I say, is rather addictive.
And that’s precisely what happened when my mom started playing Horizon: Call of the Mountain for the first time. Admittedly I felt the same.
When I first started playing Horizon: Call of the Mountain, I expected not to love it, not because I’m not a fan of the universe that Guerrilla Games created and not because I didn’t want to experience its post-apocalyptic future in VR, but because I suffer from severe motion sickness and I thought I wouldn’t be able to play the game for long enough to appreciate. Boy, oh boy, was I wrong.
Within the first minute of gameplay, I was already so hooked that I was willing to swallow down all feelings of nausea, of which there were many, and power through until I was so engaged and invested in the world I barely noticed I was feeling ill anymore. Horizon: Call of the Mountain is just that good.
Players take on the role of Ryas, a disgraced soldier trying to atone for the past by investigating a potential new threat in the mountains. Fair warning, when I say “up in the mountains”, I mean it. You will spend a lot of time climbing in-game – and it’s as exhilarating as you can imagine.
Horizon: Call of the Mountain on paper seems incredibly daunting in its vastness. The game allows players to do many things in the original franchise but from a first-person perspective. When climbing a mountain, you aren’t just controlling a character. Instead, you are actually climbing it, hand over hand, all the way up. Looking down evokes all the feelings of vertigo as a real mountain climbing experience would – The same can be said for combat.
Instead of mindlessly spamming a button, players must reach over their shoulder to fetch an arrow, load it into the crossbow, aim and fire, dodging the influx of attacks coming their way.
During their time in the game, players can experience everything from picking up a broken arrow on the floor and throwing it off a cliff to holding up food to their mouth to eat and recover health, to finger painting on walls and throwing caution to the wind and unthinkingly leaping from impossibly high ledge to impossibly high ledge. This isn’t a game you’re just playing; it’s a game you’re experiencing in the most immersive way possible.
I don’t particularly appreciate delving too far into the story of VR games because I think a large part of the general charm is going into the experience as blindly as possible, so all I’m going to say is that Horizon: Call of the Mountain brings to the table and your eyeballs various breathtaking sights, from the jungle to frosted peaks and a story as breathtaking and moving as players have come to expect from the franchise.
Thanks to the new upgraded VR technology, draw distance doesn’t feel like a factor. Instead, players will be able to look around and see details far into the distance, which is very far away – trust me. The other significant thing players will do throughout this roughly ten-hour campaign is fight.
Combat focuses primarily on the iconic mechanical creatures the series is known for. The game takes full advantage of the PSVR 2’s haptics to make it feel like you’re standing there, in-game, with this hulking machine moving ever nearer. All in all, everything within Horizon: Call of the Mountain is handled exceptionally well, and the simple system of reaching over your shoulder to grab an arrow before pulling back the bowstring and letting loose on the creatures feels far more rewarding and satisfying than the more refined and diverse combat in the main series ever has. It’s in that emersion that Horizon: Call of the Mountain truly shines, and childhood Arielle revels.
