Horizon Call of the Mountain is a linear adventure that sees you traversing the world of the Carja Sundom as disgraced soldier Ryas. It doesn’t have the sprawling story of Forbidden West but it delivers on thrills, spectacle and exhilarating combat.
You’ll spend a lot of your time climbing cliffs and fighting machines. You’ll also have to make items, dodge attacks and take in vistas.
1. Take your time
For a VR game, Horizon Call of the Mountain is quite linear. But, the environment and vistas Guerrilla has created are so stunning that you might find yourself stopping to marvel at every waterfall, flowing leaf and sunbeam.
This is a showcase piece for PSVR2, and it’s impressive. Seeing the world of Horizon from this new perspective and fighting machines in virtual reality is exhilarating.
However, it’s also a lot of climbing filler. 70% of the game is spent pulling yourself up ropes, ladders and cliff faces, which might get boring for some. Luckily, the combat is still fun and engaging. Scanning the battlefield to highlight different elements of an enemy’s body – like exploitable weak spots – is a nice touch, and using fire, shock, precision and tear arrows is pretty satisfying. Also, don’t forget to collect apples throughout arenas to replenish health. This is a good way to prepare for boss fights. And always make sure to have plenty of crafted arrows ready.
2. Look around
Guerrilla Games’s new Horizon title is a good showcase piece for the PlayStation VR 2 headset. Unlike many story-driven VR games, Call of the Mountain is relatively flexible in how you approach it, offering alternate routes to your objective and secrets scattered throughout its rugged landscapes.
Its most impressive feature is undoubtedly the way it manipulates you to look around its world – beckoning you out of your comfy chair to explore verdant forests, chilly icescapes, and rusty post-apocalyptic ruins, and turning VR eye tracking into an enjoyable gameplay element. It’s especially true when fighting the game’s trademark machines, with their soaring Stormbirds and towering Tallneck dino-bots.
They’re all a blast to shoot with your bow, and the game gives you plenty of options for varying their damage – like crafting shock and blaze arrows that can stun or burn your foes. The one area that lets this one down a bit is the amount of time it spends on climbing.
3. Take a break
A distilled version of Guerrilla Games’s open-world series, Horizon Call of the Mountain is an ideal showcase for PlayStation VR2. Its beautiful PS5-powered vistas of verdant jungles, palpably chilly icescapes, and rusty remnants of war between human and machines make it a must-play.
Combat is one of the game’s highlights, and it’s a testament to the franchise that the simple act of firing an arrow feels so good in VR. The acrobatics of strafing to avoid a roving Watcher or dodging as a mechanical Tallneck treks straight towards you are a marvel to behold, and it’s something I’d recommend anyone with a decent PC setup try out for themselves.
This standalone spinoff also lets players explore some new areas of the Carja capital, and the sheer scale of this world is breathtaking. It’s a place that is so alive, from the tiny scrappers to the massive sea monsters. It makes you appreciate the beauty of nature and the wonders of technology more than ever.
4. Be prepared
Horizon Call of the Mountain Game is a first-person VR experience in Guerrilla Games’ far future world of tribal humans, robot dinosaurs and the scars left behind by the war between man and machine. It’s a streamlined experience that takes the best of the franchise and adds to it, while pushing players to explore their surroundings by default thanks to its immersive virtual reality capabilities.
While the story is a bit more linear than previous entries, the climbing mechanics remain as fluid and intuitive as ever. And even though combat isn’t as exciting as it was in Zero Dawn and Forbidden West, the physics-based action makes up for it with its immersive sense of presence.
As always, the bow and arrow is an integral part of gameplay, offering players a variety of ways to turn around enemy attacks. Using fire and shock arrows to exploit machines’ weaknesses, precision arrows for rapid damage in short bursts, or frost arrows to slow enemies down will all help you turn the tide of battles.