I’ve seen some beautiful sights on this planet. Lake Mavola in New Zealand, the Tokyo skyline, my reflection in my bathroom mirror…they are all beautiful and haunting sights in their own right, but when it comes to video games, I’m pretty sure Horizon Call of the Mountain offers some Greatest virtual landscape ever seen.
For many PSVR2 early adopters, Horizon Call of the Mountain will be their first experience not only with Sony’s new headset, but possibly VR in general, and what an experience it will be. During Firesprite and Guerrilla Game’s collaboration, there have been a few times when I was simply struck by its beauty; the panorama of distant waterfalls and snow-capped mountains wrapped in long-lost machine wreckage took my breath away, and dense forests and glistening rivers made I forgot about the real world outside the headset.
Other than Kayak VR: Mirage, I don’t think I’ve played a VR game with visuals as gorgeous as this one. So, sadly, the world and mechanics underpinning it all are decidedly average. Between the “wow” moments (don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of them), I just couldn’t help feeling a little bored.
In Call of the Mountain, you play the internal monologue of Ryas, a man so uninteresting I quickly learned to tune his voice to the outside until it became an obnoxious hum somewhere in the background. Fans of the Horizon series will find a lot to enjoy about the story and how it connects to the main game, but for someone like me who is apathetic about the interactions in the main Horizon games, the story in Call of the Mountain is the most interesting of the games. the weak part.
Between levels, when I’m locked in place, unable to move anything but my arms and head, NPCs spewing incomprehensible knowledge at me for long periods of time is my pet peeve when it comes to VR immersion. On the plus side, this was a great opportunity to try out the Sense Controller’s finger tracking feature, which I could use to flick the V on everyone I was talking to. I don’t know what “Shadow Carja” is, but I can’t remember how many times someone has gotten angry and/or disappointed with me.
Call of the Mountain was first and foremost a technical showcase of what was possible with PSVR2, and it was far more successful in that regard. Thanks to the PSVR2’s 4K HDR display, the colors are crisp and vivid, and the details of distant objects are as crisp and clear as anything up close, which I think will be one of the most impressive things that will impress anyone who has seen it before Played the original PS VR. In the original low-res headset, anything about a meter away from your face would be blurry and colors muddy, but the contrast here is striking. The clarity of the image and the depth of color create a believability to the world, making it feel more alive than anything the original PS VR could manage.
Visual effects aren’t always perfect. The world visibly wobbles with the stick turning, likely due to the excessive amount of detail being displayed, as it’s not noticeable in more average games like Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge or Jurassic World Aftermath. On the odd occasion I’ve found textures loading from the corner of my eye, I’m guessing this has something to do with PSVR2’s eye tracking which makes objects you’re looking directly at more detailed than surrounding objects, but these popups barely affect the experience.
Eye tracking, or “gaze tracking” as it’s called in games, actually helps to improve the immersion of the game in all sorts of small ways, even being able to select options and navigate menus, but I think the best way is when NPCs can look directly at the When they talk to you (or insult you in this case), you look in the eyes, which makes them feel very human.
As a showcase, Call of the Mountain is also designed to cater to the broadest level of VR experience possible, and it does a good job of that. There are a variety of control schemes and comfort settings to choose from, and the action ramps up so slowly that it’s hard to get overwhelmed by anything but the visuals at first.
One thing that strikes me as odd, though, is how fighting gigantic robotic dinosaurs — certainly the coolest thing you can do in Horizon world — has been kept to a minimum. The Mountain Call isn’t so much about tackling a titanium T-Rex as it is about climbing a mountain before enjoying the view. I’d say it’s about 70% climbing and 30% robot dino fighting in this game, which might put a lot of people off.
That’s not to say climbing isn’t fun, and you’ll get new tools on a regular basis to diversify the way you climb, along with some really cool structures to climb. Even so, the reliance on the climbing section over everything else did become rather repetitive, and I felt like I was craving a bit of a fight rather than another massive upper body power traversal section.
Thankfully, all of this repetition feels relatively painless thanks to the accuracy of Sense Controllers. These things really outperform the clunky, untraceable Move controllers of old, and they make climbing even the mightiest of mountains a breeze. There are some gentle touches in there too, which help give you a sense of grabbing and pulling yourself upwards, but they’re a little more subtle than I expected. This is especially true of the haptics built into the PSVR2 headset, and I feel like Guerilla and Firesprite may have been toned down a bit since I played the game in preview. In the early part, a storm bird flies over your head, in my preview, I remember my head was shaking like a jumbo jet flew past me, but in the retail version, This moment almost makes my scalp itch.
Each level has plenty of distractions; things like musical instruments or hammers for smashing pottery, or areas where you can indulge in cave paintings or rock balance. None of this is relevant to your story, but it’s nice to be able to pause every so often and play around in VR and test the fidelity of the Sense controllers. There is so much materiality in this world that many of the things you can see can be picked up, dropped, played with, and bumped into each other in realistic ways.
One of the most controversial topics about Call of the Mountain is the on-track nature of its combat. I think this is to not overwhelm new players, the combat takes place on rails, and your movement is limited to slow strafing or quick dodging as you circle around enemies. It feels limiting at first, especially for VR veterans who value freedom of movement, but once you start shooting arrows and dodging left and right, combat with these massive mechs can be quite exciting. I love Call of the Mountain’s fights that throw three or more small enemies at me at the same time much more than I do against larger wonders like Thunderjaw.
If, like me, you can choose one of the many stealth parts of the game, you can use traditional free movement against these machines. In one area, I had to walk through tall grass ignored by three watchers, but I stumbled out of the grass at the wrong moment while alerting them. To my surprise, instead of restarting the sequence, I was able to attack them completely unrestricted by my movement. I couldn’t do the quick dodge you gave in the track section, Ryas’ movement speed is a bit sluggish overall, but fighting the machines in this way is still easy to control, which makes me wish there was a sequel where players are trusted to have more freedom .
Aside from the main campaign which is about 7 hours long, it has enough side roads, hidden areas, collectibles, and of course beautiful scenery to make it worth an extra play, Call of the Mountain has some extra modes as you progress through the game progress. The first of these is the five-minute “safari,” where the game’s opening sequence is transformed into a gentle theme park ride, where you watch machines hunt, fight and fly around from the safety of your kayak. It’s barely worth the price of admission, but it’s still a really cool little experience and the perfect place to drop off curious family members who’ve never played VR before. Beyond that, there’s a small training center area where you can test your aim or climbing skills and compete against a score set by some of the characters you’ll meet in the game. It’s basic but fun, and it’s a great place to hang out (sometimes literally) if you want to immerse yourself in the world without the pressure of following the game’s narrative.
On the flat screen, Call of the Mountain was little more than a forgettable spinoff with limited appeal to anyone other than hardcore Horizon fans who knew the difference between Nora and Oseram. However, with the addition of PSVR2, Call of the Horizon Mountain is a remarkable spectacle that anyone can enjoy. Sure, mechanics and story are lacking at times, but none of that matters so much when you experience the intoxicating vistas this world has to offer.
