Review of Horizon Call of the Mountain – a mountain climbing challenge

It was obvious to everyone the whole time, right in the name of the game – but it still didn’t occur to me beforehand that the VR addition to the Horizon series would fall into the genre of so-called “climbing” games. Subconsciously, I was expecting an adventure similar to the numbered games in the series, albeit without an open world, but still more focused on walking around, riding robo-dinosaurs and, of course, fighting. But the reality is that for the vast majority of this game you will be climbing some mountain. And I don’t know about you, but it really hurt my hands.

• Platform: PSVR2
• Date of publication: 22. 2. 2022
• Manufacturer: Guerrilla Games (Netherlands)
• Genre: Climbing simulator
• Czech localization: it is
• Multiplayer: it is
• Data to download: 46 GB
• Game Time: 10 hours
• Cena: 1849 CZK (PS Store)

Safra, that’s the height

The latest addition to the Horizon series was quite obviously conceived as a “showcase” for the new PlayStation VR2 platform, and it fulfills that purpose more or less perfectly. I deliberately arranged for this to be the very first game I turned on the new headset – and I was not disappointed, the experience of the moment you first find yourself on the terrace of a mountain temple high above the countryside, while the sounds of beautiful title music form the subtitles with the title of the game, was extremely strong. I looked around with amazement in this opening menu of the game and marveled at the HDR effects of the sun’s rays shining through the fringes of the ornaments hung on the roof above my head.

The game is full of dialogue, characters and events, but its story does not have a great impact on the fate of the Horizon world. Your role is that of a disgraced soldier named Ryas, who is forced to climb the highest peaks of the Solar Kingdom to find his brother, unravel the mystery of new aggressive machine attacks, and atone for his past sins. Most of the time you will be traveling alone, in the form of rock climbing, so you will only hear Ryas muttering to himself both comments about the story and hints for further progress in the game. It’s not as annoying as it might sound, as Ryas’ voice is deep, quiet and pleasant, his remarks moderate. Unfortunately, I can’t say that I like his character or anyone else in this story. A certain character made the biggest impression on me during her death, partly because of the last fatal sentence and because of the way she died. You can go through the 12 chapters of the story in about ten hours, but in addition, you will unlock several mini-games or you can go and collect the “collectibles” that you missed in the played chapters.

As with the numbered installments of the Horizon series, by far the most fun part of the gameplay is the battle with the robo-dinosaurs. Just seeing them walk “around you” in virtual reality is a great experience, these “alive” machines are really beautifully designed and the smaller ones seem like a velociraptor has popped up next to you. What if a giant Stormwind flies over you or a Thunderjaw or Tallneck rumbles past you. Unfortunately, during the fights, the creators clearly prioritized precise control of your bow, at the cost of limiting your movement – until then, smooth walking with the levers during the fight turns into only dodges to the right or left. However, the encounters with monsters are by far the best thing this game has to offer. I don’t want to give too much away, but some of these passages are like from the best big movies, only with the difference that you are “standing right in front” of those gigantic monsters.

A proper warm-up

I haven’t measured it exactly, but my impression is that roughly 70% of the total playing time will be spent on climbing activities, whether it’s straight up rock climbing with your bare hands or an ice axe, or swinging on one of several rope launch anchor systems. You have to physically stretch your arms to the next grip, so after a few minutes they can easily start to hurt (from the shoulders rather than the palms). Like real rock climbing, it’s really quite hard work, so there were a few times when I had to stop in the middle of a longer climb on some rock, hold on to one hand and stretch or at least let the other one rest for a while. I’m pretty sure you’ll work up a sweat and stretch regardless of your overall real-world physique.

Although I ended up with a slightly different genre than I “dreamed” for Horizon VR, it was an undeniably powerful experience to walk through this quirky world. The story makes sense on its own, but don’t expect any major events from it for the series as such. From a technical point of view, for things like graphics, sound or even music, the game deserves a very high rating, but the relatively stereotypical gameplay – moreover, quite tiring – is probably not something you will want to return to too often after playing it. Still, this is a very good way to familiarize yourself with the performance and features of your new PlayStation VR2 headset.