The team already plans to address the detaching issue with a day one patch.) (I didn’t lose progress, thanks to frequent autosaves. Sometimes, after particularly lengthy climbing sequences, I struggled to get Ryas to detach from the wall to begin the next sequence, requiring a checkpoint reset to continue the game. If you’re playing seated, some of the longer grabs you’ll need to pull off while climbing will trigger the PSVR 2 headset’s “out of bounds” warning grid, momentarily breaking the immersion. Sometimes you’ll be so close to a wall or cliff face that it’s tough to see where to go next. These more complex mechanics are introduced gradually, enhancing the experience of scaling ever-taller peaks rather than adding unnecessary complications.īut getting around the Sundom as Ryas doesn’t always work perfectly. As you progress, you’ll add pickaxes for scrambling up sheer rock faces, and a grappling hook to swing across gaps. Traversal is the bulk of the experience and largely consists of scaling ladders, ropes, and mountains. Guerilla Games / FirespriteĬall of the Mountain’s gameplay consists of two core components. Scaling sheer cliff faces is a core mechanic of Call of the Mountain. I put the virtual apple in my face and I ate it. A bite-shaped morsel disappeared, to my delight. Instinctively, when I happened upon a cache of green apples, I moved my hand toward my face, lightly whacking my headset with the controller. When you find encampments, you’ll find bowls and urns to appreciatively turn over in your hands, then chuck off the side of a cliff. You can paint on walls, construct stone cairns, and hone your bow skills with some target practice on faraway smoke signals. But I soon found myself relying on these ultra-gruff line reads to keep me paying attention during story scenes, because I spent most of these moments with my head on a swivel, gawking at everything around me like a tourist in Times Square.Īs you explore, you’ll stumble across a variety of fun little things to interact with. Ryas talks like a combination of Nick Offerman and Arthur Morgan from Red Dead Redemption 2 - oozing tough-guy energy at every moment. Even if you’re not well-versed with the Horizon series, like me, you’ll be able to find your footing just fine.Īloy, the main character in the Horizon series, has a role to play in Call of the Mountain. The plot drives you forward without getting in the way of your enjoyment of Call of the Mountain’s incredible world. It’s not the world’s most intricate story, and it really doesn’t need to be. His quest to find his lost sibling and redeem his past misdeeds will take him to the highest peaks of the Carja Sundom. You play as Ryas, a master climber and disgraced soldier who’s in search of his missing brother, Urid. There are no black bars, no illusion-shattering sense of looking at a screen. It’s a good thing you start off seated and bound in a canoe because all you’ll want to do for the first several minutes is look around - at the crystal-clear water, the textures of the colorful fabrics your captors wear, the intricate architecture of the ruins crumbling around you, and lumbering mechanical beasts in the distance. Horizon: Call of the Mountain is a visual marvel from its opening moments. The visuals in Call of the Mountain will dazzle you at every turn. It’s like having a theme-park experience in your very own home. With stunning environments and a gratifying sense of progression, Guerilla and Firesprite have created an astonishing VR game you’ll want to spend hours with. This keeps the focus on immersion and exploration, rather than fiddling with finicky button inputs and timing. Core mechanics like traversal and combat have a generous margin of error and can be customized extensively depending on your appetite (or lack thereof) for a challenge. Call of the Mountain succeeds where so many other ambitious VR projects stumble for one reason - it keeps it simple. For a brief, shining moment, I actually considered that I might have a natural affinity for archery, a latter-day Robin Hood or Katniss Everdeen.īut after spending a bit more time with Horizon: Call of the Mountain, out February 22 along with Sony’s new virtual reality headset (read our official hardware review here), I realized “innate talents” probably weren’t the source of the magic here. I yelped with glee as the beast tumbled to the floor in a shower of sparks. The arrow struck home, smack in the center of the monster’s metallic maw.
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