Horizon Call of the Mountain review: The mountain is busy

When I think of Horizon as a whole thus far, I think of its beautiful natural expanses, the tribes that pulled themselves together in its unforgiving world, and the fascinating, but dangerous machines that creep around it. There’s, of course, the climbing and traversal of it and the gadgetry used to defeat the machines, too. Horizon Call of the Mountain is Guerrilla Games and Firesprite’s effort to capture all of this in VR form, and while it doesn’t present nearly as much freedom or complexity as the mainline Horizon games, it’s still quite breathtaking to experience this world through the lenses of the PS VR2.

A second chance

Horizon Call of the Mountain puts players not in the role of Aloy, but instead a Shadow Carja known as Ryas. An offshoot rebel contingent of the sun-worshiping Carja clan, this character was imprisoned for life for crimes he committed against the Carja. However, the very man who sentenced him, the Spymaster known as Blameless Marad, gives Ryas a chance to redeem himself and earn a pardon. It seems Ryas’ own brother was sent on an important mission, but never returned. Meanwhile, a strange new behavior in the machines has them attacking and destroying settlements, which they don’t normally do without serious outside interference and coordination. With that, Marad tasks Ryas with trying to find his brother and bring him back, and we just might discover the cause behind the aggressive machines along the way.

Horizon Call of the Mountain is quite a spectacle. It’s breathtaking to see parts of the world, including the Carja capital itself formatted into a first-person VR experience. Guerrilla Games has always created vast, beautiful vistas within Horizon’s universe and this experience is no different. You’ll pass through verdant jungles over sloshing rivers and huge rocky mesas with encampments built into their peaks, as well as getting to see vast valleys, mountainsides, and ancient remnants of war between human and machines. Simply put, this game is vibrant and gorgeous and every break in the action is a chance to take in some of the most beautiful scenery I’ve ever seen in a VR game.

Of course, it also demands that you have some knowledge of the Horizon games and their characters, societies, and issues so far. You’re kind of thrown into the deep end here with very little to guide you into what a Shadow Carja or regular Carja are, or even who Aloy is and why she’s so important. That said, you run into a lot of familiar characters and factions throughout this game, and it’s kind of a treat to interact with them in this format of game.

Even so, Ryas is a voiced character and during the vast stretches of the game where you’re alone, Ryas attempts to fill the void with all sorts of dialogue. It’s not terribly annoying, and it makes sense for him to respond to characters or emote in combat. However, there’s also the usual quips where Ryas regularly fills the void by speaking to himself about things you already know. Yes, I know if I complete the mission, Marad will pardon Ryas. Marad made that pretty clear. It doesn’t keep Ryas from explaining it to himself several times later on when he’s alone. These small gripes aside, Call of the Mountain is another cool addition to Horizon lore that paints an interesting picture from the point of view of a Shadow Carja that did terrible things and must atone for them if they want to live.

Hold on for dear life

As far as gameplay is concerned in Horizon Call of the Mountain, your time will be split between what I would consider to be three main sections: Ground exploration, climbing, and shooting gallery combat. The climbing is easily the most abundant part of Call of the Mountain and Ryas was specifically brought out of prison because he was a good climber. The game is full of mountains, old world ruins, and plenty of other scenery to traverse if you’re to complete your mission and its handling of climbing is a fun adaptation from the main game’s platforming.

Similar to the mainline Horizon games, you’ll see areas that you can climb marked with bits of wear and a chalk-like residue on them. To move from handhold to handhold is fairly easy, though you’ll want to have full range of motion with your arms to make sure you can reach most of the places you need to in a given moment. Once you get to a ledge, there’s almost always a post to grab hold of to get your feet on the ground again. Moreover, looking around during the climbing provides for some of the most breathtaking, if not unnerving, views in the game.

When your feet are on the ground, you’ll have chances to explore and interact with various environments. You can light torches, play drums and tambourines, break pottery, and search containers for health-restoring food, supplies, and weaponry components. Overall, the environmental interactivity of Horizon Call of the Mountain is top notch, though I did notice that when gripping certain things, my virtual hands seemed to have trouble figuring out how to hold them properly. There are two-handed implements in this game as well and it was weirdly difficult to try to get a good grip on them with both hands in a way I could reasonably play with them. I also found the default movement to be a little odd. You hold the action buttons on both Sense controllers and wave them up and down to move, which feels awkward and silly. Thankfully, you can also just switch to moving with the thumb sticks.

Horizon Call of the Mountain even has a fun crafting component. You have a bow and normal arrows, but it isn’t long before you find Blaze canisters (explosive little capsules used by machines to create fire). You can make explosive fire arrows by actually assembling the arrows from scratch. It was pretty amusing and visceral to actually attach the arrowhead, fletch, and Blaze to create more powerful ammunition and Horizon gives you more opportunities like this throughout the game.

That leads up to combat, which is mostly a scripted affair in Call of the Mountain. Throughout the game, you’ll run into machines that force you to fight. In these cases, the game turns into a fast-paced shooting gallery. You’ll use your arrows and other weapons to try to strike at the weak points of machines when they present themselves. Meanwhile, you mostly move left and right, either walking to position yourself or flicking your stick to jump one way or the other, good for dodging attacks.

Your range of movement depends on the encounter. In one fight I fought a bi-pedal Watcher robot in a clearing and could strafe in a circle around it. In another with bird-like Glinthawks, I was on the edge of a cliff and could only move in limited range to the left or right. Either way, while the range of movement is limited in these moments, they provide an exhilarating break to the exploration with close encounters with machines we’ve only seen from a third-person perspective with Aloy before. One last thing I’ll note is that the game was a little finicky with hand tracking regarding the bow. I had a few instances where my hands would warp to weird angles when trying to line up a shot. It was hard to say if this was a hardware problem or a fault of the game. I’m leaning towards the latter since the PS VR2’s hand-tracking has been pretty good in other games. It may just also be the closeness of my hands when drawing a bow confusing the headset’s tracking as that’s a very particular action for VR I’ve had a bit of an issue with when playing other games on other headsets.

The only other gripe I have with Call of the Mountain’s gameplay is that between these three main gameplay sections, it easily relies on climbing the most, which is a bit humdrum compared to the other two. I like exploring on my feet and interacting with objects and I like the visceral nature of this game’s combat. Climbing on the other hand provides only so much interactivity since the only thing you can really do is look around and grab for the next gripping point in a wall or mountain. There are a few environmental puzzle elements to spruce it up, but I still didn’t find it as fun as combat or ground exploration.

A new Horizon

Horizon Call of the Mountain has value in the sheer fact that it puts you behind the eyes of a character in the Horizon universe that’s not Aloy. Taking in the beauty around me at all times was a treat in this game and I liked the interactivity Guerrilla and Firesprite implemented in this experience. I liked bonking drums and throwing pottery around as much as I liked assembling fire arrows and shooting them into a machine’s opticals. I wish the game didn’t rely so much on climbing, but even in that, it provides a pretty intense and immersive experience. The game isn’t without hiccups, and it won’t give you the same vast freedom the mainline games do, but Horizon Call of the Mountain is still a breathtaking VR adventure, a fun side chapter in Horizon lore, and a great kickoff to the PS VR2’s original lineup of games.

This review is based on a digital PlayStation copy supplied by the publisher and played on PlayStation VR2 hardware supplied by the manufacturer. Horizon Call of the Mountain comes out on PS5 for the PS VR2 on February 22, 2023.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.