This is the flagship launch game for the PSVR2 headset and acts as a brilliant intro to the device and all its amazing technology.
You play Ryas, a new character from the Horizon series, who is a master climber and it details a tale of redemption as you climb, fight and discover your way up a mountain set in the dangerous post-apocalypse world built out in previous console games.
Aloy, the star of the first two PS5 Horizon games, is one of your guides as you strap on the virtual reality headset and are immediately plunged into the lush green, but deadly, world inhabited by killer animal-inspired machines that roam the landscape.
It’s breathtaking to look at and so detailed thanks to the PSVR2’s 4K graphics that most gamers will be blown away by the immersion.
You can literally see the leaves sway in the wind and the waters pass by as you boat through danger territory.
Then, as a giant robot flying beast sweeps above, you’ll feel the brush of their wings as the headset uses its amazing rumble technology to nudge you just at the right point.
When you take up your bow and arrow for the first time it feels real.
You grab a virtual arrow with a pull of the trigger in your Sense controller and a flick of the arm behind your back. Then load it into your bow, pull backwards and shoot.
It’s incredibly accurate, or incredibly forgiving depending on how adept you are at games, and you’ll soon find yourself speedily and expertly firing off all kinds of arrows right in the faces on oncoming beasties.
Climbing is a major part of this game and it uses an old Uncharted technique of highlighting climbable areas with a white chalk so that you know how to get up the mountain to the safety of the next fire camp.
That means physically interacting with the virtual wall, doing a climbing motion to grab ever-upwards with your hands.
But as the game goes in you add in things like pickaxes and grapple hooks to vary up the challenge.
It’s all intuitive and beautifully designed.
Even just picking up and apple and holding it to your mouth to regain health after a battle is a clever example of the push for VR immersion.
I like picking up the odd cup or plate and lobbing it off the side to hear it smash below. Why? Because you can’t do that with the same satisfaction in normal screen gaming.
Horizon: Call of the Mountain is the single best VR game I’ve played and shows exactly what the PSVR2 is capable of.
It has its glitches, some of the climbing can go a bit wonky at points and the general gist of the game never wavers too far from climb, shoot arrows at baddie, craft a bit, climb, etc.
But as developers get used to the tech things should only improve.
And for now we have a wow game at launch for the new device.
VERDICT 4.5/5
