This is the poster game for PSVR2. It came bundled with the headset and that is how I got my copy of the game. I might even have bought it anyway since I’m a big Horizon fan and have played just about everything there is to play with Aloy.
This game is not about Aloy though. You are a shadow carja (whose name I’ve already forgotten), captured in the beginning of the game and eventually you get to earn your pardon by doing some highly risky missions for the Sundom spymaster. At the end you will rescue the world as you always do in these games.
There is one particular VR trope that I hate – the controller is your hands. I have no problem with controller is my pointer, or controller is my gun or controller is a box. Controller is my hands has never clicked with me so I have skipped all those games up until now.
My problem with this mechanic is that you need to reach for things. You reach and try to grab something, but misses it (and fall to your death). You try to pick something up from the ground but cannot reach it. You reach back behind you to pull out a weapon but instead you drop the weapon behind your back. It just sucks. In this game you need to fit things together by a workbench, bringing stuff together, wire them with string, it’s just horrendous gameplay. I hated every minute of it. And when you get the weapon you want in the wrong hand and you need to switch hand by banging your controllers together pushing L1. I hated this so much.
As you can tell, Horizon: Call of the Mountain is all about controller as your hands 100% of the time and it was driving me mad. At one point in the middle there is a tutorial where I got stuck. I tried to follow the instructions but it failed me over and over. At the end I just screamed and shake the controllers, and suddenly the game accepted it as successful. This is how imprecise the controller as your hands is.
The game play is mostly climbing things, houses, factories, machines, mountains. This is what you do more than anything else. At times you need to fight machines with your bow. This is a horrible experience because you have these clumsy hands that are trying to pull out weapons and arrows from behind your back, while you’re being attacked by machines. It is very stressful and I didn’t like it at all.
What did I like? Well, the game looks fantastic. You climb a mountain and are rewarded with a view worth the effort. I like shooting arrows at targets and I also like seeing the machines in VR, though I do not like fighting them.
Aloy also makes a guest appearance in the game, and I just love her so much. It was almost worth forcing myself through the game just to experience that. She’s awesome!
I rate this game as OKAY.
I recorded my last session, the last chapter of the game, if you want to see what it is like playing it. Don’t watch until the end unless you’re fine with spoilers.
Replay 