![]() By ‘grabbing’ in the air with the controller and then pulling your hand left or right, you slide along the track, allowing you to quickly strafe and dodge around the enemy while stopping to let some arrows fly. Once you start a fight with one of the machines, you’re attached to a circular ‘track’ that spans the fighting area. But Horizon Call of the Mountain is adding its own unique flavor to VR bow combat by innovating on the locomotion side. ![]() Image courtesy Guerrilla GamesĪs far as gameplay implementation goes, the bow is pretty standard for what you’d find in a VR game… you can pull an arrow from the quiver on your back, draw the bow, and fire. It wasn’t long before I got my hands on a bow, and it became apparent quickly that this will be the game’s main combat tool. Fingers crossed.īut smashing pots and painting cave walls is far from the main thrust of the gameplay. ![]() Photo by Road to VRįrankly… I’ll be impressed if the studio can keep up this level of interesting VR interactivity throughout the entire campaign without simply re-using the same few items. And I spotted a handful of interactive objects that had secondary functions to add to the game’s immersion: there was a paintbrush which could be used to paint on a cave wall, drums which could be played with mallets, and even a makeshift maraca instrument which made a satisfying rattling sound when shaken. Small artifacts-like pots, tools, and dolls-to pick up and inspect (or, let’s be honest… throw and smash into pieces). There’s barrels and boxes strew about which you can look inside of to find loot. I was happy to find on multiple occasions that my instinct to reach out and touch hanging vines and large plants was rewarded with them actually responding to my touch.Īnd beyond just vegetation, the studio seems intent on filling the world with interactive objects for the player to discover. As I progressed through the start of the game I was happily surprised to find a world convincingly full of interactive objects and a solid physics-based interaction system. The game’s locomotion method is far from the only thoughtful thing it’s doing as far as VR is concerned. That’s made quite easy thanks to PSVR 2’s new motion controllers which handled the task deftly, as well as the subtle and engaging visual affordances the studio is using to make your climbing path clear without being too obvious. Photo by Road to VRīeyond swinging your arms to walk about, it’s clear that climbing will be a big part of the game (and, hey… if a mountain is indeed calling you, you’d better expect to do some climbing). The studios say the game supports typical thumbstick movement too, but I didn’t feel compelled to enable it during my time with the game. By default (at least at this stage) players are immediately introduced to an ‘arm swinger’ locomotion method (where you hold a button and swing your arms to move forward) which quickly came to feel quite natural and immersive. It became soon apparent the developers have really sat down and thought carefully about how they wanted Call of the Mountain to play as a VR game. ![]() ![]() Image courtesy Guerrilla Gamesīut beauty in a Horizon game never guarantees safety… it wasn’t long before I was tipped out of the boat by one of the machines and had to swim and climb my way to safety. While it was suggested previously this might be a separate little demo experience that’s attached to the game, it turns out this is essentially the very start of the campaign-and visually it looks every bit as good as the trailer suggests, right down to the lens flares coming off of the robotic beasts. My time with Horizon Call of the Mountain started with the ‘river ride’ that was revealed in the announcement trailer. We’ve seen it before and I’m sure we’ll see it again-a big name studio tries their hand at creating a VR game and the end result makes it seem like they never really ‘got’ VR in the first place.Īfter nearly an hour of hands-on with the game on PSVR 2, I’m satisfied this will not be the case with Horizon Call of the Mountain.Ĭheck out our detailed hands-on with PSVR 2 hardwareĭeveloped in conjunction with Sony’s first-party Guerrilla Games and Firesprite Studios-it’s clear that not only do the people building the game ‘get’ VR, but they get it well enough to think outside the box and introduce novel VR mechanics that are quite promising. After going hands-on with the title I’m happy to report that it not only aims to deliver a full campaign, but it’s also brimming with insightful VR design. One of the big questions on my mind ever since the announcement of Horizon Call of the Mountain for PSVR 2 is whether it would be a short ‘experience’ designed as a simple demo for the headset, or a full blown game. ![]()
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