Horizon Call of the Mountain

Horizon Call of the Mountain
Information
VR/AR	Virtual Reality
Developer	Guerrilla Games, Firesprite
Publisher	Sony Interactive Entertainment
Platform	PlayStation VR2
Device	PlayStation VR2
Operating System	PlayStation 5
Type	Game
Genre	Action-adventure
Input Device	PlayStation VR2 Sense controllers
Play Area	Standing, seated, Room-scale
Game Mode	Single-player
Release Date	February 22, 2023
Price	US $59.99
App Store	PlayStation Store
Website	https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/horizon-call-of-the-mountain/

See also: VR Apps and VR Games

Horizon Call of the Mountain is a 2023 first-person action-adventure VR game developed by Guerrilla Games and Firesprite and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. It released on February 22, 2023, as a launch title for the PlayStation VR2 headset on the PlayStation 5. The game is exclusive to PlayStation VR2 and has no flatscreen version; Sony positioned it as a showcase built to demonstrate the headset's features, including eye-tracked foveated rendering, headset and controller haptics, and adaptive triggers.

Set in the world of the Horizon franchise, the game casts players as Ryas, a disgraced former Shadow Carja soldier and master climber, in events that take place around the era of Horizon Zero Dawn. It was announced alongside the PlayStation VR2 hardware at Sony's Consumer Electronics Show press conference in January 2022, with a gameplay trailer shown during a PlayStation State of Play broadcast in June 2022.

Gameplay

Horizon Call of the Mountain is played from a first-person perspective using two PlayStation VR2 Sense controllers. The developers built the game around five core mechanics: climbing, crafting, exploration, interaction, and combat. Rather than the open world of the mainline Horizon games, it is a largely linear, guided experience focused on physical traversal.

Climbing is the central activity: players physically reach out with each controller to grip handholds, ledges, vines, and ropes, and pull themselves up mountain faces. Combat uses a bow and arrow that players draw by reaching over a shoulder to retrieve an arrow, nocking it, and pulling back the string; the controllers' haptics convey the tension of the bowstring. During combat the player is generally confined to a circular arena around a machine and dodges incoming attacks by leaning physically or moving along the track. A diegetic health indicator appears on the player's gloves as green leaf-shaped segments rather than as a heads-up display.

To accommodate players new to VR, the team added an arm-swinger locomotion option after finding that stick-based movement was uncomfortable for some testers, which Game Director Alex Barnes said let less experienced players play for longer. Sony's product page lists sitting, standing, and roomscale play options. The game also includes the River Ride, a passive guided boat tour past Horizon machines that Sony described as a way to show off VR to onlookers.

Development

Guerrilla Games and Firesprite, both part of PlayStation Studios, co-developed the game. According to Barnes, the bulk of content creation and gameplay work was done at Firesprite, while Guerrilla held the original vision and helped direct the narrative and art. The game was built in Unreal Engine 4 rather than Guerrilla's in-house Decima engine used for the mainline Horizon titles.

The project was designed specifically to exercise PlayStation VR2's hardware. It uses gaze-based foveated rendering, rendering the area the player is looking at in the highest detail while reducing fidelity in the periphery, and it offers gaze-based aim assist for the bow, tools, and menus driven by the headset's eye tracking. The PlayStation VR2 hardware provides a 4K HDR display, headset rumble feedback, and Sony's Tempest 3D audio spatial sound, all of which the game makes use of. Credited leads include director Alex Barnes, producer Angie Smets, art director Jan-Bart van Beek, and writer Ben McCaw.

Release

Horizon Call of the Mountain launched on February 22, 2023, the same day as the PlayStation VR2 headset. It was sold separately and was also offered in a hardware bundle with the headset.

Platform	Device	Release date
PlayStation 5	PlayStation VR2	February 22, 2023

Reception

Horizon Call of the Mountain received generally favorable reviews. On Metacritic it holds a score of 79 out of 100 based on 71 critic reviews. On OpenCritic it has a Top Critic Average of 80 with 78% of critics recommending it, in the site's "Strong" tier.

Individual scores included 7 out of 10 from IGN, 7 out of 10 from GameSpot, 7 out of 10 from Push Square, 4.5 out of 5 from GamesRadar+, and 4 out of 5 from Video Games Chronicle. Reviewers consistently described it as an effective technical showcase for PlayStation VR2, praising its visuals and the physical feel of climbing, while criticizing the repetitiveness of the climbing sequences, the linear structure, and a thin narrative.

Critic review scores

Publication	Score
Metacritic (aggregate)	79/100
OpenCritic (Top Critic Average)	80
IGN	7/10
GameSpot	7/10
Push Square	7/10
GamesRadar+	4.5/5
Video Games Chronicle	4/5

The game won Best VR Game at the Golden Joystick Awards 2023 and the Immersive Reality Technical Achievement award at the 27th D.I.C.E. Awards, where it was also nominated for Immersive Reality Game of the Year. It was nominated for Best VR/AR Game at The Game Awards 2023 and for Technical Achievement at the 20th British Academy Games Awards. In Japan it sold 6,027 physical units in its first week, and it was the fifth most downloaded PlayStation VR2 game in Europe in 2024.