PSVR 2 Series: Episode 5 - Horizon Call of the Mountain
Today I took the big leap and finally decided to crack open Horizon Call of the Mountain 🏔️ . Opening the game, you are immediately met with absolutely stunning graphics, as is to be expected when it comes to the Horizon franchise.
I decided to set up the game with the “easiest” level for viewing purposes, which keeps a vignette when the visuals are moving a lot and has more of a jump movement when spinning (very similar to the movement in Tentacular). Next, I set eye-tracking to off; however, through the menus, eye-tracking stays on, but within the game, I believe it was only moving based on my head movement. I also chose gestures instead of joysticks because I looked forward to trying that. Lastly, I opted for staying seated, mostly because I didn’t want to add too many new things for my brain to process all at once, and staying seated felt like the safer choice.
Once the game started, I somehow had subtitles on, which I usually like; however, I had the earbuds in, and the text was in the middle of the action and a bit difficult on the eyes, particularly with everything else going on, that I had to turn them off.
In the first piece, after the initial riverboat scene, you get a bow, and honestly, I wish even non-VR games let you gesture for shooting a bow and arrow. I was way more consistent at hitting the targets through the more real-life arm movement than I ever am with the joysticks.
I managed to play for about 25-30 minutes before I had to take the headset off. The set did keep slipping down my nose, but unfortunately, making it any tighter in any way made the screen blurry, so I had no choice. The other cause of taking it off after so little play time (or at least what I think is a short amount of time) was that doing some sort of first-person movement when climbing the rocks was getting to my head. Lo and behold, when I took the headset off, I was almost immediately hit with a headache. I had to chill in a chair, staring at the wall, or close my eyes for practically double the time I spent playing. This is a known risk with VR, but it is rather bothersome that this issue exists.
Sidetracking here for a small rant as I am talking about why I had to take the headset off… how on earth do companies like Meta actually see and expect people to wear these all day and do their jobs inside of them? I was in for 25 minutes and got a headache; I do not want to know what I would feel like after a couple of hours, let a whole entire day. In another post, I will deep-dive into my feelings about headsets coming into the workspace as I have a lot to say, and this isn’t the post for it.
Besides not getting to play for a while, the ability to feel as though you are actually in the world is amazing! I was legit worried about being eaten by a Snapmaw or seen by a scrapper. I was so thoroughly immersed in the game (I couldn’t hear anything with the headset in) that when my husband tried touching my hand, my brain thought it was something from the game. It took him a few tries before I processed reality properly.
At this point in the process, I am super torn but leaning heavily toward returning PSVR 2. On the one hand, I absolutely love being in these games and the experience that it brings. But, being able to play for so little and then getting such a headache on the other end, I can foresee not picking the headset up enough to make the price worth it.
The other concern I have right now is that while I can see myself playing Call of the Mountain (assuming no headache issue), I am struggling to find what other games I will play and have to play for a while. I will probably have an answer to this dilemma by the next episode or two because I think the headache 🤕 thing will make or break it for me.