It can be a lot and surprisingly taxing if you’re unaccustomed to the physicality of VR. Combat can be frantic, with multiple ammunition types to manage and rapid dodges and strafing to initiate, and all of it depends on the player’s ability to pantomime pulling arrows from a quiver and firing the bow in real time. Much like the main series, the combat loop requires players to target specific areas on the enemy’s body to chip away at armor, reveal weak points, and turn the tides of battle one beleaguered bow-string pull at a time. If one were to reduce the game to just a “climbing simulator,” it’d still be the most enjoyable one there is. Utilizing a number of tools from pickaxes, hook shots, and ropecasters, the variety of ways to traverse and the tension created by suspending players thousands of feet in the air with actual thought required on how to progress is enough to leave some players weak in the knees. Despite this, said climbing is often thrilling. It’s the ratio that’s off, with scripted sequences and limited combat encounters punctuating what is often a game mostly about climbing. Climbing is paramount to the Horizon experience, and it’s honestly easy to forget just how much time in the main series is spent spamming the jump button to rapidly ascend mountains and walls, so it doesn’t feel entirely out of place.

The visuals help mask some of the linearity of the game, which primarily amounts to being dropped off at the start of a level and traversing various locales (often ascending portions of mountainous terrain) through walking and climbing.

Horizon call of the mountain spielzeit