Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan announced today that the company is laying off 900 PlayStation employees, or around eight percent of the company, which will affect a number of its first-party game studios. This includes the closure of Sony’s London Studio, which created VR action-adventure game Blood & Truth (2019).
Ryan announced the news in a company-wide email today, noting that layoffs will affect a number of PlayStation studios across across the Americas, EMEA, Japan, and APAC.
The email wasn’t specific on where the layoffs will occur, with employees in the US expected to be notified today at some point. In the UK, the company says PlayStation’s London Studio will “close in its entirety.”
As the studio behind PSVR exclusive Blood & Truth, PlayStation’s London Studio was last working on an unannounced online co-op combat game, set in modern fantasy London. It’s expected the game is now cancelled as a result of the studio’s closing.
Ryan says headcount reductions will also affect Firesprite, the studio behind the Horizon franchise, including PSVR 2 exclusive Horizon Call of the Mountain.
This follows recent news that Sony is making PSVR 2 officially compatible with PC VR games, as the company hopes to release some sort of PC support for the headset later this year. Reading between the lines somewhat, it seems Sony is strategically scaling back on first-party content right now, which means an uncertain future for the sort of anchor content PSVR 2 needs as its heads into its second year.
This story is breaking. We’ll be updating soon once it’s more clear exactly which studios in the US are also involved.
It’s a rare treat when we get a VR game with the scope and scale of Horizon Call of the Mountain, let alone to see a much-loved IP reimagined specifically for the medium. Made exclusively for PSVR 2, the game was built collaboratively between studios Guerrilla Games and Firesprite, both part of PlayStation Studios. We sat down to speak with Alex Barnes, Game Director at Firesprite, to learn more about how Horizon Call of the Mountain came to be and how it turned out to be one of our best-rated VR games in recent memory.
Editor’s Note: The exclusive artwork peppered throughout this article is best viewed on a desktop browser with a large screen or in landscape orientation on your phone. All images courtesy Guerrilla Games & Firesprite.
Gameplay clips may not appear with cookies disabled, click ‘View clip’ to see them in a separate window.
Moving a Mountain
Horizon Call of the Mountain is, of course, a Horizon game. With that, comes the expectation that it will look, feel, and sound like the other two titles in Guerrilla’s lauded franchise. That meant the two studios had to work in close collaboration to deliver on the vision.
“Call of the Mountain was an incredibly collaborative project, with both Firesprite and Guerrilla working really closely to develop the game, Barnes explains. “The bulk of the content creation and gameplay teams were over with Firesprite, with Guerrilla holding the original vision for the game and helping direct elements, such as the narrative and art, to create a game that was genuinely grounded in the world of Horizon. We had folks from both teams hands-on at different times and were in constant communication with each other throughout development.”
Even though the game would need to be built as a VR native title, the studios wanted to ensure that it represented elements of a Horizon game, without being too attached to every Horizon gameplay trope regardless of whether or not they fit within VR.
“The core of the gameplay was pretty set from the initial idea for the game. We wanted climbing, crafting, exploration, interaction and combat to be the mainstay of everything that we built. That meant freedom of movement and ‘real-feel’ physical interactions like climbing and bow combat were so crucial that we got feeling great for all types of players,” Barnes say. “Early on, we did look into doing some more wide-ranging gameplay elements to descend from the mountaintops, but ultimately these elements really ended up distracting from the overall gameplay experience, so they didn’t make their way into the released game.”
The bow is central to the game’s combat, so the teams gave it tons of interesting detail. | View clip
Come One, Come All
Another important goal was building a game that anyone could play—whether experienced with VR or not—and to leave a real impression.
“We knew this could be players’ first experience with PSVR 2 and, in some cases, even with VR. That meant building gameplay systems that people could just pick up, play and quickly understand so that we could fully immerse the player in the world,” Barnes says. “We are also big lovers of VR ourselves, and so it became a goal of everyone to blow new players away to show them how amazing a truly VR experience is, especially on this incredible new hardware.”
Building for experiences and new VR players alike also meant rethinking the options for how people would move in the game. This was also driven by the developers themselves, some of which couldn’t tolerate much traditional stick movement in VR. This pushed the studio to come up with an ‘arm-swinger’ locomotion scheme which I personally felt was both more comfortable and more immersive than pure stick-motion.
“Comfort in VR is an incredibly personal thing, and locomotion is such a big part of that. For some of the team, the stick-based movement was difficult to get comfortable with. So the motion mimetic system of moving the player’s arms was conceptualised as a way to help add a layer of comfort that allowed people who were less familiar with VR to play for longer and stay comfortable whilst they did,” says Barnes.
The players gloves also act as a diegetic health bar thanks to the green leaf-like segments
PlayStation VR 2 launched late last month alongside more than 40 titles, which included games entirely new to the platform as well existing games from other platforms and upgraded PSVR titles. The headset’s first monthly top download chart has revealed a big shift in which games are taking an early lead in the headset’s growing library.
Taking the top spot across the US & Canada, the EU and Japan is Kayak VR: Mirage, a kayak racing sim initially released on SteamVR headsets in 2022 by Amsterdam-based indie studio Better Than Life.
In it, players race across lush, photorealistic environments including ice caves in Antarctica, tropical locales in Costa Rica, storm waters in Norway, and the stark canyons of Australia. The paddling movement mechanic is also something that works really well in VR too, which we hope more games will make use of thanks to just how immersive it can be.
Horizon Call of the Mountain, undoubtedly a product of sizable investment by Sony, only managed to eke out third place in the US/Canada and the EU, taking second place in Japan, which is probably more than a tad disappointing to the Sony-owned developers Guerilla Games and Firesprite.
Horizon Call of the Mountain is a single-player adventure that showcases some of the best graphics you’ll find anywhere in VR. Combat could be a bit more fluid and climbing could have more interesting challenges, although it certainly stacks up to Half-Life: Alyx in terms of immersion. Check out why we game it a respectable [8.5/10] in our review.
Granted, Horizon Call of the Mountain comes with a premium price tag of $60, which may explain why it underperforms in unit sales in comparison to the cheap and cheerful $25 team shooter Pavlov and $23 Kayak VR: Mirage.
What’s more, it seems the era of Job Simulator (2016) ruling the PSVR top download charts has come to a definite end—despite it and sequel Vacation Simulator both offering PSVR 2 versions. Job Simulator has ruled the download charts nearly every month without fail since it launched on the original PSVR.
Take note: the February download chart only accounts for the headset’s first week in existence (Feb 22-28). March’s chart should be another fairly interesting read, as we see whether these top spots remain, or falter as more users pick up PSVR 2 headsets. Check out the chart below:
With Horizon Call of the Mountain, Sony is hoping to have an exclusive big-budget VR game to entice players to the new PSVR 2. Does the title succeed? Read on to find out.
Horizon Call of the Mountain Details:
Available On:PSVR 2 Release Date: February 22nd, 2023 Price: $60 Developer: Geurilla Games & Firesprite Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Editor’s Note: The clips in this review that were captured from PSVR 2 do not look correctly saturated due to incorrect HDR downmixing on our part. Rest assured, the world of Horizon Call of the Mountain is quite vibrant!
Gameplay
The first thing you should know about Horizon Call of the Mountain is that at its core, it’s a VR climbing game. While it’s obvious from the name that climbing would be part of the experience, I can’t say I realized that it would make up about 50-60% of the gameplay. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing; climbing in Call of the Mountain is well executed and creates perfect situations to showcase the game’s stunning environmental art.
The second thing you should know about Call of the Mountain is that it really is a full game and not just a collection of mini-games or one-off experiences. That includes a cast of characters with performances that developers Guerrilla and Firesprite clearly spent a lot of time on, with results that challenge the groundbreaking portrayal of virtual humans in Blood & Truth (2019).
Climbing is the central pillar of gameplay in Call of the Mountain; at first you’ll be using just your hands, but later you’ll find new tools that do a good job of mixing up the climbing gameplay just enough that it doesn’t overstay its welcome, though I wish the later equipment felt less redundant.
While the climbing systems work very well throughout, I found a near complete lack of challenge in the climbing gameplay; I don’t think I fell to my death a single time during the game. The only ‘challenge’ is occasionally needing to look around to find out where to make your next move, but there’s barely any real ‘threat’ during climbing segments, which would have served well to emphasize the game’s otherwise daring climbs.
The climbing may not throw any real challenges your way, but it certainly creates effective opportunities to see the beautiful world of Call of the Mountain. The environmental art and lighting direction in the game is seriously top notch and of a quality scarcely seen anywhere else in VR. You’ll come across vista after epic vista as you climb to new heights, and it always felt worth it to me to take a minute to soak in the views. From most vantage points you can make out other major landmarks in the game which helps make the whole thing feel like a cohesive world.
While climbing is a huge part of the game, you’ll also be doing a lot of bow shooting, which is also well executed in function and feeling. To that end, the combat is where the game really challenges players, and I was actually surprised just how difficult it can be. While I only died from a single encounter in the game, the combat definitely put my skills to the test in a way that I expect would be fairly difficult for inexperienced VR players. While there’s options to tweak the difficulty, unfortunately they’re somewhat hidden in the Accessibility menu which means some players might not find them given that they may be looking for a more common ‘difficulty selector’ as some games provide.
Instead of throwing enemy after enemy at you, combat in Call of the Mountain most often consists of very specific encounters with a set number and type of enemies. The game also takes on a totally unique form of locomotion when these fights start, where the player can swing their arms to quickly rotate around the outer edge of the combat space as they avoid attacks and look for new angles to attack from. While it might look strange from the outside, the overall concept works well, especially when you’re fighting some of the game’s biggest and baddest beasts.
Granted, I found it difficult to read and time the enemies’ melee attacks, and I didn’t feel like the ‘dodge’ mechanic (where you swing both your controllers to one side to do a quick strafe) worked particularly well. While I applaud the developers for building a unique and thoughtful combat system that’s specific to VR (and impressively comfortable, I should add), it could use a bit more refinement to really shine.
The same goes for the combat overall. While it’s definitely fun to fight the fascinating machine creatures from the world of Horizon—thanks to their excellent looks and sounds—combat never felt particularly strategic to me. For the most part you just need to keep lobbing arrows down range. That’s especially strange considering the game allows you to craft several different arrow types (like fire and ice), but all of them essentially just felt like extra damage rather than a strategic choice. That’s compounded by the fact that the game provides the player with more than enough resources to usually have their special arrows maxed out—which further meant that actually finding those resources didn’t feel very exciting.
While Call of the Mountain is a linear adventure, you’ll return to a hub area between missions where you’ll get to talk to the game’s small cast of characters. Although there’s unfortunately minimal character development and intrigue, the characters themselves are impressively rendered across the board, from the way they look to the way they move to the way they sound. It’s a shame they aren’t more involved in the game because they’re so technically compelling.
When you’re on the trail but not actively climbing or fighting, there’s usually loot to scavenge for. The game does a good job of leaving extra bits of loot for those that go looking, but since the only gameplay reward is ingredients for different arrows (which as we established, don’t really make the combat more unique) or a small upgrade to your health it can be a bit of a let down to keep finding the same stuff that you’ve already got plenty of.
Even if you’re full on arrows though, the game still peppers its pathways with little collectibles to find for those who are looking more closely at the world around them, as well as hidden targets for you to shoot (which I appreciate because this gives players another good reason to take in the environment at large). Some of the game’s levels also have optional (and sometimes hidden) ‘Legendary Climbs’, which are longer climbing segments that usually lead you to another awesome view, and these feel like a good reason to replay a level if you didn’t find them the first time around.
Call of the Mountain is a fun adventure with tons of VR native gameplay taking place inside one of the best looking virtual worlds seen in VR to date. I can’t say the story really grasped me—I completely missed why the protagonist and his brother are at odds with one another—but at least it’s all well delivered and ties the gameplay together. It took me about 7 hours and 30 minutes to complete the main campaign while finding roughly 60% of the extras like trophies, collectables, and Legendary Climbs.
While it isn’t particularly comprehensive, the game also has a small challenge area where you can test your bow and climbing skills with some timed challenges. And last but not least, there’s also the ‘Machine Safari’, which is an extended version of the opening sequence which shows off the game’s great looking creatures and animations in a non-interactive way (great as a short demo to show friends who aren’t gamers).
Immersion
Image courtesy PlayStation
Call of the Mountain is definitely easy to get lost in thanks to its beautiful visuals and solid-feeling world. Yes, you’ll come across a bunch of epic vistas to soak in, but the game also does a great job with the smaller details too. You’ll see nice touches like moss growing between rocks, glints of crystal flecks in some of the rock faces, and a ton of foliage and environmental decoration, all backed up by great lighting and art direction.
While it was a bummer to find that only some of the foliage was interactive, it did make me smile when I could naturally use my hand to push a vine away from my face, see fuzzy moss bend under my hands, and watch leaves move realistically as I grazed them while looking for my next hand-hold.
Overall, Call of the Mountain might have the best visuals of any VR game I’ve seen to date. Though I’d say Half-Life: Alyx still has the more technically proficient graphics, those graphics are largely in service of realizing a dirty, broken, dystopic city. Call of the Mountain, on the other hand, offers up a rich world full of natural beauty that’s a delight to see.
Beyond the interactive foliage, the developers also scattered lots of interactive props throughout the environment. While they have nothing to do with gameplay, they’re certainly tempting to play with. Though I can’t even recall the name of the game’s main antagonist, I do recall playing a tambourine, drums, a pan flute, finding various hand-made dolls, smashing a table full of pots with a hammer, ringing huge gongs with a mallet, throwing snowballs, and shooting vases off a steep ledge with my bow. All of these various props are detailed with their own sound effects, physics, and generally tight hit-boxes.
While it was great to see that all of these items were physically interactive and could be pushed appropriately with your hands, the physics would sometimes freak out when items interacted with each other (ie: putting a stick in a mug).
Also relating to item interactions, I was a little disappointed to see that Call of the Mountain lacks a proficient force-grab system (which is essentially standard in VR games today). While you technically can grab things with a bit of range, it was really hard to see exactly which item you are targeting, which would sometimes mean grabbing something other than what you had intended. And then there’s the fact that when grabbing distant items, your floating hand in many cases would fly away to meet the object, which certainly doesn’t look right. And all of this sometimes makes picking things up from the ground an annoyance.
A more thoughtful force-grab system would have been welcomed; it’s easy to imagine emulating the gravity glove system from Half-Life: Alyx, and either explain it away by saying it’s advanced technology from the Old Ones (the futuristic lost civilization of the game), or by creating an (admittedly contrived) version of the gloves using string and pulleys. I also would have liked to put items over my shoulder to stash them in my inventory instead of having them magically teleport there after touching them once.
One place where Call of the Mountain really went above and beyond in the immersion department is with its characters. Yes, they look great, they’re well voiced, and the facial capture is very expressive, etc., but the thing that really impressed me is the way the developers dealt with players reaching out and touching the characters.
In many games if you reach out to touch a character nothing happens (maybe your hand even clips through them), which breaks immersion. Other games will just keep the characters 10 feet away from you, but that can also kill immersion because they’re outside of your ‘personal space’ (making you feel less connected with them).
Call of the Mountain keeps the characters in that personal space, but if you reach out to touch them they will lean away from your hand while sneering at you in a way that feels really natural. And when I say natural, I mean the expression on their face—and the way they first look at your hand and then back at you—very effectively conveys a sense of ‘what the hell is wrong with you, why are you touching me’ without using any words at all. It’s such a minor detail but it’s incredibly well done, especially considering that this system is fully dynamic so it can happen regardless of how they’re gesturing, looking, or speaking. Whoever worked on this system and the accompanying body language and animations, bravo, you’ve set a new bar for the ‘players touching characters in VR’ problem.
Comfort
Though there’s plenty of motion in Call of the Mountain, the game is clearly designed to take comfort into consideration.
First and foremost, the game has a solid ‘arm swinger’ locomotion option which is the default for two of the three pre-configured comfort profiles. I found that it kept me more comfortable and felt more immersive than using pure stick movement—though it was just a little bit annoying that it slows you down so much when you come within a few feet of stationary objects like walls or rocks.
In addition to the arm swinger movement, the game has a dynamic blinder system that kicks in when there’s lots of motion, like when you’re jumping, climbing, ziplining, or falling, and I found that it did a great job of keeping me comfortable.
In addition to offering up three pre-configured comfort profiles ranging from lots of comfort accommodations to fewer accommodations, you can also go into the menu and fine-tune the settings to taste. The game also thoughtfully includes an ‘Arm Reach Multiplier’ option for anyone that needs it, either because you don’t feel like reaching as far, or because there’s a physical reason you’re unable to.
As with any VR game involving climbing, when you clasp a handhold you can effectively shake your own body around by waggling your arm; some of the very sensitive folks are likely to find this movement inherently uncomfortable, regardless of blinders. So if you are particularly sensitive to motion in VR, you might want to give this game a shot but be ready to take advantage of Sony’s PlayStation Store refund policy if you can’t handle the motion comfortably.
Below you can find the full list of comfort options in Horizon Call of the Mountain.
Horizon Call of the Mountain’ Comfort Settings – February 16th, 2023
Sony has revealed the price and launch date for PSVR 2 in addition to its launch day lineup for PSVR 2. There’s a ton of stuff coming down the pipeline though as we approach the February 22nd launch of PSVR 2, so check out our mega roundup of everything confirmed both by Sony and indie developers looking to target PSVR 2.
There is a ton of overlap with the list of launch day titles announced by Sony. We overhauled this article to include those in addition to games that have been confirmed to arrive at some point on the headset.
We have what seems to be a fairly complete list of PSVR 2 games. Below, you’ll see our top picks along with their trailers and descriptions. The remaining list is available at the bottom of the article.
Top PSVR 2 Highlights
Gran Turismo 7 – [Launch Day]
Gran Turismo 7 will support PSVR 2 at the headset’s launch via a free upgrade for existing owners. The VR implementation looks like a big upgrade over what we saw in GT Sport. Not much else to say ‘sides vroom vroom.
Moss & Moss: Book II – [Launch Day]
Polyarc announced that both Moss and the sequel Moss: Book II are set to be launch titles on PSVR 2 when it releases in February next year, which follows the adventures of a pint-sized hero named Quill who journeys through a world fraught with enemies and plenty of puzzles to boot.
Both are said to include more visual detail such as lighting and texture improvements. Making use of PSVR 2’s hardware, players can expect eye-tracking to highlight key items, a two-controller setup, improved haptics, and adaptive triggers for added immersion when picking up items.
Horizon Call of the Mountain – [Launch Day]
Horizon Call of the Mountain isn’t a log flume ride or hollow VR “experience” like the trailer might suggest. Nay, developed by Sony’s first-party Guerrilla Games and Firesprite Studios, the first VR take on the Horizon universe is going to be an honest to goodness story campaign the devs say will take around seven hours to complete, along with some “additional content” included in the game.
Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge – [Launch Day]
Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge is an action-adventure experience where you’ll take on the role of a droid repair technician operating near the Outer Rim. First introduced on Meta Quest in 2020, this will be the first time this run-and-gun, Star Wars-flavored adventure will be available outside of the Meta ecosystem.
Capcom is bringing Resident Evil Village to PSVR 2, and it says the game will provide “an even deeper immersive experience by taking full advantage of the vivid graphics possible with the headset’s 4K HDR display, PlayStation VR2’s eye tracking, PS5’s 3D Audio and more.” Lady Dimitrescu awaits in this free DLC update to the base game!
Resident Evil 4
Resident Evil 4 is already available on Quest 2, although this particular version is a classic zombie shooter of another stripe. The game coming to PSVR 2 is actually the remake, so we’re getting all new everything this time around and not just uprezzed textures. We’re hoping the VR support is as good as the Quest 2 version, and decidedly better than RE7 Biohazard, which wasn’t bad, but it is showing its age since it was released in 2017.
Demeo – [Launch Day]
Created by VR veteran Resolution Games, Demeo is a VR take on a tabletop RPG dungeon crawler. It has fared remarkably well on Quest 2 and PC VR headsets since release in 2021, which is in part thanks to its basement-themed, D&D-style action that lets you unite with friends for a tactical gaming night from afar.
Paddle through the ice caves in Antarctica, kayak with dolphins in Costa Rica, conquer a thunderstorm in Norway and discover the canyons of Australia. In Kayak VR: Mirage, made exclusively for VR, you can explore these real-world locations with photorealistic graphics.
No Man’s Sky – [Before End of March]
The redemption story continues, as Hello Games vows to bring its space exploration simulator to PSVR 2, including all of the successive patches and DLC drops that took it from procedurally generated empty shell to a universe truly brimming with possibilities.
The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners Chapter 2 – [Before end of March]
This is a full-fat sequel to VR’s most popular games as of late, The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners. Like the first in the series, you’ll scrounge around a post-apocalyptic New Orleans that’s not only brimming with the undead, but also rival gangs that you can choose to join or battle. Physics-based combat, low ammo supplies, and a very touchy stamina system means you’ll need to think long and hard before running into that crowd of walkers.
Firewall Ultra
It’s not clear how much “new” content we’re getting right out of the bat with First Contact’s next Firewall game, which like the original promises tactical squad-based shooting action across a host of maps, although Firewall Ultra is decidedly the future of the franchise. We can expect to see legacy maps, characters and weapons, but also updates for more of everything down the line.
Walkabout Mini Golf
Indie VR studio Mighty Coconut announced its smash success VR mini-golfing game Walkabout Mini Golf is making its way to PSVR 2. Arguably one of VR’s most favorite social gaming experiences, Walkabout Mini Golf is said to arrive on PSVR 2 “soon”, which is set to include cross-play with all supported versions of the game; this includes versions available through Steam, Meta Quest Store, Viveport, and Pico’s European-facing digital store.
The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR – [Before End of March]
Supermassive Games revealed The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR, or what it calls a “fast-paced roller coaster action-horror-shooter where every move you make, and everything you see, could mean the difference between life and death.” Set inside the sinister world of The Dark Pictures Anthology, Switchback VR makes good use of headset eye-tracking: some enemies only move when you blink (Visine not included).
Crossfire: Sierra Squad
Smilegate tossed out a trailer to a brand-new VR game called Crossfire: Sierra Squad, a first-person shooter in the Crossfire universe. The game is played either solo or in co-op mode with up to 4 players on a team as you battle against AI baddies. The studio says there are 39 types of weapons including pistols, rifles, throwable – and throw back-able – grenades and sniper rifles with revolutionary scope mechanics give you plenty of options to dispatch 17 types of enemies.
The Light Brigade – [Launch Day]
Funktronic Labs showed off a new single-player roguelike game called The Light Brigade which it says is “filled with immersive gunplay and moody mystery.” Uncover the mystery of the gloomy ‘Sunken World’ as you climb the ranks of the titular Light Brigade, unlock firearms and unique spells. The Light Brigade will be available for pre-order starting November 15th.
C-Smash VRS
Sega’s futuristic block-breaker, which you might remember from its launch on Dreamcast in 2001 or in arcades throughout Europe and Japan, is being reimagined for PSVR 2 with C-Smash VRS. It’s set to bring an immersive twist to Cosmic Smash’s low gravity squash-meets-blockbreaker gameplay, including single player, co-op, and 1v1 multiplayer modes—that’s what the ‘VRS’ stands for, both virtual reality and versus. Demo out March 23rd. Launch later this year.
Behemoth
Sink into an all new world of danger, survival, and mystery from Skydance Interactive, the creators behind The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners. In Behemoth, take on the role of a diseased wanderer lost in the frigid Forsaken Lands. Overcome dangerous environments, deadly warriors, and towering Behemoths using immersive, weighty VR combat and life-like physics. Travel through strange, otherworldly environments and overcome all, no matter how large, that stands in your way. Late 2023.
Hello Neighbor: Search and Rescue [Launch Day]
tinyBuild Games and Steel Wool Studios (Five Nights at Freddy’s) announced a VR take on viral indie hit Hello Neighbor, which is coming to both PSVR and PSVR 2 with cross-buy. “Mr. Peterson’s creepy house takes on a new level of immersion in VR, and there is nothing quite as scary as actually seeing that familiar shadow tower over you just before everything goes black,” tinyBuild says.
Pistol Whip VR – [Launch Day]
Cloudhead Games is bringing a free PSVR 2 upgrade to the PSVR version of its award-winning physical action-rhythm game where thrilling gunplay and dynamic tracks collide, creating a dreamscape world for players to blast, duck, and dodge their way through to become the ultimate action hero.
Cities VR – Enhanced Edition – [Launch Day]
With its intial launch on Quest earlier this year, Fast Travel Games managed to bring Cities: Skylines to VR, albeit in a slightly smaller package to run on VR hardware. Smaller, as in the size of your city: you’re actually a Godzilla-sized goliath towering over your little town as you manage all of its buildings and keep up with city planning.
Cosmonious High – [Launch Day]
Owlchemy Labs is known for highly interactive, super approachable VR games, such as award-winning titles Job Simulator and its sequel Vacation Simulator. This one went live a few months ago on Quest and PC VR headsets, and we can’t wait to see PSVR 2’s eye-tracking bring our avatars to life.
Zenith: The Last City – [Launch Day]
From Ramen VR comes the PSVR 2 version of its Kickstarter success story, the MMORPG know as Zenith: The Last City. Promised to be a day-one launch title, there are hundreds of hours of content to chew through in this well-realized VR native.
After The Fall – [Launch Day]
Launched on PC VR, Quest and the original PSVR, Vertigo Games is bringing an enhanced version of the co-op zombie shooter to PSVR 2. If you haven’t heard of it before, it’s essentially Left4Dead, but in VR, letting you sweep through levels with friends and strangers as you mow down massive hordes of zombioid baddies. Upgrade your stuff, come back for more.
Jurassic World Aftermath Collection – [Launch Day]
Coatsink originally brought this two-part psychological dino-thriller to Quest, making for a heart-pounding game of cat-and-mouse with a gaggle of Raptor baddies. Use your eyes and ears to alert you to impending doom, and hide from certain death if you can, Make sure to check out our spoiler-free review of both part 1 and 2 on Quest to see what’s in store.
Altair Breaker – [Launch Day]
Initially released on Steam and PSVR, Altair Breker is a map-based sword fighting game from the makers of Swords of Gargantua, Thirdverse. You can team up with three other friends or go it alone as you for an adventure that the studio says its for “players who want to experience stylish sword-fighting action and feel like the hero in an anime world.”
The Last Clockwinder – [Launch Day]
The Last Clockwinder is a puzzle automation game about making synchronized machines out of your own clones. Your mission is to repair the Clocktower: an ancient haven for the galaxy’s plants and seeds that’s fallen into disrepair. It won our PC VR Game of the Year 2022, so it definitively will find a good home on the very capable PSVR 2.
Fantasvision 202X – [Launch Day]
Originally released on the PlayStation 2 in 2000, Fantavision is a puzzle game based on the theme of fireworks. The game returns in an all-new title for PS VR2 powered by the Unreal Engine. The game is an artistic combination of action, shooting, strategy, and puzzles. The PSVR 2 headset and PSVR 2 Sense controller provides an immersive experience for you to fill the star-studded sky with sparkling fireworks.
The Tale of Onogoro – [Launch Day]
Amata K.K, creator of the escape adventure Last Labyrinth, returns with a co-op tale. Originally launched on Quest, PSVR 2 players will soon find themselves thrust into an all-too real parallel world where danger and mystery await. You’ll join forces with Hal, a shrine maiden who lives on the island of Onogoro. She’s not alone on the island: five giant, lethal Kami inhabit this isle as well.
Dyschronia: Chronos Alternate – [Launch Day]
Marine city, Astrum Close. Crime rate: 0.001%. In this idyllic metropolis, dreams are utilized to ensure crime is prevented before it even happens. The founder of this so-called paradise is killed in an unprecedented, theoretically impossible incident. Special Supervisor Hal Scion is assigned to this extraordinary case and tasked with unraveling the mystery threatening to plunge the city into disaster.
Other Games Announced for PSVR 2
2MD: VR Football Unleashed All-Star – Truant Pixel
Across the Valley – FusionPlay
Affected: The Asylum – Fallen Planet Studios
Aliens VR – Survios
Alvo – Mardonpol
Afterlife VR – Split Light Studio
Another Fisherman’s Tale – Innerspace VR and Veritgo Games
Among Us VR – Schell Games and Innersloth
Awesome Asteroids – Strange Games Studios
Beat Saber – Beat Games
Before Your Eyes – Skybound Interactive
Black Top Hoops – Vinci Games
Black Trail – Red Horizon
Cave Digger 2: Dig Harder – VRKiwi
Creed: Rise to Glory – Championship Edition – Survios
Desperate: Vladivostok – MIROWIN, PM Studios
Distortion VR – Future Mental Games
Do Not Open – Nox Noctis
Drums Rock – Garage 51
Dropship Commander – Strange Games Studios
Engram – Maze Theory
Firmament – Cyan Worlds
The Exorcist Legion VR: Sin – Pocket Money Games
Galaxy Karts – VR Monkey
Garden of the Sea – Neat Corporation
Ghostbusters VR – nDreams, Sony Pictures Virtual Reality (SPVR)
Ghosts of Tabor – Combat Waffle
Golf+ – Golfscope Inc
GORN – Devolver Digital
Green Hell VR – Incuvo
Grimlord – MetalCat Interactive Technology
Hellsplit Arena – DeepType Games
Hubris – Cyborn
Hypestacks – Squirrel Bytes
Job Simulator – Owlchemy
Kayak VR: Mirage – Better Than Life
Kizuna AI – Touch the Beat! – Gemdrops, Inc.
The Last Worker – Wired Productions
LONN – SixSense Studios
LOW FI – Iris VR
Madison – Bloodious Games
Medieval Dynasty – RenderCube
Mixture – Played With Fire
Neolithic Dawn – James Bellian
NFL Pro Era – StatusPro, Inc.
Nock: Bow + Arrow Soccer – Normal VR
Pavlov – Vankrupt Games
Project Lousianna: The Bounds VR – Build the Light Studio
Propagation Paradise Hotel – Wannadev Studio
Puzzling Places – Realities.io
Ragnarock – WanadevStudio
Requisition – Arcadia VR
Rez Infinite – Enhance
Rezzil Player – Rezzil
Runner – Truant Pixel
Samurai Slaughter House – Tab Games
Shadowgate VR: The Mines of Mythrok – Zojoi LLC. and Azure Drop Studios
Zombieland: Headshot Fever Reloaded – XR Games and Sony Pictures VR (SPVR)
Unannounced PSVR 2 Games
Archiact sci-fi game
Firesprite horror game
Vitruvius VR sci-fi game
Update (February 21st, 2023): Sony keeps pumping out the blogpost features leading up to the big launch of PSVR 2 for February 22nd. Many of these have been marked with launch-day releases, which we’ve rounded up here, now tallying 40+ titles coming to PSVR 2.
We’ll be updating this list continuously, so check back soon!
Did we miss any? Let us know in the comments below so we can include it in our list!
Upcoming PSVR 2 exclusive Horizon Call of the Mountain will feature “multiple paths” for players to pursue.
An updated webpage for the game — as mentioned by PSVR Without Parole — confirms as much. The description for the game notes that players will “Explore a diverse landscape – embark on a journey with multiple paths to take where you’ll have to look all around you to uncover the secrets of the mountains.”
New Horizon Call of the Mountain Details Revealed
This suggests that Call of the Mountain won’t feature a huge open-world like the flatscreen games it’s based on. That said, we were never really expecting for this new game to be on the same scale as its siblings, and this page does at least confirm the game won’t be fully linear.
A GIF for the game also shows protagonist Ryas defending himself from one enemy with another in the background. There had been speculation from past trailers that you might only take on one machine at a time but this suggests otherwise.
Call of the Mountain is also expected to feature an introductory boat ride experience for new players. Currently, the game doesn’t have a release date but, then again, we don’t even know when PSVR 2 itself is going to launch right now.
Horizon Call of the Mountain, an exclusive title headed to PSVR 2, got its first gameplay trailer earlier this month which suggested VR’s first Horizon series game would be more than just an ‘experience’. Now Sony has tossed out now new clips alongside an expanded description of the game, which promises “multiple paths to take.”
Developers Firesprite and Guerrilla Games are still playing it pretty tight-lipped on just how in-depth Horizon Call of the Mountain will be; it’s first gameplay trailer suggested it will be significantly more than just a short Horizon-flavored experience.
Conquer colossal peaks, overcome fearsome machines and uncover a hidden danger to the world of Horizon – as you answer the call of the mountain in an immersive new adventure for PlayStation VR2.
Enter a living, breathing world of dangerous machines, tribal lore, exciting quests and new and returning characters. Explore a diverse landscape – embark on a journey with multiple paths to take where you’ll have to look all around you to uncover the secrets of the mountains.
The “multiple paths” could mean a few things: it might point to the possibility of a branching story that lets you choose your own adventure, or it may just suggest there are several actual paths you can take through the world in your journey up the mountain, all of which lead to the same conclusion.
It also appears there won’t just be singular boss fight interludes like we saw in the gameplay trailer (at the bottom of the article), as the studios threw out some new gifs on the updated page as well to show off encounters that will require you to fight multiple enemies at once. We’ve strung them all together here:
What’s more, the clips state they’ve been captured on PSVR 2. That’s an encouraging sign that Horizon Call of the Mountain is aiming for a pretty high degree of visual polish.
Granted, there’s still no official release date for the game—or PSVR 2, which is rumored to arrive anywhere from Q4 of this year to early 2023.
Check out the gameplay trailer from earlier this month below:
As first reported by Video Games Chronicle, the Liverpool-based studio Firesprite is moving to a much larger office, likely indicating some form of expansion.
According to Invest Liverpool, Firesprite and Sony signed a 10-year lease on the new office, located in the Ropewalks district of Liverpool. The new office covers 50,000 square feet – a significant upgrade over the studio’s current office space, which covers just 2,519 square feet.
Given the huge upgrade in space, this could signal that Firesprite is gearing up for expansion and potentially taking on more projects in the near future. Sony looks likely to launch PSVR 2 in 2023, and while we don’t have a confirmed release date for Horizon: Call of the Mountain, it could be a launch title.
Regardless of its final release date, Horizon is likely in the latter sections of development. We recently got our best look at the game yet, featuring a full story campaign and a separate river ride experience. With all that in mind, it will be interesting to see what direction Firesprite heads in after Horizon.
We now know that the headset will also be receiving VR support for Resident Evil 8, alongside ‘VR content’ for the upcoming Resident Evil 4 port, as well as a handful of multi-platform releases. You can read about every confirmed and rumored PSVR 2 title here.
