Thoughts on Firewall: Zero Hour? (PSVR)

[Health Insurance]

So according to all the hype, PSVR apparently has its first decent, legitimate tactical multiplayer shooter, which is designed to be played with Sony's Aim peripheral.

After looking at some gameplay videos, I have mixed feelings about it -- TTK seems quite high, and there's naturally no physical diving into cover or manual reloading due to PSVR's hardware / peripheral limitations. On the other hand, there seems to be layers of tactical depth that don't exist in Onward, such as defensive traps / mines. There also seems to be a fairly meaty, robust progression system.

Gameplay vid example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTrmUG0q5oM

Honestly, I wish it the best. VR in general needs more high quality content, and Firewall currently seems to be the closest thing to a triple A VR shooter.

[Chaunsey]

im glad to see it and that it is so popular, VR needs more "killer apps" that continue to drive it into the mainstream.

it looks like a great game, for PSVR but it really doesnt hold a candle to a game like onward or pavlov imo.

the fact is in firewall, you dont have motion controls, or room scale, you reload, throw grenades, crouch etc all by pushing a button, you only have a gun controller, and if you dont buy that $60 controller $80 for a bundle with the game, or you use a gamepad. if you watch firewall gameplay, the player for the most part is stood still, in one spot, mostly facing one direction, and just moving their upper body. you're really not experiencing the game world in a physical way.

to me its a step backwards from a game like onward. only being able to interact with a game world by buttons and your gun, is not a lot different from 2d games. it is more like playing CSGO with vorpx almost.


that said, firewall gets everything not specific to VR right, it is a very polished game, with great graphics, for its limits, detailed layers of gameplay, a robust rewards system and characters etc.

these are the kinds of things missing from current VR games. sadly, that kind of detail and AAA polish require big dev teams and lots of money, firewall has the benefit of being backed by sony, and has a full size development team to build the game.

onward in comparison has a team of a handful of people, originally made pretty much by one guy.

it also only costs $25 vs the $40 that firewall costs.


again though, ultimately i think most of the things firewall improves on over current VR shooters, has nothing to do with VR, it is the traditional game systems, the VR itself, though done well for the limits of the PSVR, doesnt compare at all to proper PC VR shooters.

hopefully, as more people play firewall though it will turn them on to VR, especially with VR being so much cheaper today to get into, and naturally some of them will go looking for a more detailed VR shooter experience, and right now, that is definitely onward. so i honestly believe, that long term, firewall is good for VR as well as onward.

[[RR]HipFiire]

it is rather boring in my opinion.

[Health Insurance]

Originally posted by RRHipFiire:

it is rather boring in my opinion.

Have you played it, out of curiosity? I don't own a PS4, so I can't personally comment on whether it's fun to play.

As an aside, r/FirewallZeroHour just surpassed 1100 subscribers at the time of writing this comment. That's fantastic for a game that released just a few days ago -- for perspective, Onward has been around for years and it's sitting at 2.7k subscribers. There's also hundreds of comments in some PSVR threads focusing on the game, so I think that's a cool testament to how large the playerbase is at the moment (relatively speaking, of course).

Hopefully the community keeps growing for the sake of VR and VR shooters. :)

[[RR]HipFiire]

nah, but watched several videos and the fact that you reload without moving your hands, is a motion breaker for me (thats why i love onward so much) :D but indeed it would be good for the sake of VR if it grows :o

[falkenbbs]

It looks ok, but pushing a button to reload and a button to throw a grenade? No thanks, sounds terrible at best.

[Health Insurance]

Originally posted by falkenbbs:

It looks ok, but pushing a button to reload and a button to throw a grenade? No thanks, sounds terrible at best.

I don't think it sounds terrible. It's not quite as immersive as physically lobbing a grenade or reloading, but there's still plenty of immersion to be had from aiming, blind-firing around corners, and gesturing -- not to mention the sense of presence you inherently get from a VR headset.

Most reviews thus far are praising it as an addictive and immersive experience, and players on reddit seem to love it. I don't think that should be dismissed, even if it doesn't stack up to a game like Onward in the subjective opinion of PCVR gamers.

Anyway, we need "killer app" games like Firewall to succeed for VR's sake, even if we want to poke fun at them for not being as immersive due to lack of good motion controls and roomscale tracking. Games like Onward don't exist for all intents and purposes in the mainstream gaming community, so the visibility VR receives from games on PSVR is absolutely critical to helping grow the medium.

And like it or not, PSVR is just about the only headset that's still steadily selling units, which arguably makes it more important than Rift / Vive / whatever for the uncertain future of VR. Here's a quote from an article as some food for thought:

"The fact that Sony brags frequently about sales while rivals Oculus and HTC are largely silent on the subject says a lot about the PSVR's success."

And here's the article in question:

https://www.engadget.com/2018/08/16/sony-psvr-sales-3-million/

Title: "Sony's PSVR still going strong as sales hit 3 million"

I don't think it's an overstatement to say that Firewall: Zero Hour is an extremely important -- if not one of the most important -- software launches for modern virtual reality. Trashing something that important as "lol, sounds terrible at best" really isn't healthy. The VR community as a whole is too small for that kind of toxic fanboy elitism.

[john2910]

this for the pc vr would be great!! with our great tracking and graphics options..