This amazing new PSVR deal bundles one of the headset’s best new games with another horror classic and more at an amazing price.
UK retailer Game is currently selling a pack that includes the headset, camera, a copy of this week’s big release, The Persistence, along with Resident Evil 7, Super Stardust Ultra VR and PSVR Worlds, all for £229.99. That’s four games and the camera needed to buy that headset all in one package, with a two month Now TV subscription to boot. Not bad!
The star of the show here is The Persistence, which we gave 8/10 in our review earlier this week. It’s a procedurally generated horror game in which you sneak through a ship overridden with horrific enemies. It’s sharp, scary and an excellent companion piece to the also-terrifying Resident Evil 7, which includes full VR support for its memorable campaign. PSVR Worlds and Super Stardust are appreciated little extras.
Best of all, three of the four games in this set (Persistence, RE7, Stardust) don’t require Move controllers, while PSVR Worlds is only partially compatible with it, so you’ll be good to go as long as you’ve got a DualShock 4.
If you’re springing on this deal then definitely make sure to head over to the EU PlayStation Store, where there are more great VR bargains as part of Sony’s Summer Sale.
It has been well-established for some time that horror works well in virtual reality (VR), as very little can bring a sense of tension and atmosphere so much as putting it all around you. A common criticism of recent horror has been that it relies too heavily on cheap gimmicks and jump scares. Thankfully, however, The Persistence eschews this to bring a more refined horror experience.
The Persistence is set aboard a spaceship of the same name, which has ended up a bit too close for comfort to a black hole after a light-speed navigation issue. This accident has not only caused terrible damage, but has also caused malfunctions to several systems, including the clone printer.
The player takes the role of security officer Zimri Eder, who is the only crew member on board whose clone hasn’t been horribly corrupted by the ongoing malfunctions. As such, her job and yours is to take back control of the ship and escape the pull of the black hole.
The gameplay is heavily reminiscent of survival horror, especially at first when you have few resources to your name. Helpfully, death isn’t the end, though. Since you are a clone, a new version of you can be printed off and you can carry on from where you left off. Each time you do this, however, the layout of the ship changes.
Here is where the procedurally generated roguelike elements come in, as while you can learn the patterns and habits of each enemy type, the layout will keep changing, making navigation an additional hazard to deal with. This can sometimes cause frustration, as the level can sometimes drop you in a nigh-impossible situation, but the cloning means this isn’t quite as bad as it could be.
As with all good roguelikes, you can find useful items scattered around to help you in your tasks, and you can also capture DNA from enemies to re-sequence your own DNA and unlock new abilities which can make you tougher and stronger – which turns out to be important as you travel further into the crippled ship.
The story is well-told, and has a great atmosphere, and the voice acting remains consistently good, if relatively minimal, with much of what is going on conveyed by the visuals and sounds. The Persistence maintains a visual style that works well with conveying the tone, offering a feel that is reminiscent of Dead Space, or Bioshock, with some of classic sci-fi horror Event Horizon thrown in for good measure.
The title is controlled with the Dual Shock 4, and there are several control schemes to choose from, with the settings able to be tweaked until it feels just so for all levels, including teleport locomotion.
Sound design is excellent, giving you a real feel for a damaged ship alone in the vast reaches of space as the creaks and cracks of the bulkheads as they are slowly crushed by the black hole. Music is minimalist, but works well when it is present.
Overall, The Persistence is a great sci-fi horror experience that cleverly uses VR to slowly ratchet up the tension and fear. While never entirely terrifying, it does still work well as horror, with just enough randomisation to keep you coming back for more.
A big complaint surrounding a lot of VR games at this stage of the industry is that many of them are just far too short. After an hour or two you can see most everything there is to see in a lot of the low-quality shovelware that’s flooded the marketplaces for Rift, Vive, and PSVR. The Persistence, a part survival horror, part sci-fi roguelike VR shooter from Firesprite Games, aims to solve that problem with some light procedural generation and a heavy focus on replayability.
In The Persistence you take on the role of Security Officer Zimri Eder aboard The Persistence, a massive starship traveling through the stars. Something goes terribly wrong, wiping out the crew, and resulting in various strange dark matter related anomalies. Instead of a crew full of friends and colleagues, the ship is overrun with grotesque, aggressive mutants. You’ve got to explore, repair, and guide the ship back to Earth as the lone survivor.
The nifty thing about The Persistence is that no two playthroughs are ever quite the same. This is due to the fact that each time you die, the layout, item placement, enemies, and structure of the entire spaceship you’re set to explore gets reshuffled. And it’s not just an item reset and enemy respawn type of update, but a complete overhaul. The whole map in and of itself changes. You could explore the first level of the ship 10 times and never have the same experience.
Granted, there are limitations to this formula. For starters, you’ll eventually start to recognize identifiable “chunks” in the world, which is common with most roguelikes. When I say no two games are ever the same I don’t mean the ship’s interior is a different style and you’re playing a different game. Medical bays have a “samey” quality to them across the whole game, some rooms have similar structures, all the doors look the same, and so on. But rather if you’re enjoying the game, then you can rest assured that it’s a bit like an essentially endless stream of content that you can keep exploring and playing.
Unlike a lot of roguelikes though, there isn’t actual permadeath — at least, not really. Instead of having everything you did wiped clean, you get to keep your credits (in the form of stem cells and fab chips), everything you unlocked stays unlocked, any upgrades on your actual character are retained, and eventually you can even fast travel to higher tiers of the ship if you find the corresponding Deck Modules. Death in The Persistence can be devastating depending on the circumstance, but the game does a good job of not making you feel like all that time was wasted. In fact, when a new clone is printed of your character, you get to pick an upgrade to spend some stem cells on that can make a big difference in your next playthrough.
The Persistence (which just so happens to also be the name of the ship itself) is split into five decks. Each deck has a starting point that’s connected back to the starting Recovery room, well over a dozen connected rooms that can contain anything from enemies, items, supply crates (usually accompanied by waves of enemies as a “Challenge Room”), or fabrication stations.
Item fabrication is at the core of progression in The Persistence. Spread across each deck of the ship you’ll find fabrication stations for guns, grenades, melee weapons, and experimental weaponry. At each station you’ll need to spend rare Erebus Tokens to either unlock or upgrade your gear and then use fab chips to craft items and ammo. Once you craft something, that station is out of commission for a long time until it recharges so you can’t just buy a bunch of guns all at once. Between sessions at the Recovery room you can use stem cells to upgrade your personal stats, like shield regeneration or max health. That way you’re always slowly getting stronger over the course of the game.
Even though you lose all of your weapons when you die, the schematics you unlocked and all of your currency are saved. It’s a relatively forgiving system because once you start a new playthrough, it won’t take terribly long to get back on track with some gear. So you might start weak and defenseless other than your Stem Cell Harvester, but it’s perfect capable of landing stealth kills and beating enemies over the head. You’ve also got a shield mapped to L2 that’s great for parrying and blocking attacks.
Firesprite appear to have taken note from other developers such as Insomniac when it comes to their weapon variety. Instead of just dishing out a list of different fire rates and damage types, each and every weapon is significantly different. There’s an amazing gravity bomb that sucks in enemies, a javelin-shooting harpoon stealth pistol that results in amazing ragdoll physics, plenty of pistols and automatic weapons, and — my favorite — the Grav Hook, which has you physically move your head around to slam enemies up and down and sideways until they’re bludgeoned to death. There’s even a device that magically teleports you to safety as a last resort!
Note: The above GIF is extra blurry because it’s been enlarged. The game looks much sharper — you can see real footage in our video review near the top of this article.
Visually, The Persistence leaves a little bit to be desired. Similar to some other titles, like Robinson: The Journey on PSVR, there’s a slight grainy effect going on. It’s lessened on the PS4 Pro, but is pretty noticeable on the standard PS4. This doesn’t really detract from the game as a whole — the lighting system is excellent and enemies look really great, even close up, but when you’re exploring hallways and corridors that all kind of look the same for a few hours, you’ll notice some of the corners that were cut.
I finished the base game in about seven hours. What I mean by “finished” is that after dying well over a dozen times total, I was able to finally make my way to the final floor and complete the last objective, reaching the end of a playthrough.
On the survival horror note, The Persistence is a scary and unnerving game. Enemies have a habit of popping up out of nowhere, scaring the crap out of you and eliciting jumps. The sound design is wonderfully haunting with mutants moaning and groaning around corners. I probably spent close to half of my playthrough slowly creeping along while crouched.
Now since this is a roguelike, it’s designed to be played multiple times. In fact, once you finish it, you’ll have your completion time logged and you unlock a new Survival Mode. In this mode you only get 10 lives (that sounds generous, but it’s not) to finish as quickly as possible.
In a unique twist, The Persistence also has a mobile/tablet companion app that lets others users (up to three others) interact with your game. With the app they can freeze and tag enemies, open doors, inform you of traps, locate items, and more. However, the app also has its own separate XP and progression and sometimes that user will actually be incentivized to hinder you. But as the VR player, you can upload viruses to them to fight back as well. It’s a clever system that works well and adds an extra fun layer if you’ve got someone to play with, but is far from necessary to enjoy the game as a whole.
Unfortunately, The Persistence is a DualShock 4 only game. Mechanically it feels similar to the likes of DOOM VFR (although much slower-paced) and Resident Evil 7. You aim your weapons by moving your head, walk around with the left analog stick, and rotate the camera with the right stick. Vertical camera movement is disabled since you can just move your neck up or down instead to avoid sickness. There are comfort options in the settings, but I always crank any game I play all the way to the most intense since I’m not bothered by motion sickness thankfully. When you press X there’s a short-range teleportation power as well that’s great for evading enemies and stealthily navigating levels.
It wasn’t part of the design, but I’d have loved PS Move support with a control scheme similar to Skyrim VR, or ideally, PS Aim controller support. Farpoint more or less spoiled me on the PS Aim controller for any game that’s primarily about shooting guns and other weapons.
Final Score:8/10 – Great
The Persistence offers something fresh and engaging by mixing different genres that we don’t often see melded together so well. On a moment-to-moment basis the horrors lurking around every corner keep you on your toes and the give-and-take aspect of its roguelike nature ensures that no two runs are ever quite the same. The lack of Move or PS Aim controller support is a bummer, but it still plays wonderfully just on the standard DualShock 4. This is a dark, challenging stealth shooter that PSVR fans can keep coming back to for quite a while.
The Persistence is an upcoming PSVR-exclusive survival-horror-meets-sci-fi-roguelike that’s designed to keep your heart rate up with its relentless enemies and pulse-pounding combat. Each time you die (and you will die) the entire map reshuffles itself with a new layout, new enemies, new loot, and more.
We’ve been playing a lot of The Persistence for the past week and we’re excited for everyone else to get a chance to dive in with it starting tomorrow when it releases on PSVR July 24th.
For today, we’ll be livestreaming The Persistence on PSVR using an El Gato HD60 S and monitoring chat on a nearby PC later today. The official embargo for reviews is 9PM PT, but Sony has permitted us to do an early preview livestream that’s limited to the first deck of the ship as long as we do not discuss our final score and provide preview impressions only. But we’ll be happy to answer your burning questions!
Tune in for the livestream today at approximately 2:00PM PT — we’re aiming to last for about an hour or so. We’ll be livestreaming directly to the UploadVR Facebook page. You can see the full stream embedded right here down below once it’s up:
Let us know which games you want us to livestream next and what you want to see us do, specifically, in Onward or other VR games. Comment with feedback down below!
It may not seem like a bumper week for PlayStation VR owners with just three videogames scheduled to launch, but they do happen to be three titles worth a peek, VRobot, Detached and The Persistence.
Most PlayStation VR owners should already know about The Persistence, the sci-fi survival horror from Firesprite that’s exclusive to the headset. Players will have to work through a procedurally generated spaceship filled with their mutated crew mates.
Like any good survival horror, there are plenty of monster varieties as well as weaponry to dispatch them. As an added bonus, virtual reality (VR) players can invite their mates to help out via a companion mobile app to lure enemies, open doors, and disable traps. Or those friends can turn the other way and make the videogame even harder for the VR player. The Persistence will be releasing digitally on 24th July as will the companion app, with a disc version arriving on 25th July.
Keeping with the outer space, sci-fi theme but steering away from the horror element is Detached. Originally released for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, with cross-platform compatibility, Detached has both single-player and multiplayer modes, with the main focus being the latter. Designed to offer plenty of movement flexibility in a zero-g environment – especially in the PvP combat mode – Detached looks great but isn’t for those who easily suffer from VR nausea.
Originally Detached was due to launch for PlayStation VR on 6th July, for whatever reason that’s now happening on 24th July.
Finally there’s VRobot, a madcap, over-the-top experience which is all about laying waste to cities as quickly as possible. Another PC VR title making its way over to PlayStation VR, VRobot put you in control of a giant robot, with the only object being to destroy cites as fast as possible using an array of weaponry like the Lightning Hammer, Transformer Sword, Tornado Gun and Tractor Beam, or even just with your own fists.
If any other titles do decide to make an appearance this week for PlayStation VR, VRFocus will let you know.
Sci-fi horror The Persistence will soon be emerging onto the PlayStation VR, with its release date due on 24th July, 2018. The team behind the title have taken inspiration from a variety of sources for the creation of the title, and spoke about influences, gameplay and virtual reality (VR).
Nina Salmons of VRFocus spoke to Gareth Delve from developers Firesprite about the title, and the various gameplay elements that have come together to make The Persistence what it is.
The title is a hybrid of survival horror, first-person shooter (FPS) and roguelike. The action is set in space aboard a huge, labyrinthine spaceship which has got too close to a black hole, the distortions causing many of the ships systems to go haywire. The player needs to navigate the ship and manage to escape with your life.
Delve explains that the problems begin during light-speed travel, as the crew of The Persistence tries to navigate to a distant colony world where the 800 ‘digital engrams’ store on board can be ‘printed’ as clones to colonise the planet. A ‘spark gap’ event causes the ship to drift close to the black hole.
The ship’s chief engineer has saved the life of the protagonist player character and then backed herself up in the ship’s computer. She then acts as a repository of knowledge as well as your guide through the events that follow.
Delve also explains how each deck on the ship has its own missions that need to be completed, and once all the missions are completed, you can then head to the bridge and fire up the engines to escape the black hole and head home.
However, there are many obstacles in your way, not least the twisted, mutated copies of your former crewmates and the ship itself, as its defences have gone wild and turned against you.
The full interview is available to view below. Keep checking back with VRFocusfor more news from the VR world.
Events are tricky, sometimes there’s just only so much you can do to get to them or see everything there when you do. The next major event on the horizon is, of course, Gamescom next month and after a somewhat lackluster feeling E3 earlier this year, there’s a lot of expectation going in to it.
For those not able to get to this year’s Gamescom event, taking place from August 21st 2018 through to the 25th in Cologne Germany, VRFocus is giving members of the UK XR community an extra opportunity to check out in person some of the virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) experiences that will be shown. We’ve teamed up once again with the team at Realities Centre to present what is being called “The Post Gamescom #XR Review” – a chance to demo, connect and discuss everything to do with immersive technology that Gamescom reveals.
Amongst those currently confirmed as attending are Cherry Pop Games with Football Nation VR, Dream Reality Interactive and Rebellion’s physics-based platform title Arca’s Path VR and The Persistence, Firesprite’s roguelike horror for PlayStation VR. Along with the opportunity to play the videogames on show there will also be a number of speakers and a panel discussing VR and AR’s role at this year’s Gamescom event and the latest in immersive technology news. Led by VRFocus‘ Editor and CEO Kevin Joyce and Nina Salomons who’ll be familiar to regular VRFocus readers from our regular interview videos.
“Gamescom is always a highlight in the annual videogames event calendar, and over the years has become one of the biggest showcases for new and exciting hardware and software.” Says Joyce, “Working with UK developers to bring their titles back to UK audiences is exactly the kind of opportunity that VRFocus was always designed to provide.”
“The UK XR community is hugely passionate, and the Realities Centre is keen to enable everyone access to all the latest developments whether or not they have the budget to attend international trade shows. Partnering with VRFocus for the Post Gamescom #XR Review enables Realities Centre further reach into the UK community and to attract the biggest names in XR.” adds Thomas Gere, Realities Centre CEO.
The Persistence
The event takes place on Thursday, 6th September 2018, at the Realities Centre at Huckletree West, Mediaworks, White City in London. Applications for tickets can be made at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/vr-gaming-showcase-with-gamescom-review-in-association-with-vrfocus-tickets-45551446603. Regular tickets are free, and demos and talks will begin at 7PM. Those who purchase a VIP ticket however will be able to gain access to the demos an hour earlier. Please see the Eventbrite listing for further details.
VRFocus will, of course, be keeping you fully up to date on all the VR and AR news over the Gamescom period. We also announced another event yesterday, the third VR Diversity Initiative (VRDI) meetup which is taking place at the end of this month. You can find out more details about that, here.
Virtual reality (VR) horror titles can be particularly scary due to the sense of immersion and that feeling that you’re completely alone. In a couple of weeks developer Firesprite will launch its long awaited sci-fi horror The Persistencefor PlayStation VR and it turns out that there will be a companion mobile app available, enabling friends to join in.
In The Persistence players find themselves on a procedurally generated ship with the crew turned into horrible monsters. You play as a clone of Zimri Eder, the security officer, and every time you die, you print a new (and potentially improved) clone of yourself – but the ship changes. There’s a slim chance you could still escape, and take back your life.
So VR players will be able to enlist the help of four of their friends to succeed in the mission. All they need to do is download the free app for Android and iOS and then hack in to the ship’s engineering system – known as Solex Systems. Once connected, the non-VR players get powerful control over the game, including abilities to lure enemies, open doors, and disable traps. By helping, your friends can upgrade their Solex system to unlock even more powers, like the ability to freeze enemies to help you escape.
But friends can also turn and make life in The Persistence a lot harder. If they do so, sometimes your friends get big rewards if you die, and with the ability to spawn new enemies, make them attack, or even just turn out the lights.
The Persistence will be releasing digitally on 24th July as will the companion app, with a disc version arriving on 25th July. The videogame is available for pre-order now on the PlayStation Store for £24.99 GBP, with PS Plus Members receiving a 10 percent discount. For any further updates keep reading VRFocus.
One of the most anticipated PSVR games of the year, The Persistence, is just over a week away from release, but we still haven’t seen much of one of its biggest features – co-op. This new trailer, however, tells us a little bit more.
The Persistence doesn’t have traditional four-player co-op. Instead, its multiplayer looks a little closer to something like Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes; one player puts on the VR headset while three others grab a smartphone or tablet and download a companion app called Solex. They can use this app to see a view of the player’s world, complete with points of interest like items and enemies.
It’s up to non-VR players what they then do with this information. You could choose to help; highlighting health kits, opening doors or freezing enemies. Or, if you’re in a particularly mean mood, you could instead turn off lights and even lead the bad guys right to an unsuspecting player. We’ll be very interested to learn what motivates players to act either way.
If you’re not a fan of multiplayer don’t worry; the entire game can be played on your own, and that way there’s no need to worry about unexpected surprises. The Persistence looks a little like Dead Space in VR, with players creeping around a ship overridden with zombies, using tools to defeat them. We’re really looking forward to seeing how it turns out.
The game launches as a PSVR exclusive on July 24th.
Back in January VRFocus reported on developer Firesprite announcing that its virtual reality (VR) horror title The Persistence would be arriving next month for PlayStation VR. For those who prefer a physical copy the studio has confirmed one will be available the day after the digital version.
The Persistence is a roguelike horror experience with procedurally generated levels, set in a sci-fi universe where the crew of a spaceship have all mutated into nasty creatures thanks to the ship’s AI trying to save them.
You play as a clone of Zimri Eder, the security officer, and every time you die, you print a new (and potentially improved) clone of yourself. There’s a slim chance you could still escape, and take back your life, but to do that you need to survive the horrors onboard and repair the ship’s devastated systems in the process.
Like any good horror, Firesprite has concocted some devilish enemies to try and stop you. From The Listener who has a partially formed head, meaning he’s completely blind but super sensitive to noise and movement. Or how about the Bloodhound who never stops following you. Wherever you hide he will keep following and eventually find you. The only saving grace is that it ambles very slowly.
Of course you’re not helpless or defenceless in The Persistence, with a sizable arsenal at your disposal. From standard weaponry to items a little more exotic like the Grav Hook which can lift mutants up in the air and send them crashing through objects, or the close range Ivy Serum which will convert even the most fearsome mutants into your guardian.
Then there are the upgrade options found at the Firearms Fabricator and Armoury Fabricator. Not only do you unlock new items at these locations they’ll help you refine your skills, depending on whether you prefer stealth, teleportation or silent killing.
The Persistence is an exclusive PlayStation VR title which is due to arrive on 24th July via PlayStation Store. The physical version will launch on 25th July. VRFocus will continue its coverage of The Persistence, reporting back with the latest updates ahead of release.
For those not able to get to this year’s Gamescom event, taking place from August 21st 2018 through to the 25th in Cologne Germany, 
