Review of Firewall Ultra – a team shooter for PS VR2

Although official materials refer to it as a “continuation of the series”, Firewall Ultra is more of a reboot, as it uses improved versions of the game maps from the original game. It was Firewall: Zero Hour for PS4 and the original PS VR in 2018, which received quite high reviews at the time and was called by some “the best VR shooter of all time.” Firewall Ultra builds on these foundations but adds new features based on, among other things, improvements to the new virtual headset. While some of the new features and improvements are very interesting, overall the game has yet to live up to its potential and the creators likely still have a lot of work to do on it.

• Platform: PSVR2
• Publication date: 08/24/2022
• Manufacturer: First Contact Entertainment (USA)
• Genre: Team shooter
• Czech localization: No
• Multiplayer: 4 players
• Download data: 18 GB
• Price: 949 CZK (PS store)

Nothing for lone wolves

If you’ve had your eye on the slick graphics of this realistic modern shooter and thought you’d at least play its single-player campaign, I have to disappoint you – just like the original game, Firewall Ultra doesn’t offer a story. campaign. You can, of course, spend time in the huge training room, where you can try out weapons and controls on all kinds of targets and in a special “glove”. You can also play one of the game’s eight maps in private mode and run through it alone or in your opponent’s shoes. The main content of the game is a team game for four players, either with friends or with randomly connected online players (random matchmaking).

For team play, you have two options to choose from: either you can play in the PvE-focused “Exfil” mode, where you and your teammates will gradually hack three laptops scattered around the map. Enemy patrols and computer-controlled reinforcements will try to prevent you from doing this. A rather fun feature of this mode is the ability to take a relatively tactical approach, where enemies can be outflanked or killed silently. The second mode is Contracts, which is pure PvP action of one team of four players against another – here you will take turns defending or conquering one laptop over three rounds.

The main content of the game is a team game with four players.

Matches usually go very quickly, especially against online players. Matchmaking issues are even more frustrating because unless you have a pre-assembled group of online friends, the game takes quite a long time to find teammates or opponents, and when it does find them, it forces everyone to spend two minutes in the lobby between each match, presumably so they can customize their gear – they don’t, but there’s no way to confirm you’re ready to play, so you wait those two minutes each time. As a result, you sometimes unintentionally spend more time in the lobby than on the battlefield. While it seems (given the long matchmaking process) that there aren’t many players in the game yet, when you do find them, they’re mostly people trying to establish good (voice) communication and cooperation, which is quite rare in this genre.

Technical progress

PS VR2 is a great piece of hardware, and thanks to this platform, Firewall has also seen a noticeable change from its predecessor in terms of overall presentation. Most of the game’s maps have a strong atmosphere, and your weapons are fun to look at up close. The creators also took full advantage of new features in PS VR2, such as recognizing your eyes – thanks to which, for example, you will only need to close your eyes if someone throws a flashbang grenade in your direction. It’s even more interesting to close your other eye when aiming – it instantly “zooms in” to your view. If you press the aim button (while holding the gun up to your face), the game will raise/point it in the direction your eyes are currently facing. You can then adjust the exact position of the “laser dot” in the scope using the pupils.

The creators took full advantage of the new features of PS VR2.

It all looks very modern and new, but, unfortunately, sometimes it does not work as accurately and reliably as we would like. Combined with the very rapid mortality of characters, these flaws can quickly degenerate. So I found myself not using many of these advanced features and instead relying on slower but more controlled “manual” aiming. Otherwise, the character animations also likely have trouble responding to aiming with the eyes, whose arms often “break” unnaturally and thus ruin the feel of the game’s otherwise realistic handling. Realism is somewhat compromised by the fact that most of the environment is non-interactive, and weapons cannot yet be reloaded “manually” only by pressing a button on the controller (it is reported that the creators will add this in a future patch).

The last drawback of the game is that the grind is too slow, with it taking hours to unlock one new weapon, operator or upgrade. Of course, in-game currency can be purchased with real money. So while the game is inherently great and fun, it still seems to be suffering from labor pains, feeling more like an early beta than a full release of a full game. But if you have a PS VR2 and have a strong weakness for realistic team-based shooters, you can already have a good time playing the game, despite the aforementioned shortcomings.