Virtual reality shooters are spectacular. This is a premise that must be carried forward immediately: my very personal Top 10 of the games I tried for PlayStation VR boasts 8 more or less psychedelic shooter positions. For this reason Firewall: Zero Hour it had fascinated me from the first announcement, and for this reason I always wanted to venture into this journey made of a tactic that had hardly been compared to virtual reality. On the other hand, VR games have always been very short, linear and simple, almost as if they were afraid of making everything too complicated. Nothing ventured nothing gained.
Unity is strength
If you are familiar with virtual reality and PS VR is not your only headset, you may know Onward, a title very similar to Firewall: Zero Hour. The title of the First Contact Entertainment however, it shifts everything to a rare tactic even in classic games. We immediately highlight how the game objective will be to hack one of the two points marked on the map, and then finally reach a PC and upload data. In doing so, your 4-player team will have to clash with 4 other players: each kill will be final, but completely thinning out the team will not give you victory, quite the opposite. In that moment, in fact, a terrible countdown it will push you towards what is the only goal of the game.
As we've seen in games like Rainbow Six Siege before, dead players will be able to control cameras and help their team, especially in Firewall: Zero Hour. If the voice chat is in fact vital in both games, the contact with the players in the VR title is more alive, thanks to the need to move to play. The best peripheral to enjoy the game to the fullest is without a doubt the PlayStation Aim, this time used properly in this tactical shooter.
A simple one AI mode and a tutorial accompany the game as a side dish towards this mode which turns out to be the real deus ex machina of everything.
An exceptional design
We are not talking about graphics at all: although the level is high, in VR it doesn't take much to be amazed, especially in a title like this that completely destroys every single barrier between the various players. On the other hand, the game works precisely because it is reasoned and tactical, because it is balanced and because it forces all players to cooperate, under penalty of defeat. There will also be skills in the game that will help and change the course of the encounters, adding further depth to something that has never been seen in VR before.
Some minor problems arise in terms of collisions, especially between soldiers: the presence of solid hitboxes forces players to coordinate even to enter a door. Despite everything, the idea of being inside the real world is well brought to the viewer, thus exploiting a lot the wow effect that some VR games have.
What awaits us
The game features 9 maps in its unique online mode, all different in terms of geo-positioning, making you go from Russia to England, to the Middle East. The thing that really surprised us, however, is the community behind the game: even in the first games, where it was really difficult to find your way around, no one was ever angry at a missed shot, but rather that atmosphere has always remained relaxed and amused, almost like a highlight how it is more important to play than to win. I don't know if this is due to the VR technology, which requires such total immersion that it seems to be in the same room with the other players, or it is just a coincidence that all the neurotics on duty have remained out of Firewall: Zero Hour, but it's just to rejoice to see how a primarily online title, finds strength right from the players behind those PS VRs. To conclude a high-level technical and design sector, a dubbing in other languages that will accompany you for most of the game.
