Firewall Extremely (2023), the tactical staff shooter, hasn’t seen an replace since developer First Contact Leisure shut down in late 2023, or simply 4 months after the sport’s launch on PSVR 2. Now, Sony has dropped a patch out of the blue, tweaking incentives to get new gamers in… for who is aware of what cause.
As noticed by Reddit person ‘ROBYER1’, over the weekend Sony tossed out an replace that quadruples the quantity of XP and in-game ‘Crypto’ forex, making it simpler for newcomers to unlock cosmetics and every thing else the sport hopes you’ll grind for.
However why now? We are able to’t put it higher than ‘Gamertag VR’, who, in a brand new video (seen beneath) highlights the historical past, persistent points with the sport, and provides some hypothesis as to why Sony can be doing this now, of all instances.
“An replace like this can certainly solely profit new gamers,” Gamertag maintains. “So, possibly Sony are about so as to add Firewall Extremely to PlayStation Plus for February, or possibly there’s been a sudden resurgence of curiosity within the recreation, or possibly there’s an impending enormous sale.”
Whereas any of these situations might play out, right here’s one which’s barely extra grim. Sony could also be giving Firewall Extremely its final hurrah, as ostensibly poor gross sales and low person engagement over 2024 has put it in peril of delisting. Hypothesis apart, Firewall Extremely remains to be promoting for $40, which is a reasonably steep worth for a recreation that received’t see any significant content material updates ever once more.
Launched in August 2023 and hoping to duplicate the success of Firewall Zero Hour (2018) on the unique PSVR, Firewall Extremely confronted plenty of obstacles regardless of being one of many premier shooters on PSVR 2. At its launch, many critics cited points with the sport’s management scheme, quantity of gameplay selection, and development system, garnering it a middling Metacritic rating of 61/100 straight out of the gate.
Over the following few months, First Contact launched plenty of patches to clean a few of the points over, together with fixes to aiming mechanics, new maps, balancing changes, and the implementation of an Assignments system for leveling and accessing new gear. All of that apparently wasn’t sufficient to assist carry the kind of vital mass of gamers First Contact hoped for, because the studio introduced in December 2023 that the “lack of help for VR inside the business” had pressured the studio to shut.
