Firewall: Ultra brings premium multiplayer shooter to PSVR 2 | Insight

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I'm always happy when everything is going well in a virtual reality game. My glasses don't break. I don't feel nauseous. And the experience is smooth. That was the case with a demo of Firewall: Ultra, a new team-based VR shooter for the PlayStation VR 2 from First Contact Entertainment.

I played several plays of the game this week at Sony headquarters in San Mateo, CA. I grabbed the hand controllers, put the PSVR 2 on my head, squeezed it tight and was ready to go. The Sony team walked my fellow game journalists through how to play and we got into four-on-four matches.

The game is a sequel to 2018's Firewall: Zero Hour, a PSVR title built with Unreal Engine 4. Firewall Ultra is built with Unreal Engine 5 and will be released this year. It was easy to tell that the 3D graphics in VR were pretty good. In the first map, which takes place in an office building, there were combinations of well-lit areas as well as dark places where you could hide.

We played about five rounds on two different maps, one in the office building called Social and another called Oil Rig. OK, maybe they could name their cards better.

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The social map has a lot of lighting and shadows.

We had a fearless Sony leader in our party, talking to us about the tasks and the map. In the mode we played, you had to eliminate the enemy team and arm or disarm a computer. One team of four attacked, while the other team defended.

We started in a hall that had a shooting range for practice. I played with the weapon controls. With Circle, I could easily switch weapons between my assault rifle, pistol, grenade, and knife. It was pretty quick to make this change, and it's good because you don't want to mess with the controls while you're trying to down an enemy. Like most VR games I've played, it was pretty hard to aim for the site. And so I concluded that I would only use one hand and vape bullets. By watching where the bullets were going, I could adjust my shot, and it usually worked. But I wasted a lot of balls and went through the clips quickly.

In the first round, we didn't know what we were doing. We were defending a point and the enemy could have come from any direction. They came down two different hallways at once and jumped on us. I was shot in the back and noticed how quickly someone could take you down.