Developer: Firesprite
Publisher: Firesprite
Reviewed on: Xbox One
Code Received.
It’s always interesting when a review assignment hits your digital doormat for what you assume is a new title, and you discover it had another life previously. In this case, The Persistence – on paper is a title that’s absolutely my jam, being a sci-fi horror with elements of stealth and action – actually started out as a PSVR-only title back in 2018 from Liverpudlian developer Firesprite. Knowing this, I’m in an interesting position of judging it on its own merits while noting if the difference in interactivity aids or hinders the experience. I found the results quite surprising.
We find ourselves aboard the titular Persistence, a colonial starship that has been involved in a disastrous encounter with a black hole that wiped out the inhabitants. You’re the security officer, woken by the ship’s engineer Serena Karim. Maybe for the first time, possibly for the 50th: You’re a clone created by a “human printer”. Unfortunately, you are not the only one. The black hole caused a dark matter fritz and the colonists, having been reconstituted as all manner of monsters and mutants, now prowl the hallways and rooms (and occasionally vents, dammit) of the Persistence. Your task is to restart the ship’s drive to escape the black hole four decks up from the printer. This should be relatively simple given your clone status, if only the anomaly hadn’t caused the ship to shift shape and form with every firing of the printer that brings you back, meaning that your prior knowledge of the layout is redundant with every reconstitution. Good luck every one, ten, fifty or five hundred of you.
Breaking down the gameplay mechanics both on their own merits mixed with what’s been carried over from a different format is an interesting one. It has a relatively standard control scheme much like most first person stealth action games with your melee combat, crouching for stealth and vent traversal purposes, and shield parry mechanic. In addition to that, however, they have pulled over is a point-and-zap mechanic popular with VR games to help with traversal, and a hot grab system where simply locking the camera on a pickup will zap it into your inventory. There are options to manually grab, but I find it quite intuitive to quickly scan on the move. The zap movement has also been a welcome carry over, where it can be used quite tactfully in stealth for those important stealth kills. They work surprisingly well in a standard format, but it’s worth noting that there is a raft of options that can either tone down or ramp up control accessibility from the original version’s ease of interactivity. Control in general is really solid and slick, with smooth movement as well as responsive and chunky combat. Nailing a shield parry on a bad guy that has the chance to spin it to enable a sly stem harvest is incredibly satisfying.
Progression in rogue-lite games can be frustrating if the restarts are too punishing, or too game breaking if overly generous. The Persistence strikes a satisfying balance. Throughout your travels, you’ll be scavenging for various resources; health packs, stem cells for character upgrades, schematics for creating new items, fabricating chips for building them, and more. These are spendable in fabricating vend machines throughout the ship, allowing you to craft and upgrade your weaponry, from melee items like batons and knives, through all sorts of handguns, harpoon guns and a really sweet gravity gun for smashing enemies around the room. There are even throwables such as vortex grenades. Of course if you die, you lose these weapons, however, if you reach the corresponding vends, there your unlocked babies will be, ready for equipping, intact upgrades and all. Good luck reaching them, though.
What The Persistence nails really well is the ability to play the way you want once the upgrades kick in. Stealth is obviously recommended, and rewarded. Sneak up behind an enemy undetected and you can splice into their brain with your permanent Harvester gun, which harvests a generous batch of stem cells. However, if you’re willing to pass up that opportunity (and if you’ve upgraded your ammo capacity enough to not leave you in a pickle in a skirmish) it’s totally viable to go in guns-blazing, Dead Space style, and even more so once you go ham on the unlocks. Do bear in mind though, once your ammo is done your gun is removed as there are no ammo pickups, and the only option is to either find a new one very occasionally lying around or fabricate a new one, which will eat into your crafting chips more than you really should, so it’s best to weigh up the options.
One of my big draws to this one is the sci-fi survival horror hook, which I think it delivers incredibly well. Whether it is actually scary is up for debate, but what it does do is ramp up the tension impressively well. With well designed jump moments and a lot of heavy lifting being done by some great sound design, the unexpected aural jolts and moods create a solid atmosphere that really keeps you on your toes. The mood is set well by some very nice lighting effects that can turn a familiar-seeming room layout, with the game’s nice, clean set design, into something you really don’t want to traverse in the dark once the lights are out, even with a torch. I got some definite System Shock, Alien: Isolation and the aforementioned Dead Space vibes from this, although The Persistence doesn’t contain their more cinematically crafted setpieces.
It’s definitely quite a tough game, especially early on, and those enemies sure pack a wallop. Once the game progresses you will find yourself in siege type battles, so your gunplay chops will definitely be put to the test. It’s well worth mentioning that there’s multiple challenge and game modes once your initial 10+ hour playthrough is done, including a new game plus mode, survival mode in which your upgrades don’t carry over (NO THANK YOU) and the daunting Permadeath mode which unlocks if you complete a campaign in less than ten clone deaths. The gameplay variety combined with the shifting ship layouts promise a ton of replayability if you catch the game’s hook.
I’m surprised how much I enjoyed The Persistence. It is an incredibly well crafted rogue-lite stealth/action/horror title that feels slick and involving to play, and hits that ‘one more run’ sweet spot that not every title in the genre hits. With a number of modes to tailor your survival tastes, it should please fans of all rogue tastes. It’s a game that has transferred from its strong VR roots without sacrificing its core for somebody playing on a sofa. I look forward to seeing what Firesprite cooks up next. Just don’t make me wait two years to play it, those headsets give me motion sickness. Cheers!
