I’M DEAD. AGAIN.
As a rather early adopter of PlayStation VR, I have seen The Persistence on store shelves, but I was never really sure what it was. I’m surprised to say it’s a first person rogue-light horror stealth game. It takes place inside a spaceship called The Persistence, which is pretty witty because persistence is the main way one wins in a rogue-light.
The main story is fine. The Persistence went off course and now it is near a black holethat is causing issues with the ship, which is why the ship is constantly changing shape (explaining the randomization). The main goal is to repair the ship and get to safety. By far the more interesting aspect is that the main character is dead. Every part of this game is played in a genetic clone that has all the memories of their old body as well as every clone that’s died previously. I like the fact that there is a story reason as to why I get to keep going into the spaceship. Eventually other bodies get unlocked that have their own stat bonuses as well. That idea is far more interesting to me than saving a spaceship.
PLATFORMS: PS4, XB1, PC, SWITCH
MSRP: $29.99
PRICE I’D PAY: $29.99
Monsters that roam the halls are also clones, but are half finished in terms of being regular people. In fact, there are blind enemies who only have half a head. There’s some really neat enemy designs that require different approaches. Many enemies can be sneaked up on to instant kill and get DNA. Sometimes that isn’t an option though, and timing the shield is necessary to stagger the enemy and then melee them. Sometimes that shield doesn’t work very well and using the teleport dash is necessary to avoid being hit. I’m impressed with how many options there are to approach combat.
A big portion of that combat is weapons, which can be found and bought from terminals. There areso many options. There’s plenty of guns, grenades and melee weapons that work as expected, but there is one experimental weapon that instant kills enemies by dashing/teleporting into them and I found my weapon of choice. I also really like the spear gun that silently kills enemies. Everything is so useful though that I find use in everything dropped or found.
There are multiple types of currencies in the game that carry over after death (this game isn’t horribly punishing upon death, only losing what weapons that clone was carrying). The most uncommon are tokens that unlock weapons and upgrades, but once upgrades and weapons are unlocked, they are unlocked forever. It takes another currency to fabricate weapons from vendors in the levels and new equipment from the main hub.This the most important currency because once I found out how powerful the teleport instant kill weapon was I basically wanted to use that for any enemy I couldn’t surprise (although hitting enemies with a lance to the face was always funny as well). Lastly is DNA, whichwas used to upgrade stats or print a body other than the main character. It seemed like a lot at first and I was irritated when I lost all my stuff that I had printed, but self-judgment on each run is important to know whether purchasing items is worthwhile.
Technically the game is great. There are some quirks being adapted from VR to just standard gameplay, the main being that objects are interacted with by just looking at them for a set amount of time. Walking speed is a little slow and I assume that is also for VR to reduce motion sickness, but it’s something I got used to. After adjusting the look sensitivity to be more sensitive (which I recommend to everyone) I had very little issue playing the game. The look of the game is great, especially in the dark sections where monstrous clones are running around and there’s very little ambient light outside of the flashlight. Pitstop Productions nailed the audio in this game because good lord I was having anxiety from hearing noises that I thought were enemies crawling around. There’s a detective vision-like ability that only briefly shows enemies in an orange glow and every time some ambient clang happens I hit the button and look for enemies. It’s so well done. The voice acting on the other hand is okay. It’s nothing special, but it is by no means bad, and with the amount of dialog that occurs it’s by no means annoying at any point.
After playing The Persistence on Xbox One I’m sort of disappointed I skipped it on PlayStation VR. The game is really well done and is built in a way that every small step helps; even if I die on a level, as long as I have collected something my time is not wasted. I’m fairly open that horror games are sort of a new passion of mine and I really liked the atmosphere in this game and a big part of that is how good the enemy AI is. There is a lot to like in this game as long as randomized gameplay (rogue light elements) are not a turn off. The Persistence is definitely one of the best rogue light experiences I have played in quite some time and I will likely go back and try the VR origins of this title.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
