Firewall Zero Hour (2018), the tactical team shooter from ROM: Extraction (2016) developers First Contact Entertainment, has apparently celebrated some serious notoriety since it launched late last month on PlayStation VR; Sony has ranked it the top most downloaded PSVR game of August.
What’s more, Firewall Zero Hour launched on August 28th, giving it only four days to vault to the top spot, surpassing long-time fan favorites Job Simulator (2016), SUPERHOT VR (2016), and Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality (2017) to name a few.
Notably, the only other game to launch in August was Survios’ Electronauts (2018), a supremely fun VR DJ’ing tool that lets you mix samples and create your own tracks without the fuss of actually being able to hit a steady beat. Launched on August 7th across PSVR, HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, the funky music-maker hasn’t appeared to have resonated with PSVR users with the same gusto as Firewall Zero Hour.
Here’s the full list below:
Firewall Zero Hour has been heavily featured by Sony since it was announced back at E3 2018, as it’s had significant air time on the company’s official PlayStation YouTube channel, detailing everything from how to properly defend and attack in the game, to hype-filled dev interviews overlayed with epic music. It’s also been available for public demo at some of the biggest gaming events, including E3 and Gamescom.
A dedicated PS Aim hardware bundle, priced at a not-so-intolerable $80—a mere $40 more than the game itself—might have had something to do with it too. Oh, and it’s a pretty great game too.
In our review, we gave Firewall Zero Hour a strong [7.9/10] for its deep focus on tactical gunplay, which we said “works especially well with VR’s heightened immersion.” Here’s a quick summary of what makes it great, and sometimes a little less great according to Road to VR’s Ben Lang.
“To succeed you’ll need to be able to do more than just aim—you’ll have to communicate and strategize with your team. With strong gunplay, randomized objective locations, and unlocks to chase, Firewall Zero Hour has a distinct allure for those looking for FPS immersion. That said, match pacing needs to be reworked to provide more gameplay with less downtime, locomotion is clunky at times, the post-death camera system feels unbalanced, and item unlocks won’t come without significant grinding.”
We expect it to have some serious staying power on the charts, so we’ll be looking forward to September’s list to see just how it fares. In the meantime, check out the full review here to learn more about what makes Firewall tick.
