The Persistence is a great entry into the survival horror genre, and I feel that it is best enjoyed in the original VR format. For those entering on Xbox side of this game, this is definitely one I would pick up and take in, even though you won’t get that same immersive VR experience from it. The game still offers a great story and an insane amount of difficulty, which will challenge most experienced players. While it is rather short, the addition of ever-changing maps does add to the ‘freshness’ of the short game, as no playthrough will be the same. Definitely worth a go.
Nothing goes together better than survival and horror, but what happens when you add a bit of stealth? You get to go even further into your survival instincts, which is where we get The Persistence from developers Firesprite.
The game started as a VR port from 2018 and launched exclusively on the PSVR system. It was nicely translated from VR to Xbox, and while I don’t usually enjoy ported games because they always seem to be lacking something that their predecessors did extremely well or something that a specific console cannot do, especially from VR to regular console experience, I do feel like The Persistence ported well into a non-VR environment. That said, as much as I enjoy the console port, a good pair of studio-grade headphones do not give it the full immersive tension that The Persistence might have had in VR.
Anyway, let’s get on with the review.
Set in the year 2521, you are the sole survivor of a horrendous accident which has caused your ship, The Persistence, to use its cloning device to make terrifying mutants, who simply have one goal — to kill you. Armed with only your trusty stem cell harvester. The Stem Cell Harvester is probably one of the coolest features because when I first got it, I thought it was a nail gun that you would use to fight back against enemies. Let me tell you I was very wrong this is a much cooler mechanic because it is a drill that goes into the backs of enemy’s skulls to harvest their cells. Which you then use these harvested cells for your upgrades or even to change whose body you end up inhabiting when you respawn in order to change it up and get different bonuses as a player which really can be a game-changer for you. Along with you stem cell harvester you as the player must then use your stealth abilities to navigate the ever-changing map of the ship, this adds to the difficulty of the game because you will never see the same ship loadout twice and its beneficiary to explore as much as possible to grab bypass cards to other levels and additional upgrade tokens to unlock more weapons and armor abilities as time goes on. Along the way, you will find different tokens that will allow you to craft different weapons and armor suits to aid you on your quest. Each level adds more and more different types of enemies from your basic baddies, to ones that crawl and go for the ankles, to hulking behemoths that handle fire as shown below. Their sole purpose is to kill you. When you die, then you must go back to the start, respawn, and begin all over again, as everything, including enemies, will respawn with you. This includes whole new challenges and all-new monsters.
It’s 2020 and we are currently in month two of quarantine for fear a pandemic and what I was given was the opportunity to play this The Persistence I can honestly say that I was very excited. I personally rather enjoy horror-Survival games. With survival horror, there is usually a bit of stealth involved, which is a driving gameplay design for The Persistence, as it requires it and your patience to do it right. As mentioned earlier, The Persistence has an ever-changing map. I probably respawned several dozen times and never saw the exact same populated map in level one, or with the proceeding levels, which added a layer of frustration to the game. Even though you had a map accessible at all times, and even key cards randomly placed down dark hallways that granted you access to different parts of the ship, you still had to go the same path every time you restarted. Literally, the name of the game represented the difficulty of it, which would test you and frustrate you as a player.
Usually, when I get frustrated with a game, I take a break, get some fresh air, maybe go hang with some friends and come back to it. The current situation of the world doesn’t allow for all of that, which just keeps the frustration brewing during gameplay. Does that add to the game or subtract from it? Maybe it adds to the design of it right now, as I’m the type of reviewer that doesn’t like to leave a game unsolved.
Other gameplay design elements do help to stem the frustration of it. The Persistence does offer an upgrade system, which helps to push the player further into the game while making respawns easier to swallow. One of the first things to upgrade, and this was a priority for me, was my health and my melee damage output. Not only does the monster dish out a lot of damage, but they can also take it as well even the smaller of the monster, so upgrading both categories is a good way to ease the game’s frustration a bit. One of the coolest features I found as I progressed was the ability to harvest the stem cells of deceased crew members, which meant when you respawn you could come back as that crew member. This was a helpful feature because they usually came with different benefits such as a 25% armory discount or my personal favorite a 50% harvest rate. This would allow me to acquire more stem cells to level up my personal stats even quicker to make it a little easier. It was certainly one of the cooler features of the game, incredibly unique.
Honestly, I have never seen a game like this and I found it increasingly tempting to access their assist mode, which would give you the ability to switch the speed and hit points that monster can cause on the player. The mode also allowed for infinite teleports which means that a player is no longer tied down to the amount of dark matter needed to teleport which allows them to go quickly pass enemies so as to not get killed in their search. For people with no experience in stealth games or the level of difficulty in this game, I would highly recommend this on your first playthrough just to get a feel for the controls. It’s like a tutorial without it being a tutorial. One of the bigger reasons to start out on assist is that The Persistence starts you out on an insane difficulty level, so getting frustrated fast will keep you from seeing the bigger picture of the game and enjoying it. It would also make it easier to get used to the gameplay along with the story. Related to the story, it’s short, which can be disappointing or a blessing, depending on your level of frustration. For me, the story still has a lot of legs to it and is something I would like to see them expand on with a sequel or even a DLC. I really want to see where the developers take this.
The Persistence is a great entry into the survival horror genre, and I feel that it is best enjoyed in the original VR format. For those entering on Xbox side of this game, this is definitely one I would pick up and take in, even though you won’t get that same immersive VR experience from it. The game still offers a great story and an insane amount of difficulty, which will challenge most experienced players. While it is rather short, the addition of ever-changing maps does add to the ‘freshness’ of the short game, as no playthrough will be the same. Definitely worth a go.
