The game takes place on a doomed deep space colony starship called The Persistence, 500 years in the future. The station has been caught in the inescapable pull of a black hole and begun to malfunction, becoming overrun with mutated crewmembers out for murder. The player, in the role of security officer Zimri Elder, must stealth their way through The Persistence to repair failing systems and save the ship. Along the way, they will gain new abilities and build an arsenal of weapons to succeed in their mission.
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PlayStation Plus, the monthly subscription service that gives members free access to PlayStation titles, tends to include a VR game every few months. For PS Plus in November 2021, that VR title will be The Persistence. Luckily for PS Plus subscribers, Firesprite’s roguelike happens to also have a non-VR option. The game will offer 4K HD gameplay at 60 fps, allowing even those who can’t or don’t enjoy VR to experience the terror of being stranded on a ship filled with mutants in deep space.
The version of The Persistence coming to PS Plus in November is the Complete Edition, which has had a number of features added since the game originally launched for PS4 in 2018. Besides adding non-VR options, there is now Campaign+, as well as a few new game modes. The Complete Edition of Firesprite’s The Persistence also features enhanced lighting, motion blur, chromatic aberration, and particle effects so that even those playing on a flat screen can be immersed in the atmospheric horror.
Some of the gameplay elements of The Persistence will call to mind Housemarque’s third-person roguelike shooter Returnal. The malfunctioning spaceship has a self-configuring macrostructure that has begun to alter the internal architecture of The Persistence. Every time Zimri Elder fails in his mission and dies, his consciousness will be uploaded into a new host body and he will set out again in a ship whose layout is completely different from before. Players will also be able to resequence Zimri’s DNA in order to gain new abilities or clone crew members who possess skills that Zimri doesn’t have.
The Persistence is available on PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.
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