Firewall Ultra

Firewall Ultra
Information
VR/AR	Virtual Reality
Developer	First Contact Entertainment
Publisher	Sony Interactive Entertainment
Platform	PlayStation VR2
Device	PlayStation VR2
Operating System	PlayStation 5
Type	Game
Genre	Tactical first-person shooter
Input Device	PlayStation VR2 Sense controllers
Play Area	Seated, standing
Game Mode	Online multiplayer (PvP), co-op (PvE)
Release Date	August 24, 2023
Price	US $39.99 (Standard); US $59.99 (Deluxe)
App Store	PlayStation Store

See also: VR Apps and VR Games

Firewall Ultra is a tactical first-person shooter developed by First Contact Entertainment and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment exclusively for the PlayStation VR2 headset on PlayStation 5. It released on August 24, 2023, as a sequel to Firewall: Zero Hour (2018) and was built on Unreal Engine 5, making it one of the first virtual reality titles to ship on that engine.

The game pits squads of contractors against each other in player-versus-player matches or against AI opponents in a cooperative player-versus-environment mode. It made use of PlayStation VR2 hardware features such as eye tracking, foveated rendering, and the adaptive triggers and haptics of the controllers. Critical reception was mixed, and the game struggled commercially. First Contact Entertainment closed in December 2023, less than four months after launch, and Sony scheduled the game's online servers, which are required to play it, to shut down on September 17, 2026.

Gameplay

Firewall Ultra is an online tactical shooter in which players take the role of hired contractors. The core competitive mode places two squads of up to four players against each other, with one team attacking to retrieve data from a laptop and the other defending it, played in a best-of-three round structure. A separate cooperative mode named Exfil has up to four players take on AI opponents across the game's maps.

In Exfil, squads hack one of two access points to reveal the location of a laptop, secure the objective, and then extract through an evacuation zone. Players can approach maps with stealth, by splitting up to cover ground, or aggressively. AI enemies patrol at the start of a match and, once they detect the squad, call in reinforcements and use cover, flanking, and gadgets such as grenades, traps, C4, and door breaches. Each contractor is a distinct character with a unique passive ability; for example, the operative Havoc has a "Conditioned" skill that increases his resistance to bullet damage and deploys a mine when he is eliminated.

The game uses the PlayStation VR2 headset's eye tracking for interactions such as weapon swapping and heads-up display indicators, alongside foveated rendering for performance. The PlayStation VR2 Sense controllers provide haptic feedback and adaptive trigger resistance tied to in-game weapons. First Contact Entertainment ran the multiplayer on dedicated servers rather than peer-to-peer connections, in response to feedback on the original game.

Development

First Contact Entertainment, a studio founded in 2016 and based in Westlake Village, California, had previously developed Firewall: Zero Hour (2018) for the original PlayStation VR and the multiplayer shooter Solaris Offworld Combat. The studio revealed Firewall Ultra on September 6, 2022, framing it as a sequel set five years after Firewall: Zero Hour that would carry over and upgrade content from the first game while adding new contractors and locations.

Firewall Ultra was built in Unreal Engine 5 and was among the first virtual reality games to use the engine. In a developer interview published by Epic Games, First Contact Entertainment said it rebuilt the game's visual approach around detailed real-time lighting and refined the gameplay around PlayStation VR2 hardware, with what it described as extensive use of eye tracking, sometimes in subtle ways, to add detail and control to interactions. The studio described the game as a live-service title intended to receive ongoing updates with new maps, weapons, and contractors, and redesigns of locations such as the shooting range and safehouse.

Release

Firewall Ultra launched on August 24, 2023, exclusively for the PlayStation VR2. It was sold in a Standard Edition and a Deluxe Edition, the latter adding extra contractors, alternate outfits, weapon camouflages, and a post-launch Operation Pass. The game requires an online connection to play, including for its cooperative content.

Platform	Region	Date
PlayStation VR2 (announced)	Worldwide	September 6, 2022
PlayStation VR2 (released)	Worldwide	August 24, 2023
Server shutdown (delisted, game unplayable)	Worldwide	September 17, 2026

Reception

Firewall Ultra received mixed reviews. The review aggregator Metacritic reported a score of 62 out of 100, and OpenCritic rated it 65 with a "Weak" rating, noting it was recommended by 6 percent of critics.

Push Square scored the game 5 out of 10, praising its lighting and visual fidelity and calling full-squad play enjoyable with friends, but criticising the reliance on button prompts for actions such as opening doors, reloading, and melee, which the reviewer said hurt immersion and made the shooter feel partly on-rails. The review also faulted limited launch content, short matches, lengthy matchmaking, and slow progression. Common criticisms across outlets included thin launch content, progression and currency systems weighted toward microtransactions, and matchmaking problems, while reviewers credited the gunplay and the game's technical performance on PlayStation VR2.

Shutdown

First Contact Entertainment announced on December 22, 2023, less than four months after the game's release, that it would close by the end of the year after nearly eight years of operation. The studio said "the lack of support for VR within the industry has eventually taken its toll," and that as a AAA VR developer it was "just not able to justify the expense needed going forward."

In early 2026, Sony delisted Firewall Ultra from the PlayStation Store and confirmed, by adding an update to the original August 2023 launch blog post, that the game's online services would be terminated on September 17, 2026, at 10:00 a.m. PDT. Because the game has no offline mode and depends on online servers, it becomes unplayable in any capacity after that date.