Bullet-dodging PlayStation shooter Saros today welcomed a significant update from Zenith, which has the dual purpose of making the game both more accessible for those who haven’t played it (or have trouble getting to it) and more replayable for those who have.
The main additions are a boss-rush quickfire mode, a New Game Plus mode, a whole new layer of modifiers to make runs easier and harder and – very attractively – a slow motion option to slow down the game.
The Slow Game Speed option may vary depending on preference and can be activated manually or automatically. You choose how much this slows down the game; a video of it makes it look a lot like slow motion in many other games, providing crucial thinking time in Saros that you’d otherwise struggle to get.
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Developer Housemarque said in a blog post that it is “always cautious” about dimming its games. “While we realize our games can seem intimidating at first, we didn’t want to compromise Saros’ combat system by reducing the projectiles that put the ‘ball’ into the ‘ball ballet,'” he said. Hence the new slow game speed.
New game modifiers allow you to adjust the difficulty depending on the type of challenge you’re looking for. If you want a little help, you can apply 10 new protection modifiers. One example given was that of a melee corruption buff, which unleashes the game’s deadly corruption that stacks on you for massive melee damage.
Meanwhile, if you want to make the game more difficult, there are Trial modifiers. One example given was that of Hostile Regeneration, which allows crowd-controlled enemies to quickly regain health unless you approach melee and finish them off with a strike.
The New Game Plus mode is called Eclipse Layers and activates after you’ve completed the game. Each new Eclipse Layer seemingly represents a more intense version of the game with altered rules, and each has various prerequisites required to unlock it; some require a certain number of modifiers to be effective, for example.
Meanwhile, Arjun now wears a Solar Crown during Eclipse Layers – and his armor glows gold – which grows depending on the modifiers you have in play. The crown is also essential for seeing 12 new story visions that Housemarque has added to the game for you to find.
Finally, Overlord Rush is the boss-rush mode designed to be played in 10-minute bursts, giving you a “set” of the game’s bosses to fight. A final set – Totality, as it’s called – lets you take on all eight Overlords in a single continuous gauntlet.
Saros was released in April on PS5 and was well reviewed, although it got off to a slow start in terms of sales, especially compared to its predecessor, Returnal. Housemarque doesn’t seem worried, however, saying that “this is just the beginning of the discussion”, that there is much to “edit and add” and that work will continue for “some time”. This Zenith update is likely an important part of that work.
Gn tech
