Returnal (2021)

Gameplay: 8.5/10

Presentation: 8.5/10

Story: 6/10

Overall Score: 7.6/10

Gameplay= Mechanics, gameplay options (freedom), repetition, goals, difficulty

Story= plot, engagement, characters, world-building

Presentation= graphics, animation, environment/character design, Art direction, Script, music

The game has a difficult start, but if you can get your way past the first 2 bosses you will be on track to a much easier playthrough. Weapon traits and special tools will stay permanent with you upon death, but that is about the only thing that does. Skill and learning enemy attack patterns come with repetition, but once you know them you will be hard-pressed to die very often outside of a boss fight after that. It is a very fast-paced and fun take on the shooter genre.

The story is very interpretive and all the elements to have an understanding of the story are there for you. That said, you don't really end the game (regular or true ending) feeling like the plot is understood fully or resolved. Which I guess plays into the title. Returnally incomplete story.

On the presentation side the sound design is where it is at. The very atmospheric sounds of this wild alien world. There are even story elements that are blended into the sound design which upon repetition get to be a bit bothersome, but are interesting to notice at first. The visual presentation was also great. Each biome was unique even if some of the room layouts were copies it played into the story well and still made the levels unique. It was even fun sometimes to notice that the room you were in is one reskinned and design slightly differently from one in another part of the game.

I am only about 1-2 hours in but I love the vibe and the mood this game puts down. The game has you discover basically everything on your way with very little explained in the opening cutscene.

Ultimately I don’t know that I have the skill and persistence to make it through all the way but I hope I can make enough progress a bit in uncovering more of the mystery.

It feels especially good to down two bosses in two days, especially after returning to play yesterday for the first time in a few weeks thanks to FH5.

Now it’s off to The Fractured Wastes. I’m trying to avoid guides so that I can avoid knowing how far into the game I am.

Update: a couple runs into The Fractured Wastes and it feels like Returnal put it's big-kid pants on. Some of these new enemies are relentless, including an upgrade to my least favourite enemy from The Crimson Wastes, The Severed and these little flying robot jerks I hated from The Citadel. It's amazing what a dumb little drone can do when there's eight of them attacking you while you're also trying to fight off multiple Severed.

I'm struggling with Returnal on two fronts.

First, the legibility of the world felt terrific at first but I'm now struggling to see things that should be obvious (enemies, ramps, power-ups, some UI text, etc.). I've tried changing visual settings, adjusting lights to eliminate all glare on the screen, put a chair smack in the middle of the room staring directly at it. But with all that, I still feel disconnected. The sound is fairly immersive, but visually I'm pining to play in VR. Even if it was still in 3rd person, I feel like a wider FOV and the stereoscopic depth would help me track things better. I haven't struggled with this before, so I'm not sure if it's the fact I'm now 36 and things are getting harder for me or something else. I'm going to press on but I was not expecting to feel this.

Second, I'm absolutely swimming in game mechanics I do not yet understand them. Once I've overcome this obstacle, I'll likely reminisce on how fun it was to learn how to effectively manage sub systems, min/max stats, and improve my chances against the RNG gods. But now, I'm laying down in a...machine?...thing?...and it takes most of my health and does...something? And then I die and the game invites me to stop playing, so I do.

Game crashed on me today when I had a really solid run going into biome 6. I heard this game had some issues with crashes when it first launched but I know there's been a few patches since then, and in my roughly 40 hours of playing this is the first major issue I've run into but... it still sucks lol. This was the first really promising run I'd had in a while, I had some really good artefacts/parasites and managed to find a pretty tasty hollowseeker that was melting most enemies, but none of that really matters if the game just decides to say "no :)" as it turns out.

I'm still determined to beat this game so I'm definitely gonna jump back in once I stop crying about losing this run lol, but there is nothing more frustrating than a game crashing on you out of nowhere- especially in a game like this where you lose a couple hours of gameplay because of it and essentially have to start from scratch on a new run. It's just once a game crashes like that it'll stay in the back of my mind and I'll worry about it crashing again and it really puts me off. Like imagine that happening during the final phase of the final boss. I don't think I would recover from that I would simply lie down and give up.

But that didn't happen, and I'm obviously gonna go play it again; I just wanted to sit here and grump about it for a minute I guess 😅

haha eldritch nightmare go brrr

I don't think I'm gonna last too long in biome 2 after this fight, but at this point I'm just happy to be here :') I hope I can start finding some new weapons now because getting the same 3 on loop is starting to wear thin lol. I'll soon find out I guess, I'm excited to see what's next!