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.

This isn't the kind of game I usually play; I've never really enjoyed games where one of the main selling points is high difficulty, but from day one this game looked really interesting to me. It was the £70 price tag and the fact that I already knew in my heart I would be no good at it that made me put it off, but I managed to pick it up second-hand for £45 and... wow. I'm absolutely loving it so far !!

Am I getting my ass handed to me? Yes. But that's my business. I'm still having a really good time somehow lol. After playing Hades last year I've been wanting to try out more roguelite games because I found the whole system of jumping into the game over and over but improving each run and always having a unique experience with different builds etc. ridiculously fun and rewarding. That probably sounds like a really basic concept, but as someone who mostly plays more laid-back casual type games and tends to avoid a lot of fast-paced action games, the whole roguelite genre was pretty new to me! And it's just as fun in Returnal, I'm getting that same feeling of constantly learning and improving and getting new upgrades, it's so satisfying!

I'm around 5 hours in and still in the first biome, but the best part of this whole playthrough so far was fighting Phrike for the first time and nearly beating him first try. I didn't even do it and I'm still so proud of it somehow lol. Animal Crossing enthusiast nearly kills giant lanky laser shooting alien monster. That was pretty hype for me, especially with how much I'm struggling with some of the regular enemies in this biome; the horde rooms are destroying me more than anything else. I've only faced Phrike twice and the second time I lasted a solid 20 seconds, I ended up going in with a sliver of suit intergrity because I had a particularly stinky run and the regular enemies had already flattened me. Less fun that time lol.

But yeah, that first time I got him down to 1/3 health in his final phase..... Phrikes Phinal Phase if you will... was very cool. Very fun. Felt like Gamer™. I picked up his attack patterns really fast and I think that helped it not feel frustrating, because I knew exactly where I went wrong, and how to avoid it next time. Now it's just a matter of getting back there in a decent state and hopefully getting to biome 2 soon! I have no idea if I'll be able to finish this game if this is just the beginning, but I really want to try to get it done and that's exciting in and of itself!

((Sorry for being so long winded, I tried to figure out a way to put a 'read more' type thing on here but no luck! If anyone knows a way let me know 🙃))

As I have mentioned in previous updates, I think several things about this game are just incredible, but I think I’ve reached a limit where I just want to stop and watch someone else play it.

I’ve completed games that on paper I find just as hard or harder, but in those games, I felt like I was actually making progress and not wasting my time. Hades, for example, is filled with meaningful, highly visible progression systems and conversations after each death. Here, once I’ve explored the area a few times, there is no more sense of forward momentum as I try again and again. Such a small percentage of each failed run is spent on me actually practicing the part I find hard that it’s disheartening to have to give it another go. I’ve had the patience to overcome the skill gap in other games, but here, the experience has become punishing and stagnant in a way that others seemed to sidestep.

I’m honestly not sure if I can recommend this game or not, or how I’d even begin to rate it. It feels much more than just a 3/5, but do I “really like it”? Not sure!

Sprinting from the spawn point to the second boss of this game, grabbing a weapon and a couple health upgrades along the way, then dying to his tough last phase takes me just 15 minutes per attempt, which is a lot better than I expected from what people were saying about this game’s biomes taking hours. I don’t feel like I need the stat boosts I’d get from exploring if I barely even know what attacks the boss does — like I did on the first boss, if I just learn how it works one phase at a time, I think I can do it while barely getting hit.

This is the only way I can somewhat tolerate this game’s structure, since like a much higher stakes and more long-winded version of something like PUBG, the idea of spending an hour of character buildup per attempt only to die sounds awful to me. That run back to where you died is only interesting to me a handful of times per level, and unfortunately you have to do a lot more than that. Though the second level is much less interesting than the first, the gameplay itself still feels amazing, so looks like I’ll continue in this way and see how far I get.

I’ve played 3 hours of this now over the last couple nights, and have found it to be stunning to look at, really intriguing in all its story and gameplay mysteries, and incredibly fun to play. The weapons and melee attack feel outstanding. I love the enemies and level designs, especially how readable and cool they look.

I knew going in that I was signing up for a roguelite, a genre that I’ve slowly come to peace with just not being a fan of over the years. I haven’t necessarily got super frustrated yet or anything, but the game is looking to be not much of an exception to that distaste in how it’s designed overall.

Definitely shaping up to be a very conflicting but interesting experience. We’ll see how much my love for the fundamentals carries me through what they chose to make with them.

Just got my first crash in returnal tonight. It was my best run yet, and I had the right build to take out the first boss I think. I was just running around collecting some health and trying to find some way to get my weapon skill up one more level before I took him on. Then it just shut off. I was mostly having a bad time with the game tonight too because I feel like the rooms were just so unbalanced. Sometimes I’d run into like the second or third room of a run and just get ambushed with 15 normal enemies and 2 warpers and get smoked. Then sometimes I’d run through 10 rooms without seeing an enemy.

I think I still like it, but this definitely leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Also the pacers are kind of bad and injured as hell right now and it’s dampening my spirits. I guess I should just dedicate all my free time to Grouvee again.

This review kind of nails my issues with the game:

"This lack of variety in the style of play makes every run feel samey, and they begin to blur together. That leads to a roteness that made me want to put down the game when I was struggling with the difficulty. I like challenging games, but roguelites need to walk a fine line between familiarity and routine. Familiarity is the warm embrace of something that feels like home. Routine is boredom, and it is poison for a game like this."

Good article from Waypoint over at Vice:

Why ‘Save and Quit’ Might Not Be an Easy Change for ‘Returnal’

I am going to wade into the Retunral save debacle and discourse by suggesting one reason for the perceived backlash:

I think the fact that Returnal is a very flashy AAA seeming game with a AAA price-tag, and is one of the only PS5 exclusives available this spring has meant that the game has attracted a lot players who may be brand new to the roguelike genre. If that's true it also means it's possible that some of these players have expectations going into Returnal that are based on other AAA experiences rather than experiences with roguelikes. If so that could explain why some players are bemoaning the absence of a save system, something that is not always common in roguelikes. I also think there is a significant tendency to compare Returnal to Hades because Hades also managed mainstream market penetration, and Hades set a precedence for saving between each chamber. I do think, from what I read about Returnal, that Hades and Returnal are very different beasts and the comparison might not be that apt.

I do look forward to eventually taking a swing at Returnal.

Just read a review that said Returnal “makes Doom Eternal seem like Baby’s First Shooter.”

I see that the game is getting mostly very positive reviews. Even those mildly critical of the game, including the review I quote above, seem critical of the decision to go down the Roguelike path, something I think a few reviewers thought might put people off Returnal.

I want to pick it up but I know if I do that now it will sit on my backlog until after I play ME: Legendary Edition and R&C: Rift Apart. There's also the fact that it is apparently best played with 3D audio, and I am still waiting to pick up the Steelseries Actis 7p which supports Sony's Tempest audio. So I think I'm sitting this one out until later.

I hope it does well for Housemarque because it does look very compelling.