Returnal Full Game Review
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It's hard to go back. A pop-up window tells you that before you start the game, but that doesn't mean you'll be ready. Returnal is a blockbuster third-person shooter, but developer Housemarque put roguelike features like changing levels and permanent death into it. What makes Returnal hard isn't just that it's a "difficult" roguelike and so unpredictable.
Returnal is a game with many dangerous situations that can distinguish between a good run and a hard one. Players are also at the mercy of random generations regarding the loot they may or may not get. A lucky run with excellent loot can distinguish between success and failure. Especially since you don't get many permanent upgrades between runs (especially in the first of the game's six biomes), it can make it feel like you're grinding and starting over simultaneously.
But each death in Returnal, and you will die a lot, isn't completely pointless because it reveals more of the story, reveals secrets you might have missed before, and sometimes gives you better loot (if you're lucky). The environment is constantly changing, which keeps things interesting. Even after you've died 20 times, There's a chance that you'll stumble into a room you've never been in before & might never find again.
Your preferred method of playing video games will determine whether or not you enjoy Returnal's gameplay, but no one can deny how amazing it is. The subtle use of the DualSense PS5 controller's haptic feedback and adaptive triggers, Sony 3D audio technology, and the mesmerizing environment make this one of the most immersive games we've played, even without VR. The game's strange and exciting story gets much depth from this, and Returnal earns its place as a true next-generation PS5 exclusive.
Returnal tells the tale of a female space pilot named Selene, whose ship, Helios, is involved in a collision with an unknown planet, Atropos. However, Atropos is caught in an endless cycle of time. It means that every time Selene dies, which will happen often, she starts a new life cycle at the site of the crash. Selene goes to Atropos in a high-tech suit to fight her way across the planet and break the loop, which will let her get away.
But Selene doesn't just have to repeatedly work her way through the same map. Instead, the world changes with each reset. Each of the six biomes features a distinctive landscape, from the open plains of a desert to the decaying remnants of a once-thriving forest, such as desert plains or ancient forest ruins. Each biome is made up of "rooms," which are similar to dungeons. But when the cycle starts over, the order of these rooms changes, and sometimes you can't go back to a room you were in before. The enemies in those rooms also change, which keeps you on your toes because you never know which room you'll walk into next or what's in it.
Since you die a lot in Returnal, it's an excellent way to keep each run fresh. In some cases, Resetting the cycle also allows Selene to learn parts of the story that she may have previously been unaware of, like the Scout logs she made before, which give hints about the (exciting but strange) story. Even if you are confident that you have learned everything there is to know about a particular biome and that there is always more to learn, you might be wrong. After almost 20 hours of playing the Returnal game, we found a room with a log we had never seen before, even though we had been through the biome many times. On other occasions, we found walls and gates that could be broken down and held secrets we had previously missed. On rare occasions, we found that the perfectly preserved 20th-century house that sits in the ruins of one room is reachable.
This house is essential to the story of Returnal. Each time the porch light flickers on, Selene can get in. It lets her discover a piece of the story that may explain why she landed on Atropos and why a mysterious astronaut figure is haunting her. There are six house sequences, one for each of the six biomes in Returnal. Even though these scenes are strange and hard to understand at first, as you unlock more, you start to understand the psychological thriller at the heart of Returnal.
Returnal gives you small bits of the story on purpose between the scout logs and the house sequences. It's a great way to keep you playing when you struggle to get to the next biome. It gives you just enough to let you know that Selene's adventure isn't what it seems at first, but you have to work to find out what that is.
Selene starts each cycle with only a low-powered pistol and a melee blade. It would be best to find weapon proficiency upgrades that let her use higher-level weapons as you play. As you unlock more biomes, you'll be greeted by a high-proficiency upgrade when you return to them after a cycle reset. It means you don't have to start over with your weapon proficiency in that biome.
Take, for instance, the time when we got killed in biome three and had to begin again from the crash location., we used the shortcut in biome one to go straight to biome three. At the beginning of biome three, there was an upgrade to our weapon proficiency that let us use weapons at a higher level right away, so we didn't have to build up that proficiency again. But you should still upgrade as much as possible before you get there.
Returnal will have 10 base weapons, over 90 weapon attributes (each with three levels), and 10 alternative fires, as revealed by Housemarque. Most of the time, these weapons look like standard weapons in the game, like a pistol, shotgun, rocket launcher, assault rifle, and melee blade. But these primary weapons have different features that make them suitable for different play styles and enemies. For example, you could be looking at two Spitmaw Blasters, one of which makes acid pools and the other shoots shells that explode. As you play, you'll unlock new weapon traits and later be able to add more. You'll also be able to get weapons with a higher level.
Returnal uses the DualSense controller's adaptive triggers, which let you hold down the left trigger halfway for a focus shot or for an alt-fire (more powerful) shot. It makes all the weapons feel smooth and weighty. This use adds depth to combat by making you think about how your trigger finger moves and letting you immediately feel the effect of a powerful shot. It's important to know that you can turn this off if you want to.
We found that it took a lot of trial and error to figure out what kind of weapon worked best for us. It also depends on what type of enemy you're fighting. Returnal's rooms are often a bullet frenzy, especially as you progress. You'll use your gun, melee weapon, and dash to fight enemies. Like tentacle-covered aliens and legless exploding robots, and that's not even counting the bosses, who have different ways of fighting that will likely find a weakness in the way you play at some point.
Firefights are intense, and while you can usually avoid them (except in "lockdown" rooms, where all the doors are locked), it's worth taking advantage of the resources and loot that enemies drop when they die. Pro tip: sprinting to a boss fight doesn't always help.
With each reset, enemies get more hostile, making these fights even more dangerous. But as time passes, you learn to spot an enemy's "tell" before it attacks, making these fights more like a dance. We found that fighting non-boss enemies can get dull, especially when you repeatedly run through the same biome.
Along with weapons, artifacts are some of the essential things in Returnal. Artifacts give Selene upgrades, like making her melee attacks do more damage or giving her more protection. Even though artifacts are beneficial, most of them don't last from run to run, and which ones you get again depends on chance. You lose all the artifacts and weapons you've collected in that cycle if you die. In Returnal, there aren't nearly enough permanent upgrades, which can make moving forward feel like a chore.
A little bit of flexibility could have helped a lot in this case. It feels great when you beat a demanding boss, but when you die again, you find out that you lost all the good stuff you got from them.
As you play the game and beat more bosses, you get access to more permanent tech and upgrades, making it a little easier to move through biomes. But to get there, you must do your best with what you have.
It is best to get as many artifacts as possible on your run. Some are made with a fabricator. Fabricators take Obolites, a glowing yellow resource you can find in the game, and turn them into certain artifacts. A Fabricator's authentic artifacts can change with each run, but broken Fabricators make random artifacts. You can get Obolites by killing enemies and sometimes from yellow-eyed statues or containers.
Harvesting obsoletes and loot is a part of Returnal that almost makes you go through each biome on your way to your goal. It is because each biome has a limited number of abilities to collect. Skills are beneficial because they let you buy artifacts from Fabricators instead of randomly getting them.
Returnal has a lot of dangerous situations. For example, you can use a rarer resource called Ether to get artifacts from an alien device called the Cthonos at Selene's crash site. You put a certain amount of Ether into the Cthonos and get a random artifact in return, making that artifact available for future cycles.
Ether is very useful for several other things as well. You can instead use it to clean containers, keys, or health resin that are infected with Malignancy and could cause your suit to break if they aren't cleaned. By using the Ether to get rid of the Malignancy, Selene is safe to pick up or open these things. But if you don't clean these items, there's a chance (ranging from low to high) that you'll get a suit malfunction when you open or pick up an item, even if you don't do anything else. You can fix these malfunctions by doing certain things. It's hard to know if using your Ether or even taking a chance on a glitch will be worth it. It is especially true with containers containing great loot or nothing.
Ether can also be used to look for loot on the bodies of other scouts who have died (if online play is turned on). You can also try to get Ether by getting revenge on a fallen scout, which is a bit riskier. When you avenge a scout, a big enemy will appear, and you'll need to kill it to get your Ether reward. Sometimes, the dead scout will turn into a parasitic monster that needs to be killed. Sorry, buddy.
Ether is a scarce resource, so it's up to the players to determine which scenario will most likely pay off in the long run. It isn't always easy when you're in a tight spot.
Even riskier is picking up a Parasite, which gives Selene both a buff and a de-buff, or positive and negative effects. For example, you might get more power from your weapons if you stand still but not if you move. Risk and reward are always being weighed, and being too greedy can sometimes hurt you in the long run.
The world of Returnal is easy to get around in, which makes something that could be hard a lot easier. A map helps you keep track of which rooms you've been in and shows you which rooms you're about to enter are likely to have been looted and which are main entrances to the goal (highlighted in orange on the map). It is a valuable feature, especially as you unlock more biomes because it lets you quickly move through the biomes that stand between you and the biome (and goal) you need to get. It does this by pointing out shortcuts that make the journey easier in later biomes.
Returnal's cycle doesn't start over from the most recently unlocked biome, which was frustrating in the first two biomes. Instead, you start over at the crash site and go through all the previously unlocked biomes to get back to where you died. So, if we passed in the middle of the second biome, we would start over at the place where we crashed and have to go through biome one to get to biome two.
We can promise you that this isn't true for every biome, which might put some players off. As more biomes are unlocked, it becomes easier to get to your most recently opened biome through technology and story progression. However, the ease with which you can use shortcuts still depends on how packed the room with the shortcut is to you in the next cycle.
But even after you find these shortcuts, runs are still long. Most of the time, players must finish the biome they reset from and the one they try to spend on each run. In some cases, this is helpful because it lets you pick up some extra gear or health. However, most of the time, it's just a bother that wastes your time more than anything else. And because enemies get more hostile with each cycle, you may find that you can't even get to where you need to be.
Returnal is a PS5-only game, which makes sense. Even though PS4 owners will want to play Sony's upcoming first-party match, we don't think it would have worked on last-gen hardware.
Since the game is based on constantly dying and coming back to life, the super-fast SSD in the PS5 makes this process much less frustrating than it could have been on the PS4. The loading times are rapid, and the changes are smooth, making you more likely to return for more.
Returnal is also a great way to show off PS5 technology. The haptic feedback from DualSense isn't too loud or distracting. It reacts gently to what's happening on-screen, which doesn't take your attention away but makes the experience better. Returnal's world comes to life when you play with headphones supporting PS5 3D spatial audio. You can hear the creatures of the world slithering in the background, the rumble of a storm in the distance, and raindrops falling on Selene's helmet.
All of this immersion made us feel a little sick at times. However, Housemarque has several options to make the game easier to use, such as removing motion blur and making changes for people who are colorblind, among other things.
Returnal is an excellent game for people who like to be challenged but also want something more. It's a risky game where the difficulty level is more about how unpredictable it is than how hard the enemies are. When Returnal is hard, it's very hard, and we often get stuck for hours at specific points. Since the game isn't always predictable, we just hoped our next run of loot would be luckier than the last one.
But it's hard to deny that Housemarque has done something different with Returnal by combining a roguelike with a blockbuster third-person shooter and making an arcade bullet hell that's unlike anything we've seen from Sony before.
Returnal is a PS5-only game that lives up to what we've been demanding from the new console, and it's a great example of what this new hardware can do.
Returnal's formula may annoy some players, but others will love its fast-paced action, psychologically thrilling story, and risky missions. Since the game costs $69.99 / £69.99 / AU$124.95, it's essential to know which camp you're likely to fall into before you buy it.
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