[quote]"Nothingness had a feeling."[/quote]
Returnal's sights, crisp and stark, burst with awe-inspiring unholiness of Barlowe's and Beksinski's worlds. On top, I saw no popping textures or anything immersion-breaking. Somehow it ran fine on my average rig, except for trap rooms with too many lasers. Those are made of lag. Regardless, the game looks and sounds classy. And what could be more classy than a story about an astronaut stranded on an uncharted planet entombing an alien civilization? Poor Selene Vassos suffers greatly, stuck in a loop of rebirth like an echo trapped inside the walls of abyssal temples and epic megastructures. She's being in that grinder for a while before we take control. That's the premise, I won't go too further down the drain of Selene's morbidly fascinating fate. But I'll gush over the psychological sci-fi on offer, contemplative to the bone despite the speedy action. Certain pieces of exceptional fiction incite a special feeling of longing, akin to nostalgia for something one couldn't have. I call it sci-fi woe. I'll never get to experience something so otherwordly in my entire life. A fact that I mourn.
I realise Selene's painful predicament isn't enviable. Reaching for a tomorrow that never comes, alone she fights a biomechanical planetary fauna, which constantly adapts its hostile ways. The setting reminded me of Harry Harrison's Deathworld books, only adorned by Lovecraft's cyclopean scale, Giger's symbiosis of flesh and machinery, and Lem's existentialism. Greek myths, too. There's no better testament to a work's worth. I loved Returnal right away, on every cerebral level, being eager to rip out its indomitable secrets. Is it a punishment or a gift? What are the bounds of xeno-tech? Can I have some? What's up with all the statues of weeping horned people? The bosses and some enemies sure look like them, while most adversaries resemble biotech weapons rather than something civilised. The mazes are swarming with flying manta rays and octopuses from The Matrix. But the greatest nemesis of this story (apart from lasers) is despair, and nothing erodes hope like time (or them bloody lasers). Impotently spinning in its wheel, Selene returns for her equipment, then her past... then what?
[h3]Screaming, Drowning, Returning[/h3]
In the depths, dead Chronos is waiting for an adequate match, they say. That would be a Sadko packing the loudest gun and the strongest parasites. Returnal is a roguelite bullet hell arena shooter with strong metroidvania elements and modest meta-progression. The biggest permanent boost are gun traits, you unlock and upgrade them by shooting things... tell me you're complete without a full-auto rocket launcher shooting missiles out of missiles that explode twice. Ether is the only resource carried through death. It does a lot of things and unlocks new stuff. In a limited capacity, most unlocks are found in the wild. You also keep story items and essential equipment like a lightsaber or a grappling hook after you find them. As well as access to levels you've already conquered by defeating their bosses, allowing you to skip ahead on subsequent runs. Gauging how much power you need before warping further is part of the strategy. The game has the courtesy to give you a few level-ups when you do that, but little else.
As new gear enables your traversal capabilities, you raid previously inaccessible places, both for story progress and loot. It's a metroidvania, as I've said, whose levels are a thrill even outside of combat. Secret walls hide spoils behind them, trapped rooms challenge your platforming skills. Moving from one deadly arena to the next, you gotta keep an eye out for hidden buttons and doors locked with randomly dropped keys, instatravel teleporters, various stat-upgrading and item fabricating alien devices, consumables, currency, lore. The latter doesn't feel tacked-on, imbuing your struggle with purpose. Higher aspirations aside, your immediate goal is to seek out all the power you can get before facing a boss. Artefacts are your standard fare, giving passive buffs. Less premium suit augmentations in the form of parasites are similar, but their buffs come with drawbacks. Some items and events cause your suit to malfunction and often taking on a pesky curse is worth the risk. You want it, you pay the price. Take damage when picking up items, have reduced stats, etc. Each malfunction comes with a micro-objective. You can get rid of one by fulfilling certain conditions like a few melee kills or using consumables. It's a dynamic system that gives your decisions weight.
See, the planet is bipolar. It harms, yet it also kinda helps? Mostly harms, I died from everything, in every position imaginable. But it allowed me to see how the local procedural generation plays out. While the enemies and especially the biomes change drastically between the acts and look amazing, within said biomes things shift softly. On one hand, you'd see almost the exact same rooms regularly. They just swap places, only secrets, drops, and encounter types get re-arranged. On the other, these rooms were designed to give you a decent challenge. Procedural creations tend to be generic and nonsensical, but here it's nothing like that. Yeah, soft randomisation has its perks. Still, it could use more templates, considering how often the game forces you to start from scratch by mercilessly killing your ass. Then again, as soon as you get complacent, you suddenly enter a never-before-seen arena with a deadly gimmick that wipes its ass with your smirk. At this point, I don't know where my smirk ends and a fecal streak begins.
[h3]Don't You Dare Go Hollow[/h3]
Returnal is moronically hard. Think Halo on Legendary + permadeath + no regen. That said, the bosses are just here to look sexy. The first one took 3 tries before I learned to respect the beautiful bullet hell patterns the bullet sponge raised. With respect, the rest took 1-2. They're fun either way, but it's later in the wilderness where the Reaper drank a million pools of me. Where elites hit harder than bosses and ordinary octos casually spam arena-wide projectile fields. Maddening! Despite it, I persisted. When you start feeling the game, it gets hard to put it down. It's a joy to fight, hitboxes and telegraphs are pristine, and just moving around is amusing. Selene is responsive, runs at the speed of a car, and jumps high using her jetpack boosters. Sporting a fully invulnerable dash whose length depends on how long you press the button, and later a grappling hook to yank her ass out of trouble. Or towards it. Bouncy, precise, fluent - the controls suit the process where you're forced to make tough choices on the fly.
Given the speed, you'd think it pays to rush, but recklessness gets punished all the same. You must watch out for stuff like bottomless pits, Half-Life barnacles hanging from the ceiling, giant eyes shooting laser beams from the tops of Xenochtitlan pyramids. Adrenaline level rises, providing useful combat boons, but resets after getting hit. At the same time, camping sucks since enemies drop currency that quickly dissipates and melee has the oomph. Running past most arenas is possible, but you want to loot and kill plenty to boost weapon proficiency whose level corresponds to the minimal level of guns that drop, meaning better stats and traits. Even the act of reloading, or overloading, is proactive - click in time or wait for eternity. Thank you, Gear of War. Returnal's combat demands spacial awareness and focus, its mechanics come together nicely, incetivising careful yet aggressive play. You gotta use everything at your disposal, use it timely, and enjoy the spectacle. The best action moments made my heart pump battery acid, and so did the atmospheric trip of Returnal's story. Every run a speedrun, every frame a painting! Finnish gamedev is cooking with plasma.
My curator [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/35305390/]Big Bad Mutuh[/url]
