Returnal™

Game is okay, but installing Epic Online Services without my permission is something else. It also asks me to register my PC on PlayStation's website, but it says 'This service isn't available in your country or region'. Thanks, I guess.

Very cool bullet hell but jumpscare Epic install and multiple things locked behind online functionality which requires an account makes a big no even at 2/3% off.

The negative reviews about Epic are on such a high horse. That and PS network optional login are for cross-play - not a requirement. You guys are acting like it's GFWL levels when its very unobtrusive. Also you get like 1 cosmetic item for linking - thats it. People basing a whole negative review on 'locked' items are referring to 1 suit skin weow. Great game, people moan about anything

[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]

Score: 8/10 Returnal is one of those games that feels amazing when everything clicks. The movement is super smooth, the shooting is intense, the alien atmosphere is beautiful, and the soundtrack makes the whole experience feel mysterious and stressful in a good way. It really feels like a true next-gen sci-fi roguelike. But yeah, it’s definitely not for everyone. The difficulty can be brutal, dying and repeating runs can get frustrating, and some players complain about bugs or runs feeling a bit too punishing. If you hate roguelikes, Returnal might drive you crazy. Still, when the gameplay starts flowing, it’s addictive, stylish, and very unique. I understand why some people love it and others bounce off hard, but for me it deserves respect.

As much as I liked the story and the general gameplay of Returnal, it is a roguelike after all, so it must be judged on roguelike metrics. I find it ironic to see all the reviews warning roguelike newcomers to be wary -- I would argue this game is very much unlike a lot of other roguelikes, in that I think Returnal really lacks the two main draws of the Roguelike genre: build variety and quick runs. Between the short list of weapons in the arsenal, the short list of artifacts, and the prevalence of simple stat boosts as upgrades, the runs do start to feel same-y very quickly. I understand the variety is supposed to come from the weapon traits, but progression had been too slow for me to actually experience this fully. Even still, the weapons/traits that do encourage a longer-range playstyle get punished anyhow, as Obolites - the main currency in the game - disappear if you don't pick them up, which homogenizes viable weapons/playstyles (and narrows it even more once you face the Biome 3 boss). While each of the weapons were fun to use in their own ways, their unique playstyles have difficulty finding time to shine and more often become hinderances when the right enemies exist to counter the playstyle you're trying to adopt. You end up always getting back to the tried-and-true carbine. Even though the variety isn't really all that much to gawk at, the gunplay is still really smooth and responsive. A real highlight for the game alongside its boss designs. All the bosses are both spectacles to awe at, and spectacles to fear (willem_dafoe_looking_up.gif). It's just a shame it takes forever to get to any of them. Run length is honestly the biggest drawback of this game and it's killed any sort of replayability for it in my eyes. Despite having such a great time fighting each of the bosses, I can't imagine having to go through all the grind just to get there again. Each biome alone takes like an hour, whereas the average run of most other roguelikes are less than that. And could you imagine: this game originally came out with no ability to stop a run in the middle to save your progress. I get that it's not a casual-friendly game but even those of us with no-life need to stop playing at some point 😭. When it takes longer to get to a single boss than it takes to write this long-ass review, there's a bit of a problem. Small section about game performance: Despite having the recommended PC specs for the game, I found that I still really had to concede a lot of the graphical fidelity (low preset, 67% res scaling) in order to have a playable (40-50 fps in high octane encounters) experience, albeit this was on a 1440p display. That said, your mileage may vary. This doesn't heavily affect my review of the game, though it's not insignificant. In all, I think this game still continues to alienate those outside of its niche, which at this point I'm not actually sure what that may be anymore. Not only is this game difficult to get into for a more casual audience, they've also somehow been able to exclude those who play too many roguelikes like me. Narratively, it probably wouldn't make sense, but the game would have probably been better off not being a Roguelike. Despite having a good story and great gunplay, Returnal unfortunately just fails to be its genre.

I got this game to play co op with my brother. The problem here is the game is catered to a one player experience. It literally punishes you for playing co op in a way that's so stupid its insulting to the players. If both of you aren't larping as conjoined twins you're punished. To make it worse keeping up with the other player is extremely difficult after you pass the beginning sections of the game and there so much going on you cant even take half a second to look at the tiny mini map to see where they are. Basically when you kill enemies they drop points, points that are extremely important to progressing. Those points bounce all over the place and disappear pretty quickly so the idea here is to let one player lead, while the other follows, killing enemies and getting as close as possible when doing it to maximize that drop. Its okay at first but quickly becomes a chore when the solution is so brain dead simple that a small child could see.... just make it so if they pick up those points both players receive them.... in fact... with the scarcity of health i feel like deciding between the two who gets the health becomes irritating pretty quickly. There are going to be situations where youre teammate is running a little bit ahead of you, misses some points hidden in a statue, so you have to call him back before you can grab them. In one case personally i stopped to tell him, but he ran into a room that has treasure on both sides with the floor opening to a pitfall, so you have to be quick, but he ran a little too far ahead of me and i was waiting so he didnt miss out on those points so i was punished for it. Absolute trash situation if you as me. Not fun at all... Ohh and lets not mention the fact that if your other player disconnects you cant reconnect... go for an hour to drop connection and lose all that progress. Among so many other problems this game has i just cant recommend it unless youre into this kind of stuff and not buying it to co op.

Really wanted to play this, but the sound glitches out and I couldn't fix it, had to refund.

3D bullet hell that takes major inspiration from high-concept sci-fi media like Annihilation, Interstellar and Arrival. Fun gameplay loop but wish there was more content. Story is just a bit up its own ass but shows major potential. [spoiler]Act 3 kind of ends with a whimper.[/spoiler]

It's so good. Returnal is basically Hades, but minus the home base interactions and plus more unforgiveness. You retain nothing between runs apart from some progression-necessary tools, so the only thing you can rely on is your own reaction time, remembering enemy patterns, and patience. There's no difficulty slider or aids, either. It's hard as nails. Not quite Souls-like level, but still, it just does not let you breathe at all and does not forgive mistakes. The gameplay is fast and addictive, and when you find some good items and get properly in the zone, you feel amazing. But the opposite side, when you're failing for the fifth time in a row and you don't have any help, any upgrades, or anyone to talk to between runs, takes a toll. Not sure Returnal is necessarily for me. I don't have the time to learn the skill properly, and I never had any patience to begin with, but it's definitely a recommend.