Returnal™

Real good

the most frustrating crap iv ever played but its good :) atmosphere is 10/10 this game has me sweating

50% third person shooter + 30% rogue-like + 20% bullet hell = 100% good time. …that opener is not as snappy as I wanted but it’ll have to do. “Returnal” is a mash-up of two genres I very much enjoy (third person shooter and rogue-like) with a splash of a genre I’d like to… suck less at (bullet hell). While there were plenty of things about the game that appealed to me right out of the gate (e.g., two genres I very much enjoyed, the sci-fi trappings, an evocative soundtrack, the look/affect, etc), it was the promise of bullet-hell elements that sealed the deal for me. Note: while “Returnal” certainly contains no shortage of projectiles and attacks to avoid, it’s not really a ‘bullet hell’ in the conventional sense of the term. Yeah, you’ll be dodging all over the place all the time, but the way in which you’ll do much of that dodging is via the ‘dash’ command. That command, you might be surprised to learn, enables i-frames. I’m given to understand that a ‘true’ bullet hell doesn’t let you rely on i-frames for avoidance. Rather, it requires you to learn placement and movement patterns. This is not to say that “Returnal” permits, promotes or otherwise promotes indolence; as mentioned above, it demands constant movement (like any respectable shooter). It’s just not quite the same as other bullet-hell style games I’ve played (e.g., “Enter the Gungeon”). As tempted as I am to discuss specific sections of the game and its narrative, I’ll refrain from doing so. “Returnal,” like “Clair Obscur: Expedition 33,” is best served by going in completely blind. Doing so will make every discovery so much more rewarding. That having been said, I will offer this: biome 4 is one of the best levels in a game in recent memory (this generation, certainly). Straight-up amazing. None of the levels are bad, boring or even ‘meh’, but biome 4… /chef’s kiss. Two thumbs up, Severed or no; 8/10 for the numbers crowd. For me, the thing that kept “Returnal” from scoring as a 9/10 was that the biome runs are too long. The overall completion time, be it for a single biome or for an entire run, felt like it was tuned more for a shooter than a rogue-like. While I do tend to play and learn more slowly than many others, progression in “Returnal” felt slower than most other rogue-likes I’ve played, especially in the first few runs. Even with that caveat, this is a game that deserves to be experienced, savored, and considered. And repeated. Again. And again. Recommended for: third-person shootists; action aficionados; enjoyers of rogue-likes; those with narrative preferences that run toward the unsettling and oblique (a la David Lynch); purveyors of disturbing visuals and haunting music; those who enjoy genre mashups done well and appropriately. edit: managing expectations