Returnal

2024-12-15
For a game about a woman's sanity withering away as she endlessly dies fighting Space Demons™ it's a surprisingly delightful game! And mechanically, who would have thought "You know what we need is a 3rd person shooter roguelike"? Not me. But here I was playing the game for hours at a time. It has the classic stamp of approval for a good roguelike in that I'd go in for a session saying "Just one run and then I'm done" and then I'd play for 4 hours straight.

First of all it's a graphically gorgeous game. The environments and art all running beautifully on the PS5 are something else. The alien worlds, the architecture, the giant monstrous gates, the swirling balls of otherworldly "Ichor", and of course the terrifying and immense bosses. I mean shit the third boss, Nemesis, alone is one of the coolest things I've ever seen in a video game.

Related to this is the vibe of the game comprised of the weird scifi elements of being trapped in an endless loop dying over and over on an alien planet. Mixed with the story that expands upon the psychological toll such a situation would take on a persons mind. Very cool.

I was interested in the narrative that slowly trickles as you progress but I wasn't a big fan of how the story kind of just descended into "Was any of this real? Was she just insane and this is all some self-designed purgatory because [insert spoiler-y traumatic event]?" I dunno if I'm just sick of that trope or what but it felt like a cop out. That and all the little moments where you walk through the house and pick up things and trip out didn't really resonate with me. But hey, we're not here for Sad Space Lady story, are we?

What we're here for is a really top notch roguelike as well as an action-y third person shooter. The movement with the jumping and dodging is really tight. Shooting is noisy, and beautiful, and powerful feeling--due in no small part to the DualShock 5's rumblings and sounds and lights flashing. There's so many guns and artifacts and items that create different builds as you go long. And the game gives you a really nice drip-feed of new weapons and artifacts and items being unlocked as you go along to keep things fresh.

I actually thought the Proficiency system, a system wherein you slowly level up a stat that determines the level of weapons you pick up off enemies, was a really cool feature. It adds another layer of investment you can either ignore or lean into in a build and if you get far enough you start getting absurdly overpowered weapons with multiple passive abilities that completely change the way they behave. You end up with pistols that have homing bullets or machine guns that steal health from enemies (my favorite).

Another interesting design choice was the way you build up your health bar as you play. The game is littered with health pickups. If you have taken damage these heal you as you would expect. BUT if you have a full health bar they will count as essentially heart-pieces from Zelda where if you pick up enough your health bar will increase. I saw it's interesting and not amazing because it can have the effect of making you playing insanely conservatively and leaving behind health pieces till you're full of health and then making you backtrack to pick them all up. Overall I liked it though especially once I found the leech health gun which kind of breaks the system and you end up with 200-300% health.

Encounters themselves are hectic and fun. It's basically a third-person-shooter-bullet-hell with a ton of movement where enemies are constantly either rushing you forcing you to dodge and jump around and/or shooting huge amounts of projectiles also forcing you to move around. I was initially getting absolutely rocked at the beginning but after maybe 4 hours I got into the groove and it turns into this beautiful dance where you're just doing laps around the level dodging all sorts of balls and rings of death and shooting enemies as you go. In that way it's almost like if you turned Doom Eternal into a roguelike. They just needed Mick Gordon to write the soundtrack.

Bosses are the real set pieces of the game. Each one has its own flavor of bullet hell and they are epic 3-stage fights that have the boss evolving and ramping up its attacks. From the simplest, Phrike, who shoots lots of balls around and teleports taking swipes at you to the second boss who flies around covering the arena with bullets to the epic Nemesis, a giant monster flanked by two lanky laser-shooting monsters that in the final stage has you flying through the air grapple-hooking from platform to platform as you're perpetually falling through the air shooting at the titan in the distance. Initially I thought they were too long when I was fighting Phrike but I grew to really enjoy them.

My one complaint-- and a lot of people share this-- is the runs are too long. If you really want to beef up your character before some of the later bosses you'll spend upwards of an hour just clearing the early areas to get as much health and artifacts as you can before squaring off. And then to do that and die to a boss and have to start all over is pretty brutal.

But overall I actually really loved the game. It's a beautiful tour-de-force and a really showing of what the PS5 is capable of.

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A surprisingly delightful game. Who would have thought "You know what we need is a 3rd person shooter roguelike"? Not me. But here I was playing the game for hours at a time. It has the classic stamp of approval for a good roguelike in that I'd go in for a session saying "Just one run and then I'm done" and then I'd play for 4 hours straight.

First of all it's a graphically gorgeous game. The environments and art all running beautifully on the PS5 are something else. The alien worlds, the architecture, the giant monstrous gates, the swirling balls of otherworldly "Ichor", and of course the terrifying and immense bosses. I mean shit the third boss, Nemesis, alone is one of the coolest things I've ever seen in a video game. Bar none.

Related to this is the vibe of the game comprised of the weird scifi elements of being trapped in an endless loop dying over and over on an alien planet. Mixed with the story that expands upon the psychological toll such a situation would take on a persons mind. Very cool.

I will say, while I didn't finish the True Ending, I wasn't a big fan of how the story kind of just descended into "Was any of this real? Was she just insane and this is all some self-designed purgatory because she killed her daughter?" I dunno if I'm just sick of that trope or what but it felt like a cop out. In general I didn't really enjoy the little moments where you walk through the house and pick up things and trip out. I appreciate what they were going for but most of the time it kind of just was a whiff and didn't resonate with me.

Gameplay-wise it's a really top notch roguelike as well as an action-y third person shooter. The movement with the jumping and dodging is really tight. Shooting is noisy, and beautiful, and powerful feeling--due in no small part to the DualShock 5's rumblings and sounds and lights flashing. There's so many guns and artifacts and items that create different builds as you go long. And the game gives you a really nice drip-feed of new weapons and artifacts and items being unlocked as you go along to keep things fresh.

I actually thought the Proficiency system, a system wherein you slowly level up a stat that determines the level of weapons you pick up off enemies, was a really cool feature. It adds another layer of investment you can either ignore or lean into in a build and if you get far enough you start getting absurdly overpowered weapons with multiple passive abilities that completely change the way they behave. You end up with pistols that have homing bullets or machine guns that steal health from enemies (my favorite).

Another interesting design choice was the way you build up your health bar as you play. The game is littered with health pickups. If you have taken damage these heal you as you would expect. BUT if you have a full health bar they will count as essentially heart-pieces from Zelda where if you pick up enough your health bar will increase. I saw it's interesting and not amazing because it can have the effect of making you playing insanely conservatively and leaving behind health pieces till you're full of health and then making you backtrack to pick them all up. Overall I liked it though especially once I found the leech health gun which kind of breaks the system and you end up with 200-300% health.

Encounters are hectic and fun. It's basically a bullet hell with a ton of movement where enemies are constantly either rushing you forcing you to dodge and jump around and/or shooting huge amounts of projectiles also forcing you to move around. I was initially getting absolutely rocked at the beginning but after maybe 4 hours I got into the groove and it turns into this beautiful dance where you're just doing laps around the level dodging all sorts of balls and rings of death and shooting enemies as you go. In that way it's almost like if you turned Doom Eternal into a roguelike. They just needed Mick Gordon to write the soundtrack.

Bosses are the real set pieces of the game. Each one has its own flavor of bullet hell and they are epic 3-stage fights that have the boss evolving and ramping up its attacks. From the simplest Phrike who shoots lots of balls around and teleports taking swipes at you to the second boss who flies around covering the arena with bullets to the epic Nemesis, a giant monster flanked by two lanky laser-shooting monsters that in the final stage has you flying through the air grapple-hooking from platform to platform as you're perpetually falling through the air shooting at the titan in the distance. Initially I thought they were too long when I was fighting Phrike but I grew to really enjoy them.

My one complaint-- and a lot of people share this-- is the runs are too long. If you really want to beef up your character before some of the later bosses you'll spend upwards of an hour just clearing the early areas to get as much health and artifacts as you can before squaring off. And then to do that and die to a boss and have to start all over is pretty brutal.

But overall I actually really loved the game. It's a beautiful tour-de-force and a really showing of what the PS5 is capable of.