Turns out second impressions can be better than the first.
I bought Returnal about a year ago while it was on sale. I plopped it into my PS5 (yes, I bought a physical edition) and played it for about 45 minutes. At least that’s what my PS5 claims. Anyways, I played for under an hour and thought “Well, that was interesting, I suppose.” I then proceeded to uninstall it and not play it for a year.
I was in what I call a gaming funk when I decided to give Returnal another go. I didn’t expect much based off of how it went the first time. Long story short, I started playing it and kept playing it and kept on playing it until I had beaten the first boss. I have now put in at least eleven hours into the game. I think I’m hooked.
Returnal is either a roguelike or roguelite game. You pick which term you think is best. I’m going to go with roguelike cause it sounds better. The point is that Returnal has procedurally generated levels and, when you die, you start way back at the beginning. Returnal is different from a game like Hades or its sequel, however, in that the game doesn’t make you beat the boss of an area every time you die and have to reset. I like that a lot. To be clear, I still love Hades and everything it does. Hades, in case you’re curious, was the game which changed my mind about roguelikes. Enough about Hades though, back to Returnal!
The biggest part of any roguelike game is learning what each item does and its rules. This is where I wish Returnal was a little clearer. For example, healing items are green (as would be expected). What isn’t expected is that some green items replenish your health (called integrity in-game) while others provide a pip towards increasing the maximum amount of your integrity.
Some people would say that this isn’t a problem. Just read the description that pops up if you’re so worried about it. To that I say you’re right except when you’re low on health while fighting a monster and desperately running around trying to find some healing items. It would help if I knew if the item I was running towards is going to heal me or just increase my maximum integrity.
A simple fix would be if the description of what you’re looking at popped up faster. This is a nitpick, I know, but I find myself impatiently waiting for a text box to pop up even when there are no enemies. It doesn’t take too long for it to appear but I still find it to be too slow. This is especially true when some items (including ones called parasites) give you both a boon and a penalty at the same time. This is where the risk/reward design of roguelikes comes into play. You know what? I’ve rambled enough here. The gist of what I’m saying is that I wish the text showing the benefits and downsides of a given item would appear faster.
The bosses and mini-bosses of Returnal are a lot of fun. I had just beaten the second boss when I sat down to write this. As a side note, the second boss resides in one the most Star Wars looking deserts I’ve ever seen. I made a mistake on the first two bosses and with some of the tougher enemies in the game. I thought that I had to kill them quickly. This is not true. It’s not about how fast you do them in but how well you do it. Does that make sense? Put another way, I found that it’s better to be patient, learn the enemy’s attack patterns, and then whittle away their health. That’s my advice to you.
There isn’t too much enemy variety per level although a few enemies do provide me with more of a challenge since I haven’t figured out what the best way to kill them is. I can forgive the lack of variety in the enemies because, again, Returnal is a roguelike game. Luckily for me, the game has a few different weapons with their own perks which can be unlocked.
I don’t remember each weapon’s name (and I’m not going to look them up) but I will list their real-world counterparts. There’s a pistol, a rifle, and a shotgun (so far). I will name one gun though because I hate it. It’s called a Hollowseeker. I can’t quite put my finger on why I don’t like it but just know that I can’t stand it. Anyways, those are the weapons I have discovered (again, so far). I hope that more weapons appear later on in the game. I guess we’ll see, won’t we?
You lose your weapons and most of your items every time you die. You do retain a few permanent resources and a couple of tools. These tools range from a key that unlocks the second area to a device which allows you to use teleporters. It is implied that your suite of permanent tools will grow larger as you progress.
The story revolves around a woman name Selene who is a scout for a planetary exploration company. She crash-lands on a planet called Atropos after receiving a mysterious signal from said planet. I don’t know the intricacies of what’s going on yet but I’m having fun learning more and more as time goes on. One part does freak me though out since it goes into first-person view which makes me suspicious that it’s going to become a horror game at some point but it hasn’t yet. I won’t mention anything else about this section as it seems significant. You should find out about it for yourself.
My favorite part of Returnal by far is how responsive the controls are. I hate how some main characters control like they weigh a thousand pounds or turn at a truly ponderous pace. Guess what happens when I push left on the control stick in Returnal? Not only does Selene go left but she does so with a sense of urgency. She does not take her time. She goes the same speed when going right in case you’re curious. My point is that the controls are responsive and you can run through levels at a high speed. I love being able to do that because, like I said, I hate a character who controls like garbage.
That’s all I wanted to say about Returnal as of now. Just thought I would jot down a few of my opinoins and publish them here today. I’m having a good time with Returnal and I’m looking forward to jumping back in once I’m done writing this. If you’re a fan of roguelikes, you can’t go wrong with Returnal.
Thanks for reading!
The Pretend Gamer 