It takes a special breed to enjoy a game like Housemarque’s Returnal. In practice, there rarely is any reprieve – constantly testing not just your skill, but your willpower to perpetually pick yourself back up to bite and claw your way to victory. I like to think of myself an aficionado in torturing myself through playing video games.
I’ve completed my initiation with Dark Souls, blitzed through the frantic combat of Bloodborne, and stood my ground in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. With my experience, I figured that Returnal would be like familiar proving grounds, but I was painfully mistaken…
Approaching Returnal like it was just another souls-like was my first blunder, but that should be obvious right? While comparable in levels of difficulty, you can at least mentally prepare for the road ahead in Dark Souls. Everything is laid out in front of you, and after a few deaths running down the stairs of the Ringed City, you have a sure plan on how to maneuver and identifying which enemies you’d want to fight. Everything is choreographed in this dance of death and your ability to adapt is your trump card.
But Dark Souls choreography is countered by Returnal’s improv as there’s no true second chances. It’s the ever changing Rubik’s Cube that shuffles itself once you reach the point of failure. Safe to say that I am out of my comfort zone – and I am loving every minute of it.
Fear of the Unknown
To be transparent, my expertise in the world of roguelikes are limited, with the last one I seriously committed to was Atlus’ Baroque for the PlayStation 2. And while I’ve dabbled with other roguelikes here and there, I’ve mostly felt bored or unimpressed with the worlds and the lack of challenge. Returnal not only brings the heat, but brings along the otherworldly terrors of the unknown.
You take on the role of Selene, a deep space scout employed by the ASTRA Corporation. While on mission, she diverts course when she discovers an anomaly codenamed “The White Shadow”, leading her to crash land on Atropos. Unable to make contact with her employer, she begins traversing the treacherous environments of this hostile planet. Selene’s mind begins to falter when finds the corpses of her body, accompanied with a recording of their final moments. She soon comes to realize that she’s stuck in a time paradox that death cannot break her out of.
Her quest for the enigmatic “White Shadow” takes a turn for the paranormal when she discovers that her childhood home sits cozily in the Atropos forest. Entering the home forces Selene to reflect on parts of her adolescence and her own childhood traumas, which could be the key to breaking the cycle.
At War with the Old Ones
Selene’s battles with these eldritch abominations require her to be quick on her feet as you can become easily overwhelmed by the enemies’ numbers. Combat in Returnal is some fast paced gun-slingin’, as you’ll have to accurately bob-and-weave your way past the wide lunging haymakers and bullet hell like projectiles launched at you. Even getting hit once is too much of a risk, as the game incentivizes damageless encounters with the Adrenaline mechanic.
For every three kills, Selene gains a rank of Adrenaline, which buffs your reload times, ranged and melee damage output, battlespace awareness and currency generation. These stat increases truly make the difference when you go from the hunted to the hunter, mowing down night creatures with ease. However, the power dynamic can swiftly tilt back into the enemies’ favor as with a single hit, your adrenaline resets back to zero, and you’re stuck trying to dodge and stave off the onslaught.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that all of the Atrophic organisms are hostile. Selene can take advantage of some of the parasites on the planet that provide her with various passive skills and buffs, like reducing the costs of fabricating items, increasing the drop rates of salvage after slaying the enemy, or recovering consumables after they’ve been used. But as with all parasites, there’s always a give and take: every parasite comes with the positive and negative effect. So you will need to choose wisely if increasing your weapon proficiency is worth the 50-percent reduction of your maximum health.
Armed to the Teeth
While initially equipped with her sidearm as her primary weapon, Selene takes advantage of various Atrophic firearms lying around the planet’s ruins. As expected with any roguelike, weapons carry wide range of stat builds, secondary effects such as armor piercing, ricocheting bullets, and pulling money towards you.
What’s absolutely fascinating to me is that Returnal takes full advantage of the Dualsense controller’s adaptive triggers, building the alternative fire option into the trigger itself. By holding down the left trigger halfway, you’re able to sight in on the enemy as normal. But pressing down on the “notch” of the trigger gives the player access to powerful secondary attacks like the electrifying Shockstream, stunning enemies in their tracks as they take on massive damage, or the wide shot of the Carbine’s Horizontal Barrage.
Searching for decent weapons can be difficult, as you’ll have to find hidden locations or take down larger enemies only to find another sidearm with shittier stats than what you have. But you can press your luck with malignant chests, as these miasmic crates typically have a higher chance of hiding something good – at the cost of potentially malfunctioning your suit.
Malfunctions add another element to the whole risk/reward nature of Returnal, as the tainted items you come across have the chances of damaging you whenever you pick up consumables, preventing you from swapping weapons, or minimizes melee damage. These malfunctions can be fixed by performing specific tasks, but are better off curing by using special items or just avoiding them altogether as malignant items are more trouble than what they are worth.
Faultless Paradox
Returnal offers one of the most enriching experiences for not just the PlayStation 5, but ninth generation gaming as a whole. Masochists searching beyond the soulsborne franchise for their fix will find equally challenging and engaging encounters they will not be able to prepare for. If there was a single problem that held Returnal back, it would be the lack of a quick save option mid-session, as solid seeds will often run you two to three hours at any given time, and losing that progress due to a system update is heart wrenching.
Beyond that, Returnal is a near flawless game. No matter how confident I feel in a run, I know there’s a chance that walking into the wrong room can just as easily snuff me out. It’s the fear of the unknown that keeps me going, and how I am going to overcome it that keeps me high.
