Returnal

This roguelike gets a bit loopy

Crash-landing on Atropos in a very brief introduction, you’re quickly thrown out into the alien elements. The dense forest surrounding the crash site is dark and brooding, and heavy rain pelts down. Feeling the patter of the raindrops via the DualSense, and the sound of it all around thanks to PS5’s Tempest 3D AudioTech, it’s wonderful to finally be playing another fully-loaded PS5 game.

Housemarque made its name developing arcadey shooters. This bigger-budget third-person roguelike take on the genre is filled with PS5 hallmarks, whether it’s the sound of insects chirping around you, the beautiful and striking visual design, or the way the p adaptive trigger stops halfway for normal fire, switching to alt fire when squeezed all the way. Within the first ten minutes you want to hand the controller to someone with a ‘try this!’

BULLET NIGHTMARE

A tech demo introduction to PS5 this is not. It’s probably the hardest game we’ve played on the system to date, taking the bullet-hell shoot-’emup elements Housemarque is known for and merging them with snappy, third-person blasting to create an intense experience that never lets up. Ostensibly item unlocks make it easier over time, but we don’t really find that to be the case (and there are no difficulty modes).

Selene has come to this planet chasing a mysterious signal named ‘White Shadow’. As she takes her first steps into the world, she realises they aren’t her first steps at all. In addition to piles of bodies of the planet’s inhabitants, she stumbles upon a human corpse in a scout suit much like her own. So like her own, that it is her own. Somehow, she’s ended up stuck in a cycle of rebirth.

Whenever she croaks, she ends up reliving the crash, crawling from the wreckage and trying to

It’s wonderful to finally be playing another fully-loaded PS5 game.

break free of the cycle once again. There’s nothing tongue-in-cheek here. Returnal’s premise is played straight, and it relishes exploring the nightmarish details of Selene’s situation, from the tapes left behind by previous versions of herself (who feel chillingly like strangers) to the visions she experiences between lives. Inexplicably she even stumbles upon a version of her own home. Whenever she does it plays out in first-person chunks of story that feel PT-like but have their own unnerving shocks (though there are only a few of these sequences). It’s dark science fiction.

ANTIQUES ROADSHOW

As effective as the tone is, this isn’t the kind of game you play to get from cutscene to cutscene, it’s the kind you play to play. Especially as each time you die, you effectively start again in roguelike fashion (though you keep things like item unlocks that might appear as you play, possible weapons and their skills, and traversal upgrades and other major progression upgrades). Beat the boss of the first biome, and in subsequent plays you can skip that and take a gateway to the next one.

There are six biomes in total (most paired off with another thematically), and accessing the next isn’t strictly linear. You’ll probably jump between no more than three in a single run if you’ve got the skills. Every time you come back, their layouts are different, though the design of the rooms themselves remains the same. But the order in which you come upon the biomes and rooms, the enemies you shoot, and even doorways in and out will change. The map points you in the general direction of your objective, and handily indicates doorways that contain side paths or lead to your goal.

Choosing where to explore is a constant risk/reward dilemma. Should you skip to the next biome early, or comb it for every possible upgrade? Artefacts can give you some very nice powers, recharging a chunk of health near death, or even acting as a 1-UP. On top of that there are consumables that can make or break a tough boss fight, and parasites that offer you a buff and a debuff at the same time. To obtain many of these you need to pass through tough rooms (are you confident you can get through without losing your ability-boosting adrenaline combo?) or open malignant chests that have a chance of causing a suit malfunction, locking abilities like your active reload (called overloading here) until you complete a task to fix it, like killing a number of enemies with melee or popping open some chests.

This risk/reward dilemma focusses your attention on survival. It creates tension in the moment, but it does leave you with less opportunity to plan how to develop Selene’s powers. And there are basically two ways to do that: either risk health to get something, or spend Obolites (a currency you lose on death) to buy something. Each biome usually has at least one shop, but the selection is limited. As you always start with the same pistol, you need to concentrate on making the most

It starts to become more about optimisation than experimentation, which is a shame.

of what you find rather than pursuing a particular build. After you’ve taken a few risks only to gain little more than a rubbish consumable, playing starts to become more about optimisation than experimentation, which is a shame.

WHOLE NEW WORLD

While the alien world is impressive in still images, it’s wonderful in motion. Selene runs, jumps, and air dashes like nobody’s business, and the shoot-’em-up gameplay works surprisingly well in 3D. Different types of enemy blasts are colour-coded, so you can intuit how you should dodge.

Rooms often have an element of verticality so you can stay on the move. When you unlock the grapple it really opens up exploration, with you zipping from point to point (as long as the environment allows it). Boss fights are spectacular, and often very tense as the screen gets covered in projectiles. Your first victory is always won by the skin of your teeth.

Still, a lot feels the same each run – not only do the rooms remain the same structurally, a biome’s enemy combinations are often similar (which helps you learn, but is repetitive). When you spend an hour only to die just before you get to a progress marker, it can be frustrating, especially when you take those big hits after accidentally strafing into a bit of level geometry. It’s hard to be enthusiastic about putting all that time back in when the narrative rewards are sparse, and the choices you make aren’t all that compelling.

Dripping atmosphere and making great use of PS5 tech, its roguelike elements don’t quite come together, as great to play in the moment as it is. Oscar Taylor-Kent

Incoming fire is easy to see, though managing to dodge it all is another matter.

1 Projectiles have varying spread, shapes, and colours. It’s surprising how quickly you intuit how to dodge the various blasts, even as they fill the screen. 2 Enemies aren’t the only things that can knock your health down. Environmental hazards such as lasers and the like equally tease you. 3 Each biome feels suitably alien, with weird structures that make you feel incredibly small. (They have more than a touch of Giger about them.)

5 4 Selene’s house appears randomly, and sometimes contains spooky first-person narrative sections. 5 Strange touches lie in wait in each area. 6 Bosses look spectacular. Minibosses can be harder to predict.