Village of the crammed
If you’ve snaffled a PS5 but have been waiting for a genuine next-gen game to play on it, good news: it’s just arrived straight out of leftfield
Although it’s a larger game world, Village’s length matches previous instalments – so expect to wrap things up in about 10 hours. That includes exploring to find all the optional treasures and upgrades.
But as with the recent series remakes, there are plenty of incentives to replay, where completing challenges nets you points to unlock new stuff like weapons, figures and loads of concept art. In one especially ludicrous touch, you can hunt animals and give their meat to the Duke to cook up meals that boost Ethan’s stats.
The real highlight, however, is Mercenaries – first seen in RE4 – which is unlockable after beating the main game. This arcade-type mode takes you on a silly but entertaining shooting gallery across the game’s different locations under a time limit. It’s a fun diversion, and the challenge is trying to get a decent score based on enemies killed and a kill-combo bonus, as well as taking into account your leftover resources.
Of course, there was also meant to be a PVP mash-up Resident Evil Re:verse, where players pick characters from across the franchise history to fight against each other, but that’s been delayed until later this summer.
From the moment your space scout crash-lands on a hostile alien planet, Returnal delivers a full blast of PS5 hardware as you feel the depth of the Dualsense’s rumble and engage the immersive 3D audio of the Tempest Engine. Play this game with headphones.
It’s a scene you’ll go through many more times, since the twist is you’re trapped in a purgatorial time loop. And, as desolate as the game’s multiple biomes are, the visuals are incredibly atmospheric, all running at 4K in 60fps with ray-tracing, while accessing each area is as seamless as running through a gate.
At its core, Returnal has you trying to survive against waves of intimidating enemies who shoot colourful projectile patterns. Similar to Stuff’s 2020 game of the year, Hades, it uses its looping structure to tell a story that unfolds with each new run.
What starts like a simple sci-fi jaunt becomes something of a psychodrama: by the time you’ve reached the second biome you’ll wonder whether you have the mental fortitude to continue. The biggest obstacle is that death resets your progress all the way back to your crashed ship: you might unlock new weapons and artefacts, but you always start again, while most resources need to be found from scratch.
With each run also changing up the map layout, you’re often at the mercy of luck. It’s not just whether a better weapon shows up – some items have a chance of causing a suit malfunction, while there are also parasites you can attach that provide both a buff and debuff, letting you weigh up whether you should take the risk.
This is an arthouse blockbuster: a technical marvel showcasing the PS5’S potential that at the same time offers a bold choice of structure embracing the new weird. It’s also uncompromisingly tough, which might scare off a more mainstream audience, but this is a game that doesn’t do half measures – either in its gameplay or as a truly next-gen exclusive. Alan Wen