Returnal

After reading some reviews on here I felt obligated to leave one of my own. This game is so misunderstood. Most people that gave this game low ratings are bad at the game and are mad they have to start over after every death. Just because you're not good at a game doesn't mean it's bad. On the contrary, this game is incredible. Great combat that gets more rewarding the more you play and adapt. Weapons become better the more you play and you unlock more powerful consumable as well. The story is up for interpretation, but the difficulty is that way for a reason. The main character is locked in a personal hell that she can never leave.

Give this game a chance and I promise you won't regret it.

In short: Surreal setting and intriguing plot with roguelike die-and-start-over gameplay and fluid, polished FPS controls and camera.

Lacks the growth and progression of many roguelikes, making many play-throughs entirely wasted, and the game inaccessible if you lack hyper twitch skills.

More detail: Mystery right from the start, in a surreal world with a surreal premise, and the intrigue is cleverly built into the rogue-like gameplay, with gradual reveals as you slowly unlock more areas and abilities and discover more secrets. It's dark, creepy, and the lightning, soundtrack, and sound effects combine well.

It's the first FPS I've seen that's a roguelike, and I expected it to be poorly implemented. But the controls are smooth, both in movement and shooting, and the camera is easy to control. Areas where combat starts allow for a wide range of tactics, with natural cover, potential for chasms or other drops to maintain distance, and often ways to get higher or lower than the enemies.

You might have to be familiar roguelike, rogue-lite, metroidvania style games to properly enjoy the semi-repetitive nature of dying and restarting over and over and over again. But honestly, that's what makes them such addictive games. Most 'runs', you'll unlock just a little more to make the next run easier. It could be a stat boost, a gear upgrade, or a more unique ability that gives you access to shortcuts and new areas. Whatever it is, that constant little increase in achievement just feels so good.

Unfortunately, while it looks like there are going to be tonnes of different things to unlock and to discover... the difficulty level can be a significant barrier.

In most other roguelikes, the difficulty is extreme to begin with too. But in many, as you replay over and over, you grow in minor ways that ultimately lead you to reaching a level where you can manage. That makes each play-through feel rewarding, even if you die right near the end of a level or after getting tonnes of abilities and power ups - because you know that even though you missed out on that try, you're a fraction closer to success next time. In Returnal, each death just feels like a complete waste, because all the relevant investment and growth is reset each time.

Importantly, within each run most of the game mechanics are designed to only award perfection. Three primary examples are:

1) The healing items double as max health increases, except you only get that max increase if you don't use it as a healing item. That is, the only way to increase your max health is to never get hit, otherwise the items are wasted in simple healing instead.

2) All weapons have a 5-stage power up that is entirely dependent on not getting hit. One of the power ups is a considerable increase in the resource used to gain access to higher level weapons. If you get hit, the power up resets, so your progression will be too slow to ever reach higher levelled weapons.

3) Another of the power ups is having an additional weapon ability, such as firing off a range of homing pulses in addition to the main ammunition. If you get hit, it resets back to just the main ammunition.

In summary of those three points: if you get hit, you lose out on a range of benefits and bonuses that will prevent you from levelling up properly during that run, in numerous ways. As a result, you'll be more likely to get hit again, and the cycle repeats. The overall impact this has is that if you get hit once or twice, you can be sure that run will be wasted, so you may as well die right there and start afresh. Perfect play or restart, perfect okay or restart, perfect play or restart...

Final comment: Another in a string of games that are hard for the sake of being hard. Except in this case, it's otherwise an amazing, intriguing, addictive game. That makes it all the more painful to have to let it go afterixx cd you get stuck in an endless loop of dying with no benefit.

It's a very well crafted game with some welcomed historical influences and brilliant combat.

If you like rogue-like games, like myself, then you'll find it has a lot to offer in the genre, but it misses the mark by being too punishing in the wrong ways.

All rogue-like games require some kind of grind, but this is brutal and very unrewarding at times with very little, to no guidance. Other rogue-like games shine a light on what is expected, Returnal is just a closed book which can be exhausting to play after some time, it isn't a good thing. Games should be welcoming, not stubborn. Encouraging but challenging is the way.

The balance is a little out, and this game is set out to hurt you, but I do still recommend it a due to its overall design and bullet-hell combat. 7/10.

Returnal sounded great on paper but after playing it the game is just a mess. Everything looks the exact same from start to finish. I know it's a rogue like but that doesn't mean it has to look alike. It just makes the game feel empty. The weapons aren't to bad. They get held by the lacking combat. They wanted to make it all fast pace but it just feels uncomfortable. I don't know what it is. The bosses are where the game really takes a nose dive. From example 1 of the bosses has different attacks where you need to avoid it different. Throu dash or jumping. But they both look the same at 1st so you have to guess which way to avoid it. That is unless your lucky enough to be standing on further side of the sweep but if not enjoy getting hit for a mass amount of health. Also in-between each health bar you don't have any time before the next phase so why not just have 1 long health bar with lines in at each new phase. If your going to make it 3 separate health bars it makes you think your gonna have a bit of time in-between each phase to revive your friend or whatever. Which I think there should be during a long encounter anyway but that's just my opinion.

At 1 point there was a building which you can't enter. But later after seeing it I got a key and it said it was for the building but you still can't enter it? Why do you give me a key when you still can't enter? Surely someone would have picked up on how misleading and silly that is?

Anyway, essentially the game boils down to mindlessly running round the same looking rooms doing random stuff which you don't know if it's optional or its actually driving the progress forward. Eventually it will tell you that you can now open the boss room door. Also here and then it will tell you something about the story. But that's few and far between and you'll probably forget what's actually going on half the time.

I like the fact the developers tried something new. However this game would have probably been better if it wasn't a rogue like.

A great game with a lot of variety with the weapons and abilities you can use. A fair amount of choices to be made when you decide what kind of build you want for different fight engagements.

There's something left to be said about the final boss when it is the easiest one to beat in the entire game, but the rest of them will give you a challenge on your first run-in with them.

A bit lacking with other activities to do in the game other than just moving down a lot of aliens. Could have added more optional challenges to overcome.

But overall a nice little challenging experience.