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[#FORCED START OVERRIDE - - LOG OPENED]
BROADCAST: DSE Backloggd - - RA 18h 06m 0s | Feb 20th 2023

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XENOGLYPH I
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Writings by “BeachEpisode”
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[Translation Accuracy: 86%]
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“Never should have smoked that ҂ѼҎ҉֎ (excrement? physic?), now I’m in the Abyssal Scar.
I must admit to having been left gobsmacked and dumbfounded by how much Returnal has left such a strong impact on me. I don’t have much history with Housemarque’s library of games, despite Super Stardust HD being such a near-permanent fixture on my PS3 that it could have passed for my TV’s screensaver. Outland is relatively slept on these days too, I reckon, but ƺƻƛʥʭФѩ (unneeded digression?). Returnal finally received a PC port, allowing me to give the title a shot. The ᵬᶚỻӜѯ (electronic device?) is so deprived of games it’s genuinely heartbreaking…”
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XENOGLYPH II
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Writings by “BeachEpisode”
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[Translation Accuracy: 91%]
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“Typically I’d run for the hills whenever someone threatened me with a roguelite - a genre I often find ƛʥ؆ٱᵯᶈ (disinterest in?) at the best of times, and one that stands in stark opposition to what I personally find fulfilling about videogames at worst. There wasn’t much in place to prepare me for how deftly Housemarque utilised their core arena arcade design tenets around this Cronenberg/Villeneuve aesthetic pastiche with equal parts confidence and purpose. It must be said, because it is ﬗꬳꬲﭏ (true?), that this is the best-feeling third-person shooter I’ve touched. The degree of freedom of expression in the general character movement, as well as the broad utility of the tools available allow for some astoundingly gratifying excursions through arenas fraught with enemies spewing endless pointilist bullet patterns in easily analysable & counterable on the fly attack patterns.”
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XENOGLYPH III
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Writings by “BeachEpisode”
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[Translation Accuracy: 95%]
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“The compounding subtleties and delicate touches to the way Returnal’s roguelite structure was sculpted for purpose to encapsulate Selene’s purgatorial journey convinces me of this being one of the best character studies I’ve seen since maybe Silent Hill 2? Blurring the line between ﬕתּﻼἕ (symbol?), metaphor and physicality and never prescribing strict and demystifying literalisations. I think it is a very special thing when taking a moment to enjoy the environmental art design can yield subtle narrative realisations, lines drawn between the fragments of a character that they allow you to excavate. The world of Returnal is so dizzyingly all-encompassing.”
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[!!!!CONTENT WARNING: Topics of suicide!!!!!]
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XENOGLYPH IV
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Writings by “BeachEpisode”
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[Translation Accuracy: 0%]
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“Rot13 Rneyvre va gur jrrx, V znqr na nggrzcg ng raqvat zl yvsr. Qvqa’g nppbzcyvfu zhpu orlbaq fbzr oehvfrf naq n srj qnlf fcrag va n orq va RE. Va gur zbzragf yrnqvat gb zr npgvat ba zl vqrngvbaf, vg sryg yvxr funeqf bs vpr jrer cvrepvat guebhtu rirel cneg bs zl obql - svyyvat zr jvgu n qrrc puvyy naq fgvyyarff, nyzbfg nffhevat zr gung vg’f bxnl, gurer’f ab funzr, V’ir nyernql orra qrnq. Jura V neevirq onpx ubzr, fgvyy n yvggyr qehax bss gur cnva naq funzr bs vg nyy, V qvqa’g xabj jung gb qb. Guvf ebbz qvqa’g srry yvxr zl bja nal zber. V qvqa’g erpbtavfr gur crefba va gur zveebe, gur crefba jub jebgr zl grkgf be zrffntrf. Yvfgyrff, V gubhtug abguvat bs pbagvahvat zl cynlguebhtu bs Ergheany, vg jnf whfg na rnfl cvrpr bs abeznypl V pbhyq fyvc onpx vagb.
Fryrar ernjbxr ba na nyvra cynarg jurer fur nyjnlf qvq, gur napube cbvag ng gur fvgr bs gur vavgvny nppvqrag. Fur znqr n pbzzrag ba ubj haerpbtavfnoyr gur raivebazrag jnf sebz ure ynfg yvsr, fur yvfgrarq gb nhqvb ybtf erpbeqrq ol urefrys naq rkcerffrf qvfthfg naq pbashfvba ng ubj guvf crefba pbhyq cbffvoyl or ure. Univat na nethzrag jvgu tubfgf naq ybfvat gb lbhe bja ibvpr, qrfcrengryl pynjvat sbe n yvtug ng gur raq bs gur ghaary bayl gb erirny gur znyvtanapvrf naq cnenfvgrf rngvat njnl ng lbhe bccbeghavgvrf sbe frys shysvyyzrag. Fghpx va n fvflcurna gevny sbe frys, sbetvirarff, ngbarzrag gung bsgra srryf qbjaevtug shgvyr.
V xabj nyy bs guvf fbhaqf evqvphybhfyl gevgr, ohg Ergheany fgehpx n areir jvgu fhpu cerpvfvba vg sryg nyzbfg vainfvir. Univat guvf yvggyr fvzhynpehz bs n wbhearl gb puvc njnl ng naq zrgnzbecubfr bagb zlfrys unf urycrq prager zr, svaq pbagrkg va gur abvfr naq pbashfvba, znqr zr srry yvxr V pna nvz gb or abezny ntnva. Znlor gur wbhearl V'z ba vf n shgvyr bar, gurer'f rirel cbffvovyvgl V'yy ybfr zl sbbgvat naq snyy gb gur onfr bs gur zbhagnva lrg ntnva - ohg orsber gura, V'yy fgevir sbe nppbzcyvfuzragf gung whfgvsl zl cynpr va guvf yvsrgvzr. V'yy fubj zl gunaxf gb gur crbcyr jub znxr yvsr n wbl. V'yy xvpx gur jbeyq va gur qvpx orpnhfr fcvgr pna or n cbjreshy zbgvingbe.”
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[LOG CLOSED]

shocked by how into this I am despite it overtly representing like 800 simultaneous trending references and roguelikes not being a thing I typically enjoy at all! The scott/villeneuve style trappings are obvious but they're cleverly wielded to convey a story through refreshingly non-cinematic means, and so much of the housemarque soul is still present here. The playfeel is stellar--the dualsense and sound integration especially--and the grueling pointillist combat is reactive and wondrous in a resogun meets nier meets furi kinda way. The punitive precision and masochistic self-empowerment systems (parasites, malignancies) feel so synchronous with the game's themes about delusions of potentiality and the horror of being trapped within a losing conversation with yourself. The whole "the location is its own character" thing is so pat and tritely overused as an assessment at this point but uh... it kind of is tho and i really like it!!! I haven't finished yet and honestly don't think you're even intended to in order for the experience to meaningfully land; the whole notion of "seeing it all" as a means of understanding game messaging is so parochial and rooted in other mediums and their histories, and an especially odd cudgel to use against Returnal when frustration, obfuscation, and defeat are all integral ideas being directly explored in it!!! I will be genuinely kind of disappointed if the ending brings any semblance of traditional closure. Selene is a wonderful and subtly articulated character and the experience feels much more like a portrait rather than a journey. More cagey, damaged middle aged ladies in games plz, i love a smooth altruistic jrpg teen but it is really nice to get to excavate a thorny character who already comes with so much baggage and life experience!!!!!!!

repression is the most grueling form of labor / regret murders our potential selves

i am vast; i contain malignancies!!!!!!

Returnal has a lot of themes going through it but what really stuck with me more than the story tones is the risk reward gameplay loop. Every action you take throughout this rogue like arcade third person shooter has consequences to be measured for potentially long and short term gains. Is it worth the risk at this point opening this malignant chest? How badly do I need a stronger weapon? Should I explore this Biome or take an early shortcut to the next one? Should I go in this secret room with just my starting side arm? Is the positive on this parasite worth the negative aspect? Literally everything you do is a risk reward decision, some of which can have utterly fatal consequences. I actually loved that balance scale system and though you can become good enough to overcome most negative consequences with permeant traits and experience there will be times it gives you a surprise kicking throwing you back to start all over, there is a reason the Ascension downloadable content references the Greek King Sisyphus.

choices aside, it's moment to moment gameplay is excellent. The developer Housemarque has leveraged all it's experience in fast paced arcade games to make each encounter a pretty thrilling experience. It plays smoothly and the guns are extremely satisfying to use especially once you start leveling up traits for extra abilities like homing rockets, portal turrets, leech bullets etc. I never thought I'd enjoy Rogue Likes but I'm really starting to get into them seeing that constant progression. My one issue with Returnal though is the levels. Don't get me wrong, the art design and visuals are really good, leaning heavily into H.R Geiger and the Aliens franchise in a lot of aspects with great lighting and fog effects. The game has a genuinely creepy atmosphere. What I mean is that though there are 6 biomes, 2 of them are just kind of reskinned versions of earlier ones and though there are differences with some rooms being completely new and new enemies I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed.

It's pretty much my only complaint though. The story is way different than I expected but revealed steadily though logs and imagery and the lead character Selene's voice acting by Jane Perry is really good, at times, somber, at times professional and at times a little crazy. This game isn't for everyone, I can absolutely see that, you do have to put some time into it to really get the most out of it and see some of it's more subtle aspects but once it hooks you a 20 minute run will turn into a few hours before you know it.

+ Great gameplay loop.
+ Action is fast paced with cool weapons.
+ Great art design and story themes.

- A couple of the biomes were kind of disappointing.

So this game was basically just made for me. An arcade arena shooter masquerading as a roguelike, with an interesting narrative, a gorgeous sci-fi aesthetic in a bunch of cool environments, and probably the best third person shooting ever conceived.

And really that last one is all that really matters. Returnal is absolutely fantastic action game, nothing more, nothing less. Whilst it is a third person shooter, it resembles Housemarque's own Nex Machina and the likes of Twin stick shooters for the most part, with a heavy focus on enemy prioritisation, strafing, and "cutbacks" through gaps in enemy attacks, formations and such to gain positional advantages. Throw in a extremely versatile melee attack with some generous snap-to-target, a dash, and a grappling hook you get in the second area and it's just super good. It's particularly great at adapting the style to the third dimension using environmental features and verticality to evade enemy attacks and bullet formations. Add on top of that a limited, but extremely fun and varied set of weapons, and it just works so damn well. The large arena fights in particular are an absolute joy.

And then you throw on top the roguelike elements. It's a mixed bag in that whilst I feel a lot of it is pretty pointless, there's a few little aspects of it that lend such a huge amount to the game. The first is the sheer tension this adds to runs. Returnal is all about tension, the feeling of getting so far and ending back at the start with very little to your name. It makes the encounters feel even better, makes every loss of health worse, and punishes you hard when you fuck up. It's basically like getting to a lategame stage of an arcade game, and it works so well. Also ties fairly nicely with the aesthetic and narrative.

And of all things for the narrative to be actually good was the one thing I was not expecting. The closest comparison I can think of to it would be Alex Garland's Annihalation. I wouldn't want to go much further than that, but I think if you're into that sort of thing, or maybe things like Silent Hill's narratives, you'll dig this, and I certainly did. It also has some fantastic wham moments. It maybe relies a bit too hard on the use of audiologs, and this sort of narrative is never going to be for everyone, but I thoroughly liked it, and it all came together nicely for me in the end.

It's a bit rough around the edges - how it launched without a save system is beyond me, the weapon and difficulty balance is a bit weird, there's not a huge amount of different rooms per biome, and I would appreciate more difficulty options - and I get the impresison a lot of this stuff will be addressed in patches, fortunately.

But don't let any of that put you off. This is for my money, the best third person shooter ever made by a long shot, as well as just one of the finest action games available - and when you interweave that with it's presentation and narrative, it ends up something really quite special.

I’ve held off on writing about this game for awhile due to needing more time to absorb it all. I’m still playing this game even though I’ve beaten it, and I think, just like Yharnam or my friend, Isaac’s mom, I’ll be returning readily for a long while.

I love the cryptic, Lovecraftian nature of Atropos and the ever-changing environment that begs for our heroine's blood. Some of the biomes fall flat, but it’s such a small issue that it’s not really worth complaining about.

The gameplay loop, with its heavy hitting weapons that just light the screen up and the frantic and lightning movement, is pure bliss. Honestly, I’ve even woken up early just so I can play it before work. The bosses aren’t on Bloodbourne's level, for example, but they are still stunning in their beautiful attacks and Lovecraft image.

I spent ages trying to piece together the plot and paint my own mental picture of this visual and mental trauma that Selene goes through, and I love that Soulsbourne-esque archaeological take on a story. The game's difficulty never really feels bad, as there is never really a feeling of punishment; like Sisyphus, you just push the boulder again.

I will be abandoning Helios for years to come.

I love this game so much. I love this game so much I dream about it. I love how every mechanical decision is built on some marketing quirk for the Playstation 5 hardware. I love that it is purely a fetish object. I love the way its narrative - which would be stupid, shallow, and unaffecting in any other medium - flows into a kind of demonic poetry, where its symbology slips into vestiges of Gamerdom (audio logs, the amalgamation of proc gen elements within its metroidvania structure, walking sim interludes). I love its bombastic cruelty. I love its bifurcated, cartoonishly sinister rhyming. I love that it is not the self versus the self or the self versus the world but the self versus hell. I love the coy way its upgrades only become useful once you have gone long enough without them. I love its pacing, which asks you to learn an area intimately and then flee through it to have enough psychological stamina for repeated efforts, an intentional barrier where the obstacle is just your willingness to give yourself over to what the game is teaching you, to forget you have ever played anything else, "immersion" as total mental submission. I love its bosses. I love Blue Oyster Cult. I love that beneath the skeleton is an astronaut. I love that Returnal is not enough, even for itself. I love that I loathe that this is the platonic ideal of the video games we have built for ourselves. Our best is ancient as the titans of an arcade's high score, Y.O.U. Most of all, I love that Returnal exists as a cacophony of echoes with no aural vanishing point; Plug your ears and the tone only gets deeper and louder.

Muito muito bom. Antes de jogar Returnal, já havia visto um vídeo cheio de spoilers e lido diversas críticas do jogo, mas mesmo assim a experiência foi fantástica. Descobrir os mistérios dos biomas, entender Helios, e, por conseguinte, quem é a protagonista, são questões criadas através do gameplay com maestria.

Em termos de hardware, jogar com o Dualsense e o Pulse 3D melhorou bastante minha experiência. O audiodesign do jogo é fantástico e muito bem implementado para headsets com Áudio 3D/Dolby Atmos.


Enfim, Returnal é um jogo extremamente criativo e inteligente, que não subestima a capacidade de abstração do jogador e, por incrível que pareça, também não é tão desafiador em termos de jogabilidade, ao contrário do que os críticos me fizeram crer.

Leading the sudden new trend of timeloop games, ahead of Deathloop and Twelve Minutes, Returnal is not exactly breaking new ground but has plenty going for it.
One of the better showcases of the PS5's versatile haptic feedback, the game's inventive variation of weapons, gadgets, monsters and ever changing level structures almost keep the gameplay from feeling too repetitive. A lot of attention has clearly been given to the pacing, particularly speed and movement of your laser-gun tooting heroine, who can usually outrun any big fight in order to get to that bit you died on hours ago!
It's also nice to see borrowings from horror games in its mystery narrative structure and spooky first person segments.
But, after the hours of gamplay, I did find the ending to be underwhelming: without spoiling anything, the final 'revelation' occurs and the game just comes to an end, it's pretty cinematic but game-wise unrewarding. I always mention this goddamn game but Silent Hill 2 nails that kind of an ending with the gut punch reveal followed by a whole final level in which you come to terms with what happened and, as a result, face that final inner demon as a boss.
In summary, as smooth as it is to play, Returnal probably works best in short bursts, otherwise starting again can be tiresome.

Do you see the White Shadow?

Have you ever played a game you are not sure if you are even going to like it, but still give it a go? Not only this was me with this one, but it also happened to my brother. The idea to play it was his, as he had downloaded it to try it out himself but saw it had co-op, and since we share a PS+ Extra subscription, might as well join him!

Returnal begins in a very peculiar manner. One of the first things you see after starting to play, is the corpse of your own character, Selene, and shortly after, you are probably going to get killed by an enemy that is 5 times your size. Start getting used to this, it's going to happen a LOT, that difficulty warning when you first boot up the game isn't just for show

As a Roguelike, Returnal shares a lot of things that you have probably seen in other games of the genre, every run will not play like the previous one unless you really try to, all while you quickly fall in love with the amazing gunplay (Hollowseekers, Full Auto Thermogenics and Leech Rounds Carbines are the best weapons by the way don't fucking fight me over this), snappy movement (I mean, hell, you even get a grappling hook as you progress, who doesn't like those?), great boss fights and mechanics that reward you heavily as you improve and become better at surviving and dominating the high skill-high rewards aspects of it

I never considered myself a big fan of it, unless it was either extremely fun (like Risk of Rain 2, Slay the Spire) or it was trying to tell a great story (like Hades). Returnal does both, by telling one that uses its cosmic horror aspects to invoke a feel of helplessness and dread that keeps you wanting to know more, and the same time having yourself realize that the more you learn, the worse the situation gets. And like in most of my reviews, that's as far as I can go without getting into spoilers.

However, it's hard to pitch someone a $70 game of a genre that is niche on its own, but if you really enjoy this kind of game or just difficult ones in general, consider picking this one up (or if you have a PS5, try it out in PS+ Extra)

Oh, by the way, if you decide to play this in Co-op, be aware that there are some game breaking bugs on it that were never patched so you might need to do some workarounds with them, some of them would cost the runs I had with my brother on its entirey

Roguelikes são fundamentados em repetição. Detalhes de terminologia ignorados; seguimos. Às vezes essas repetições são absolutas, cada vida uma página em branco; outras, vamos lentamente construindo pedaços de um inteiro - um personagem, uma narrativa, um entendimento, um arsenal. Mas por que repetir? Existe algo que pode ser entendido de maneiras diferentes quando composto pelas mesmas palavras? Mantras e orações - repetidos infinitamente, um tijolo de cada vez chegando mais perto de uma iluminação.

Returnal se repete. Não muito, mas as frases são longas, um pouco além da conta. Cada ida no carrossel te alimentando um pouquinho mais sobre um mistério - ora iluminando o caminho, ora mostrando que a sombra era muito maior do que se esperava. O cerne de cada ciclo é um balé letal, onde eles propõem a dança: tudo se resume a dançar no ritmo deles, e responder da forma que pode - aniquilação absoluta do outro lado sendo o único fechar das cortinas. O mistério é vasto - por que e como? Onde e quando? Aqui e lá? Ele e eu? Cada passo incerto no desconhecido, se encontra chão, constrói uma base segura para se reconstituir - entre os ciclos de violência há trégua, e nesse espaço pode-se planejar com as poucas peças que o jogo te fornece. Por que repetir? Releituras - novos olhos em um texto inerte trazem perspectiva inédita. Água mole em pedra dura tanto bate até que fura.

Returnal se repete. Não só entre si. Pode-se dizer que este Ícaro subiu nos ombros dos gigantes - Isaac, principalmente - para alçar voo, e na subida aprendeu alguns truques próprios. Embora as entranhas não sejam nada revelador, a experiência momento a momento é absurda: Atropos tem uma voz através dos ambientes, suas paisagens - sonoras e visuais - evocam todo o duplo, triplo, múltiplo sentido que o jogo quer te provocar: curiosidade, medo, maravilha, nojo, melancolia, raiva, arrependimento. Prometeus foi buscar o fogo e trouxe também o Dualsense: em meio ao frenesi do combate, o controle pulsa vivo em suas mãos, extensão direta do tato como agente do jogo. Por que repetir? É apenas humano - academia, terapia, estudos, relacionamentos. Somos seres de rotina, e através dela construímos tudo. É de grão em grão que a galinha enche o bico.

Returnal se repete. Atropos se repete. Selene se repete. Por que? Não demora muito para o jogo deixar claro. Abandonar Helios e se jogar em direção ao desconhecido, ao perigoso, até que tudo faça sentido. Mas não é exatamente assim que funciona. Nem toda conclusão é uma conclusão ideal; nem toda jornada se conclui quando queremos, também. Queria que houvessem mais palavras neste dicionário, queria que me mostrasse mais lados de si. Não obstante os detalhes, Returnal é uma história que só pode ser contada assim: paulatina, mântrica, altos eufóricos seguidos de planejamento neurótico, um lampejo por vez.

Returnal is an impossible game.

Not in the sense that it's difficult (and it is), but as a product and work of fiction it is full of contradictions, and yet the result is fantastic.

Returnal it's intense, action-packed and has Housemarque's arcade sensibilities all over it, and yet it's also has an incredibly engrossing atmosphere and sense of space.

Returnal is a rogue-like with a very high level of challenge, that expects (and wants you) to die dozens of times before seeing it through, and yet it's also very narrative-focused, making sure every single thing present in its world has a deeper meaning and purpose.

Returnal is has unbelievably tight controls, with some of the most satisfying movement you'll ever experience in a 3D game, which seems to signal it's all about its gameplay and the narrative may only be there to add flavor, and yet Selene's predicament and further struggles are very much at the center of it all and can serve as the main drive to encourage the player to keep on trying.

Returnal is brutally difficult, at times can even feel unfair in some ways, due in no small way to its unusual run times bordering in an hour per run, and maybe even two. And yet it was just impossible to me to give up on it, no matter how many times I got destroyed by the same mini-boss the game threw at me by surprise when I clearly wasn't well-equipped enough to stand a chance against yet.

It's incredible to me that after seeing its true ending after many struggles and a lot of incremental growth as a player, what drives me to go back to this outstandingly fun game is its story. It won't leave my mind to the point I just have to spend more time in the ever dangerous and merciless Atropos, because I simply have to see every nook and cranny it has to offer.

We are all capable arbiters of our own destruction. In the face of trauma, loss, anxieties of the world we chase specters, seeking solace in vacuums where nothing can touch us. But the metaphorical monsters follow, twisted by our own attempts to forget and leaving them in fragments that we are forced to piece together again for any attempt to heal to succeed.

This destruction permeates, festering and swelling until it is our own purgatorial hell. Returnal is Silent Hill 2, it's also Housemarque's past properties, it's also Arrival. It's a weaving gripping story as much as it is a compounding stressful game to play. They're intertwined, for every artifact that saves us is the same one that shoots us down. To gain is to lose, and to lose is to gain. And in that mind-numbing dance we hope that eventually we'll find answers and ASCEND.

But we don't, we return. The choice to journey alone against the dark within is a futile one. We may eventually piece things back together yes, but an outside hand was needed at some point or else the result is the same, the crash repeats. Cyclically. You can help future versions, but those same notes will hurt you too. You are not perfect at envisioning how you will respond to yourself later as much as you can now.

But is that really true? Are we really incapable of breaking the cycle? Perhaps there is a way. Once we've come to terms with our traumas, pieced together things, maybe now the grieving can begin. And then trial after trial, we can come to accept our fractured home and our multitudes, trace them to where they began, and then move on.

There's more to it than I can effectively take away and regurgitate here. Our souls are simply denser than that. Selene's journey is complicated and painful, and crossing every cycle is punishing and difficult. You can choose to remain strong, but the twist is that there's no real destination for you here. This is her story to let go and you can ride it as long as you like.

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I can wax prose like this, but there's simply no way I can do that and comprehensively talk about everything I love here. So this is now when we zoom out, lol. I hope you enjoyed that. As much as Returnal deserves something that considers it in all its interwoven nature, I would like to spend time on just how much it gets right.

Housemarque really just outdid themselves here, something I would've never expected were I following them before this game came out. The sense of scale to where this third person shooter roguelite seamlessly works with its narrative and ethereal elements is incredible!! I enjoyed every boss, each of them forced me to sit still for a moment and understand what I needed to work on and use as soon as possible. Biggest shout out to the fourth boss that really shat on me and said "dashes are not a spammable escape tool. They can be smokescreen to slaughter equally as much as assisting." In other words, sometimes it's better to just WALK. The bullet patterns match this, each of them require different ways of moving, jumping, traversing. The harder and optional minibosses near the end especially emphasize the limits of your toolset. At a lot of points there was a re-evaluation of what my main strategy to traversing the area is. This led to a lot of heart-pounding scrambly moments, and when the roguelite elements showed their ugly face on top of me that only beat me down further. You have to be prepared for the worst case scenario at all times, but you can't afford to stay strictly safe either if you want to grasp victory!!

Also god the aesthetic is so great, I love how Returnal is visually and it never compromises clarity. There are times in Resogun and Nex Machina where I couldn't 'really' see things and felt like I was hit cheaply. Of course it was likely my own fault, but the idea is that the clarity isn't exactly perfect as much as I'm having to adjust my vision for particulars. Returnal sidesteps that completely, just perfect layering. Really doesn't go stupid for the sake of next-gen, and as low a bar that is it gives me a smile! Music is incredible too, and if there's one issue I have it's that the official soundtrack doesn't have all of the music and that makes me angry >:(

I had such a good time here. Not a ps5-seller mind you, there'll never be justification for spending $500+ for one game and that in of itself stops me from shoving this game down people's throats. Fucked up. Even still, I can't stop thinking about this game. I had to finish it today and even still I don't feel like i'm done! I will be returning! If by any chance you can touch this experience please do, I implore you. And to a good rest of the year I pray as well!

When you are committed to a mental hospital in the USA, you generally have to consent verbally to surrendering your agency, or someone has to do it for you. You have to do this for the hospital to be able to treat you as "legally insane" so they can lock you up in a room and treat you like a prisoner or an enemy or some kind of other thing. Nurses then work hard to ignore you, doctors that see you for five minutes attempt to either belittle you or goad you into some kind of behavior that confirms their suspicions that you are an unstable and suicidal person that is a danger to yourself and to others. They keep you locked up for a week and make you take pills that make you puke and you aren't allowed to sleep when you want to and you have to pace a circular hall shaped like a fucking panopticon with a nurse's desk in the middle. You will never want to die more than right there.

Why do people want to kill themselves? Because they're depressed? Sure. Depression, usually, means that your brain is chemically deprived of serotonin or other hormones responsible for a healthy internal world. It makes things you like feel less meaningful, makes things you're afraid of more scary, makes things you don't want to do into the heaviest weights imaginable. It's easy to look at this and just say, yes, we need antidepressants, we need therapy, we need whatever other number of things to treat this fucked up serotonin vacuum.

So you get therapy and antidepressants and you give them an honest try and you end up in the psych ward anyway. You open your eyes again and it's a frustratingly familiar sterile white fiber board ceiling. A man one room over screams about how he wants to kill his bitch of a wife, how he wants to strangle himself. You will never want to die more than right there.

Why do we never ask what has led people to these states of serotonin drought? Is it because you are just designated "legally insane," that there is some integral piece of you that was made broken that must be rectified by the sparkling techno-brilliance of modern medicine? Is it because you are simply a lazy whiner that has had it too easy and the reason you are falling to pieces is the shattering weight of your own malaise?

Or is it maybe that there's not a solution so simple. Maybe the very fiber of what we've come to understand as living is fucked. Maybe it's the fact that the ambulance ride that took you to the hospital costs you several thousands of dollars. Maybe it's that you couldn't even afford to see the therapist they recommended you in the first place. Maybe it's that you can't hold down a steady job because they demand so much for so little and your hands shake when your manager raises their voice. Maybe it's because when you were young felt some kind of sting on your skin or in your mind and you couldn't even begin to imagine how long that sting would stay. Maybe it feels like you are shouldering the weight of something at all times, and it is invisible. You can't point to anything to say:

"Look now, doctor. Look at my burden. Look what I am coming apart under. Please, help me. Please, I want to be free of this. Lay poppies by my bedside if you must. Please."

What you actually say to the doctor isn't that. You say "sometimes I think about killing myself," and that's all it takes for the shape in the doctor's mind to be something broken, bruised and insane. You are wrong, no matter how much it feels to you like the world has been wrong. All you've wanted to do is explore it, to have some answers. You don't get that. You're stuck here. You can't even kill yourself. They tell you this hell is your own making. You believe them.

Small edit:
I recommend beating this game in a single sitting without stopping. The PC optimization is terrible though, fair warning.

[ATROPOS_SCOUT_LOG_#01]://“DualSense"

The drizzle of rain rippling through my fingers. Stone hearts pulsating, shocks to my system. A fog unending. This ain’t home but the place where I must be. The ghost of Sisyphus lost in a dark forest where the rivers run red with neon-blood at her feet.

This is not an ordinary planet. Everything here wants [to kill] me. The worm-fed wolves and the speckled colossi uncoiling their endless garments of tentacles. Selene gets bashed into her suit by a biological blade slicing through the bullet rainbow. Azure echoes, a scan. Soft waves washing over my palms, producing new images, forming a sense of space built on the past-pulled directions of her previous deaths - rubber-banded triggers and reflexes snatching at the pressure of our fingers, dashes across a yard of grass, concealing its cosmic horrors, gestating new ones, each loot chamber a tomb filled with little dilemmas like a gun or another gun or a malignancy that’s worth the bite it will inflict on your virtual corpse once the creeper’s been fed if only I could survive that long - come through the other side of the mirror not unscathed but changed, finally, freed from the kind of anxious death-drive repetition forces upon you with its binaries of risk and reward. The sepulchral horror of Returnal’s feedback loop isn’t so much the impossibility of our escape as it is the unveiling of desire’s deepest seat; Selene - and by extension the player - are exactly where they’re meant to be, embedded within this unbelievably tight system of dashes and haptics, movement mechanics that thankfully prioritize responsiveness over groundedness complimented by an array of weapons each embodying distinct ways of approaching and eradicating our outer demons in this inner hell - and god does it feel good to burst this Hollowseeker open, watch Ixion fold into a cloud of golden dust; to see polygons devolve by my hand and understand this information in the skin directly then commits the player to kinesthesia as a form of immersion in which Returnal refuses subjugation and offers a direct line of conversation with the text instead - the best rumblescape since Rez’s Trance Vibrator. I’d go one step further even : Atropos as a sexual device. Of parasites latching onto my arm and skin saturated in power-ups. Digital matter that burrows in my brain's DualSense, carries me over this teleporter and away. Pop the bubble bath. Selene crumbles like the feeble being of particles that she is before reappearing somewhere else. Another room, another reverberation, this time I fail miserably at dispatching the heretic Phrike but I’ll soon be here again no doubt, and if not here then perhaps up in this spire that festers into infinity, grinding the score, collecting poppy flowers, attempting to make sense of the frenzy of it all. Bared tendrils at the mere sight of me, so I respond in kind - they tear me to pieces, they send me under.

Hihi, Atropos.

-

[ATROPOS SCOUT LOG_#02] :// “DreamSequence”

“Her name was Echo and she made the mistake of helping Zeus succeed in one of his sexual conquests. Hera found out and punished Echo, making it impossible for her to say anything except the last words spoken to her. Soon after, Echo fell in love with Narcissus whose obsession with himself caused her to pine away until only her voice remained. Another lesser known version of this myth has Pan falling in love with Echo. Echo, however, rejects his amorous offers and Pan, being the god of civility and restraint, tears her to pieces, burying all of her except her voice. Adonta ta mete. [—Adonta ta… = “Her still singing limbs.”]”

- Chapter V, House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski

Between every crash, a vision. Dreams in cathode ray-tubes and ocean-memories leaking through [her] with each failed attempt, a corrosive force of time itself, a marriage happening in reverse. Days falling into darkness; back to the beginning. In that particular fold of forest green a house stands - stood - still. Upon entrance, on the left wall just before a flight of stairs resonates with unknown footsteps, there hangs, I remark, the wooden-carved face of a sun left alone long ago. My son. Her daughter. Someone else’s Pandora's box - the soft voyeurism of play as metaphor. If DualSense’s intent was to obfuscate, to render tenuous and tactile the delineation between player and character then the house serves an opposite function - it sings with echoes, granting my poor astronaut the corporeal presence she so desperately craves in order to grasp the dream sequence and tear this body away from me. In her first-person perspective, at last, a new symbolic layer of reality touched in artifacts. Each passage through the house's pristine innards bores new holes in the narrative whilst grounding Selene in a larger picture of Returnal as an object both about her and itself - incapable of escaping its own maze of contradictions. But it's never enough. For me, for her. Even in death the proverbial rug is pulled from under us; to end her life on Earth means the same for Selene as it does on Atropos. We never escaped. And in this realization something shifts in our perception. Biomes of meaning begin to coalesce as crimson wastes become fractured and composed again, a ruin overgrown no longer and instead echoing our knowledge of design, confronting it to that of a decaying specter - except there's no one to race against but ourselves, frolicking in lasered flesh, taking a certain pleasure in charting that tract of scorched earth turned calcified snowmetal, in knowing that the planet glances back at us with every variation of its arcade terminologies. Sometimes on the ground you find a music box. Couple of omens, couple of tunes. Suddenly Returnal shrinks - and then expands. This planet is real, I’m convinced of it and the more Selene remembers, the more she seems to forget. I was lost in a forest once but now, it seems, I am trapped at the bottom.

Smile, Atropos.

-

Further journal entries will be added, in due time.

I know this just now got its release on an accessible platform, but I'm a little surprised that I've been hearing about a different plot-heavy action roguelite steeped in Greek mythology for years now.

Returnal uses every element of its design to work towards its central theme. The plot is constantly introducing you to something else that doesn't fully make sense right as you've come to understand the last clue. Knowledge of Greek mythology will help a player quite a lot and let you skip ahead a bit in making sense of what's going on, but even then I found my own theories about the plot to be ever-shifting, and I'm sure if I went back to complete more of the Tower I'd find them changing yet again. I won't say much else because I think continually going "oh my god" (good realization) and "oh my god" (terrifying realization) is a key part of the experience, and I'd like to preserve that as much as possible for anyone who hasn't yet played it.

What I will say is that the game (story-wise) is deliberately unpleasant, making this possibly the first roguelite plot I've seen where your inevitable failure does not feel like something the developers have to hand-wave away to keep things moving. Your goals are vague - much of the game is spent with the objective of reaching something that Selene is fixated on. Instead of a surmountable, heroic challenge, the whole thing feels eerie and unnerving - a desperate, irrational struggle through the tendrils towards a distant, beckoning something that holds little chance of being friendly. The tentacles and tendrils and all the other ways that the forest grasps at you, the way the same forest has... a run-down house resembling nothing else on the planet? The way the ambient soundtrack sounds wispy and ethereal and flowing and aquatic, interrupted by unnatural stutters and surges of sound that lends the entire environment a feeling of vastness that simultaneously has too much and frighteningly little going on.

And it's because it all works so well together that the most video game-like parts of it begin to stick out. To be clear, this is a nitpick: I was tempted to start this off by saying that the fights are "too good". The further I progress, the more I'm thinking about the story, and the harder I can feel my thoughts being violently yanked off-course by seeing a gun on the ground and having to decide if it's better for the challenge ahead than the one I'm using. It's a nitpick because these encounters are still fun, the items still suit the game thematically - the only pure upgrades you get in Returnal are traversal tools - but after each fight I find myself thinking about consumables, one of the very few elements present that feel like they don't belong. To be honest with you, it's probably necessary if you want players to continue through multiple deaths, because combat in Returnal has been pretty aggressively trimmed down to a (very strong) set of action game fundamentals. Removing the most game-y elements would arguably suit the mood a little better, but those same bits that I'm griping about are the only parts that allow you some room for mistakes.

It is the best attempt at working a story into a roguelike I've seen yet, and if you ask me it's worth picking up based on that fact alone. Selene is a character with genuine depth, and the game is fully committed to exploring that depth.

Returnal is the first true next gen experience (other than maybe Astros Playroom) I had, since I was lucky enough to get the PS5 day one. I didn't really expect to play it early on or maybe at all. But the high praise from this community and the atmosphere evident in the trailers made me wanna jump into this.
Returnal is a surprise hit for sure. Even if it's areas are limited, they look beautiful. The sound design is superb and helps give the entire game a cinematic feel, that could fit into the Ridley Scott catalogue easily. You will feel right at home if you're into dark sci-fi horror aesthetics.
It's impressive how the game blends a roguelike gameplay loop with a mysterious story sprinkled in between the runs and areas. It never feels out of place and helps keep the interest even if the repetition of some areas might get tedious for some after a while.
The gameplay itself is what you would expect when you're into the genre. It's roguelike done right, but not perfect. I missed a greater sense of progression I felt in some other games of the genre, that made the losing and repetition of areas feel less like a punishment, but more like an integral part of the experience and getting better. I couldn't help but feel some of the runs I did here to be a complete waste of time because of a little mistake I made at the end. This especially gets frustrating, when you are forced to do multiple areas in one run.
However, if you spend 70+ hours in this game like I did, you will get better of course and you will see a significant difference to your early runs. By the end of grinding I was able to go through the entire game without using more than 1 or 2 resins. I felt extremely powerful as my move set and weapon usage became more and more sophisticated. It felt like playing a third person Doom Eternal in that sense and that's one of the highest compliments I can give. Movement is impeccable - fluid and responsive and perfectly underlined by the haptic feedback of the Playstation 5 controller.
Getting the Platinum and unveiling every bit of story there was to find, was fun for the most part, but ended up being a very heavy grind that will be the last time I go for a trophy that's rng based.
Overall I think I can only recommend Returnal to a certain kind of player. If you know what you're in for and expect to die a lot, than you will definitely have a great time. If not, you should reconsider spending any money on this.
I'm extremely interested in what Housemarquee will come up with next, as their AAA third person shooter roguelike debut is impressive.

What an absolutely beautiful, perfectly imperfect game: a blend of arcade shooting and addictive exploration, with a narrative coating of hard sci-fi shot through with deep human trauma.

The full story has to be coaxed out via many, many deaths and retries, like any roguelike; and while it's far from perfectly executed, I am just absolutely smitten by its sheer ambition. They could have made a game about, just, shooting evil aliens to save the world, and it would have been fine; instead they've made a game about excavating the remains of lost, intricate extraterrestrial civilizations, and tied it in with a personal exploration of the main character, Selene, in ways that I don't even fully understand but that are delightful and weird and, at times, desperately sad.

At the end of the day, though, engagement with the dense and fragmented story is essentially optional: Housemarque have done a brilliant job keeping the pace of the game blazing-fast, using only bite-sized cinematics or audio-logs to pepper things gradually with thematic and emotional heft as you blast your way through what are, perhaps, the most gorgeously designed enemies in any videogame, ever.

Seriously--this game looks amazing. The way your neon weapon-fire pierces through the rainy haze in the first biome is just spectacular. The way the tentacular enemies move and explode is artisinally crafted. The bosses are electric lightshows of dizzyingly intricate bullet patterns that bring to mind the top-down arcade shoot-em-ups of yore, testing your ability to aim and dodge simultaneously in some incredibly unique ways.

It's the FEEL of the game that makes it so thrilling, so replayable. The weight of your melee attacks, and the way you home in on enemies from a slight distance with a slash of your sword, is just right. The variety in gunplay styles is expansive. The speed and fluidity with which you can tear through the environments, slashing at turrets and then jumping and dashing and grappling to dodge away from enemy fire, all while spinning and shooting, is modern-dance-esque.

That's a lot of words to say something that, at its core, is very simple: at the level of individual encounters, the game is really, really, really fun to play.

That being the case, there's no lack of frustration to be had, as beating the game is EXTREMELY difficult. A good, long hour-and-a-half run can be ended in the blink of an eye by one of the game's particularly evil malformed enemies. Bosses will rain bullets on you without mercy, making you feel helpless and like you'll never progress. The way the game is designed to account for this, though--never making you beat a boss more than once, and allowing you to skip to later biomes on subsequent runs if you've already accessed them-- is a triumph, and something that should be implemented in every roguelike. You don't HAVE to suffer through the entirety of the game, playthrough after playthrough. You CAN, in order to increase your power (in one of the game's many brilliant risk/reward balancing acts) -- but you don't have to. And giving the player choices in this way, it turns out, is how to make a roguelike not feel smothering and maddening, and still make it plenty difficult.

I say Returnal is a perfect imperfect game because not a single one of its flaws detracted at all from the core experience of sheer exhilaration I had whlie playing it. Sure, the story is a big, weird mess. It doesn't matter! Dive in if you want, or ignore it entirely. Sure, you find yourself seeing the same environments over and over, which can be annoying; but it allows you to intricately learn them, and all their nooks and crannies, so that eventually, in later playthroughs, you can fly through them, grabbing items and blasting enemies and moving on. Every single item that I initially thought was pointless and a waste of game-space ended up saving my ass at some point later down the line. All of this is to say that: for me, the game's initial annoyances eventually melted away as I got better and learned more, and every playthrough then became a nirvana of uninhibited run-and-gun bliss.

Housemarque deserves an immense amount of credit for creating a triple-A game that is as strange and heartfelt as it is gloriously smooth to play. I put 35 hours into like it was nothing, and finally beat it; and it will be the first roguelike I've ever played where I'll be diving right back in for more.

Constant danger against the unknown and even yourself

I have little experience with the previous Housemarque titles other than the first PS Vita game I ever bought being Super Stardust Delta and if there's anything I can remember about that game is that it was just a huge explosion of effects and explosions bordering on a Michael Bay production. Returnal essentially brings that in their first huge endeavor and became one of the most unique games I have ever played. Now you're probably thinking "A roguelike being unique? The genre has been over flooded by indie developers in the past decade!" and while I agree with that sentiment, the way they handled progression while keeping the action and difficulty at the perfect spot is bordering on magical that it never felt upsetting when you eventually die other than the time commitment. Returnal is not for the faint-hearted, this is a challenging and grueling game but also forgiving in actually giving you checkpoints through the entire campaign while making things slowly easier over time.

The story and the gameplay structure of it is surprisingly personal and ambitious. It won't win any major awards but it does a great job complementing the whole experience. Most of the story is told via audio logs and first person PT like segments that feel fragmented but eventually get put together in a sense in the end. I won't spoil any of the story for obvious reasons but I will go into the gameplay structure of it. Although being a roguelike, Returnal is pretty forgiving in its progression structure that you won't have to repeat specific objectives constantly. Getting further in each run will make your future runs easier just for the completion of said objectives and unlocking tools and equipment that almost feels like a Metroidvania in the most broad sense possible. An example would be spending an hour getting yourself ready for the boss of the first level and managing to defeat it, you'll be giving a key which acts as a means for the next area and some equipment that will make previous inaccessible areas during your run accessible for your future runs. Now say you die in the second area and feel the dread of starting over, you will still have the said key to go into the next area immediately without facing anybody as long as you manage to find it and a pick up at the start will top you off with enough proficiency that you won't feel too far behind. This also doesn't mention the permanent equipment you get which allows you to access and explore most of the areas previously cut off thus giving your more resources and items and thus making your runs easier. Some objectives later on will be more difficult and require more time to be commited before making a permanent checkpoint but the game hopes you take each time and learn the game little by little until you can get back to the same spot with more health and extra chances.

Returnal's gameplay is bordering on being on an adderal fueled bullet hellscape in a great way. The variety of guns you'll encounter feel extremely fun to use with each of them having perks you can unlock permanent that improve them or completely change the way how the gun works. The main thing that makes Returnal's gameplay so rewarding is the movement and the enemy design and attack patterns though. Selene moves like a dream with her dash and speed to match with the enemies that are just as aggressive. They somehow managed to make a third person shooter with insane bullet hell mechanics work extremely well and each encounter feels rewarding when you dodge into a melee attack or get some great shots in that gibs an enemy. The enemy designs are excellent here too with specific enemies in each biome acting different and having different attacks that keeps your on your toes especially since it can all happen at once. Returnal rewards movement above all else and gives you the actual attacks that require that you be perfect with dashes and moving around the map along with some of the best feeling guns I've used in a game in recent time. All of this also using Dual Sense which I think is used extremely well here. Each gun firing has a different feel of vibration that really makes you feel like you're firing that gun in real life along with the sound effects from your controller telling your alternative fire is ready that makes this also an extremely immersive experience on top of that. It's not a roguelike without power ups and Returnal has those in spades but also focusing more on risk and reward from my experience playing the game. You have artifacts which are your usual roguelike buffs in a run which have no downsides, parasites which work as giving you a buff and a debuff at the same time sometimes one outweigh the other one hard and malignant items which have you risk getting the item in exchange of getting a debuff which can range from situational or something extremely important with the only conventional way of removing it being completing the objective given to you by it. I personally always risk one if I have none but you never want too many or risk a critical malfunction which can destroy an item in your inventory. The maps in Returnal or the room structures will definitely become familiar in structure after a while but enemy placements will always be different and where you see the rooms during a run as well. Returnal truly relies on two things: your own skill and a bit of good luck and not getting an enemy early on that will one shot you but if once you get into the rhythm of the gameplay, it somehow gives me the "one more run" feeling despite how long runs are in this game.

The soundtrack does a lot to elevate the atmosphere and the level design each biome has. Each biome truly feels different in the enemy variety, the layout of the levels in general and just how each place has been affected by the events of the game. It's almost bordering on horror sometimes with how eerie the first person house sections are and traversing up a spire and hearing this organ music playing and getting louder and louder until I was at the source. Returnal truly uses everything the PlayStation 5 has and can do to make the sounds feel visceral and haunting bordering on having the controller literally screaming at you at certain moments.

I really loved Returnal honestly. It took me around eightteen hours to finally beat the game and it never got frustrating or fun despite the deaths and commitment to time. The fast frantic gunplay while having to dodge particles like as if they were drops of rain while even running for your life will only get you so far accompanying it with a great narrative and being extremely immersive that I forget myself sometimes. Returnal is truly a challenging game and you will probably feel like giving up at certain points. If you don't want a challenge then you should look elsewhere. Housemarque tends to make arcade style games and them creating this roguelike narrative experience feels like the evolution in a sense. This game feels like a console seller to me alone just for how well it uses the consoles to its absolute limit. With news of a PC version coming soon, I don't know how they'll manage to make the weapons feel with no haptics, it was that good. An extremely fun roguelike taking a few ideas from Metroidvanias in how equipment and item progression work to act like checkpoints and making runs easier but only for the strongest of wills.

Returnal's tight gameplay loop is enough to keep you coming back until the end, though that ending will almost certainly disappoint if you were hoping for sensible closure.

Parts of Returnal are very well done: the textures and lighting effects in all of the varied level environments look great. Some enemies you fight have a dreamlike fluidity in their animations that accentuates how "alien" they are. Your visor splinters and cracks at low health and the music here can be beautiful yet haunting.

But there's not too many weapon choices, and some of them aren't viable (or at least sensible) at all. The pistol will be dropped as soon as possible and even when one is level 30, you'll ignore it every time. The Hollowseeker will do a bit of the aiming for you, but I've never found one that wasn't abnormally weak for its level. Weapons like the Dreadbound are unique and interesting, but why gamble with one when you know exactly what you're in for with the shotgun? None of these weapons have sound effects I really cared for, either, they were all just serviceable.

Returnal went for a plot that really reminds me of Signalis, and without spoiling either, I'll say I don't really like this choice. I actually think the style of how both told their stories was good, I enjoy how both games went into first person in important segments, creating a great juxtaposition. But as for the plot itself, not my cup of tea. Like Signalis, if you want as close to closure as you're going to get, you need to find its secret ending. Here, that requires potentially many more runs through all six levels until you find a fragment in each. I liked the gameplay when I was unlocking new stuff, loops for keys for a cutscene wasn't enticing me to stick around. I watched the secret ending on YouTube and I think I dodged a bullet, there.

I'm glad I tried Returnal and I think its gameplay is enough to keep you hooked (again, just like Signalis) to the "end", but probably not the actual end. Though I liked what felt like Hideo Kojima or David Lynch-inspired horror segments, I think the story was a bit of a disappointing dud. I still think if you like third person shooters, you should give this a try when you can nab it on sale.

Yeah, it's a brutally tough roguelike inevitably inhering the divisive traits of the genre, striking a tricky balance between that adventurous excitement of every new run and the frustration of progress beholden to RNG. All that being said, Returnal is my favourite PS5 exclusive so far, one of the most conceptually ambitious titles PlayStation Studios has published in years and one of the highlights of the year. A beautifully surreal cosmic horror narrative encases absurdly tight gunplay set in visceral arenas. Both blisteringly modern in its flaunting of particle effects and non-existent load speeds but deliciously old-school with its callbacks to bullet-hell classics like Ikaruga and coin-op shmups begging you to give them one more go. The more I played, the more I came to appreciate its unique design, its obscure storytelling, its ruthless difficulty. Moments of frustration paled in comparison to the ridiculous highs I felt during far greater portions of the game. A brilliant achievement by Housemarque and gave me a bit of faith in the industry once again.