Returnal thoughts
The greatest synthesis I made while playing Returnal was that a larger-scale Rogue-type game was always the natural progression from Housemarque’s Arcade-style roots. In thinking about it, Rogues are more forgiving than arcade games that only let you transfer your skills between runs. Applying the Rogue design philosophy to a fast-paced third person shooter and making the leap to a game of this scale is an innovation that Housemarque will always get to claim. Even if the final product isn’t completely for me, I have immense respect for what the team accomplished here. The broken narrative structure
The hell and constant death of Returnal’s First Act drives home the helplessness of Selene’s struggles and eternal entrapment on Atropos. It’s more than crash landing on a derelict, alien planet and wanting to return home. Selene has no escape even in death. Her only actionable option is to fight. The story premise is strong and unrelenting gameplay loop reinforces it. That doesn’t make it a strong loop though.
After dropping Returnal two separate times influenced by many similar reasons, I finally made a breakthrough on my third bout. At the end of the third biome, Derelict Citadel, players are rewarded with the most spectacular fight of the game, Nemesis. Entering in, it’s clear that this is the source of the White Shadow broadcast, but not the end. The conflict is cinematic with an arena that morphs across every phase. Nemesis feels infinite and overwhelming but distinctly fallible. This fight, the story segment following, and the next House Sequence are the peak of Returnal’s story. It reengaged me in a way I hadn’t expected. Losing what I’d built over my winning run was gutting but makes sense in the context of the game. The Overgrown Ruins feel like a true reward.
While no single biome on Atropos is somewhere I want to spend time, Biomes four through six feel far more pleasant than their Act 1 counterparts. Even as the lethality is ratcheted up in all encounters, a heightened adrenaline level, multiple weapon bonuses and overall progression through the game enable a better feeling of play. While still randomized, the structure and layouts of these biomes that are guaranteed still feel more fun to traverse. The tools and transports you’re granted access to come at consistent times; rewards are measured. In a game constantly in the balance of RNG things become a bit more constant for the better.
The Second half of the game being significantly stronger than the first half is to Returnal’s detriment. For a game that already had to surmount a $70 price tag, it does a terrible job of encouraging players to continue pushing and playing. What I felt like were rewards of story and gameplay unlocks came far too late. It becomes painful and a bit taunting to play through the first two biomes, constantly walled by glowing hooks that are inaccessible. This is just the most apparent among several interactables.
As a randomly generated Rogue, Returnal doesn’t benefit from the intentionally designed layouts of metroidvania titles. Typically as you begin to see new areas to interact with that are unreachable, you’ll be close to an upgrade that enables that. By gating upgrades behind completing biomes while constantly including unreachable locations in nearly every room along the way, the game starts to get in its own way. The final unlockable may be the worst. Whether it’s that it comes ~95% through the game or that it enables you to access platforms previously unseen it just feels like a blunder. There were several locations I found myself in trying to clamber up towers and ledges only to later learn there was never an obvious indication that I couldn’t do it. The lack of telegraphing was disappointing.
The structure of the first two acts is a wonderful cadence that causes the final act to fall a bit flat. Retreading the full game to collect new keys to beat it once more for a new cutscene was a bummer.
The laundry list of negatives I built up don’t require quite as much dissection as everything that came before it, so they’ll come in a more haphazard recounting here:
Returnal is not a very good name!
This game should’ve never come out at $70! I was thrilled to play it through the PS Plus Extra Library, which didn’t exist at the time of launch. It certainly would’ve sold more, thus reaching more audiences and becoming a bigger hit if it were priced lower.
I’m beyond hopeful for whatever Housemarque is cooking up next, and that’s bolstered knowing they’re supported as a PlayStation Studio. The future is bright with the potential Returnal signals they are capable of.
The trophy list is so bad it’s almost embarrassing. Heavy RNG trophies tied to each biome that were still awful after a major patch. For a game with so many options and interesting combat encounters, there wasn’t much in the way of using the weapons in a variety of ways. Though including things like that would ultimately invoke even more RNG!
The technical issues cannot be excused. Even playing after the ‘Suspend Cycle’ patch, there were still issues that haunted me. I fell off in earlier attempts after not being able to save runs, losing runs to random updates, anything conceivable. Even then my friend and I were having issues with falling through the world after resuming a cycle, not being able to join up, falling through the world on a cutscene, etc.