Housemarque is known for their excellent bullet hell score based shooters, mostly simple in design but extremely addicting. Returnal is by far their most ambitious game going full third person action game with a very ambitious story and rogue like level design. The shooting is fantastic, as housemarque knows how to make frantic combat but there are elements that could be better.

The good is that the loop of Returnal is very addicting and the progression of getting better and better works so well. The game loop is basically starting on an alien world with random generated levels, these levels all have rules to make them not too different and you will see similar rooms just organized differently. As you explore there are chests and items all over the levels with optional side rooms that have prizes for getting through them. You will gain weapons, artifacts and stat enhancers that give you perks and more to augment Seline in your current run. The goal is to get through three whole worlds, battling a boss at the end of each one, to end the loop. If you die you restart with basically nothing except the few major upgrades you get when you first make significant progress that allows you to access more rooms and secrets.

Guns are acquired as you explore and they all have perks that you have to unlock by using them. You can only have one gun at a time so choosing the correct one is key. They come in all forms from the standard pistol and rifle to a gun that creates a web of lasers as you fire needles into walls and the ground. There are homing rockets, a disc launcher, an alien gun that spits acid pools. There are some guns that are clearly better than others but at the start of each run you have to take what you can find so it can create some interesting situations. As you go deep in a run needing to make a choice between a slower firing gun but with high power or a gun with homing middles but low power is a compelling choice that has serious ramifications for boss battles. This game makes good use of the Dual sense and it’s adaptive triggers, every gun has a secondary fire that is accessed by pushing down all the way on the trigger, for normal fire just fire or lightly press sim though in this game no need to aim down sights, you need to be constantly moving. There is almost a Ratchet and Clank feel to the weapons, I loved using them especially when you get a great combo of perks, oh what a power trip.

The developers decided to make a game about risk and reward by making nearly every item procured have some gift and penalty. There are parasites that you can choose to attach which gives you a perk and a penalty. There are malignant cheats and items that when opened can infect you with a penalty that has some requirement to remove like “kill 30 enemies” or “open 3 chests”. This creates a compelling system where you are constantly weighing whether it’s worth taking a hit for a certain perk that can really help deep in the run. In practice it sounds like it would make each run filled with tough choices but after a while you learn the different combination of rewards and penalties and which ones are easily worth it and which to avoid. Also at a certain point in the run you become so stacked with power than the thought of any penalty is a dumb risk that is not necessary. This resulted in my just ignoring loads of items because I don’t want any of it, I’ll just stick to the normal items.

Enemies in this game are alien creatures that have tenticals and resemble wild animals and Cthulhu monsters. There will be floating squid things, tiger like creatures, floating drones, gigantic hulking beasts and they all have their own attack patterns and weaknesses. The one thing they all have in common, they will fire all kinds of shit at you, colorful balls of energy that will be flying at you creating that classic bullet hell feel in 3D. To avoid being hit you have a dash with a small invincibility frame to get through the attacks, it gets hectic. Combat rooms become a beautiful dance of you unloading lasers while colorful energy balls or red beams fly at you. It took me a while but I realized the zone I had to get into was just like their classic 2D shooters, it’s navigating a bullet hell, never stop moving while keeping your attack focused on the most threatening enemy.

To replace the combo scoring system there is an adrenaline system that gives you great perks as you kill enemies without being hit. instead of being rewarded with more points it’s for aid to stay alive and make more “money” to buy much needed items. I do lament that there is no score system, there is one in this daily challenge mode that has no connection to the main game, it’s strange because getting a high score is such a great aspect of their past games and made wanting to get better a goal. Now to be fair just getting through this game is a great challenge so that is the impetus to keep pushing your skills but after the game is over there isn’t much to keep going.

I don’t want to spoil much but after the first three levels you unlock three more, and there is no need to play all three. It’s a game of two separate three level runs. After finishing both you basically beat the game, there are secrets to find for another run but it’s not really necessary. I found it to be lacking the end game of games like Hades where beating it feels like the start, instead here it’s kind of over. Also I find it weird that the bosses are only needed to be beat once, the game then lets you bypass them. I feel like bosses should be tentpole moments in this game and doing the “boss rush” is usually the point. The bosses are good but not that great, they extremely tough the first time but learning the patterns and having a good stacked character can make them trivial. Also there are only five, one level strangely just doesn’t have one.

One of the oddest aspects of this game is the very ambiguous story that is more Silent Hill that sci fi adventure. There are moments where you will enter a house in first person and see memories from Seline’s mysterious past. Why is she on an alien planet, why is she stuck in a loop, why is her past haunting her, what do all these diaries and world lore mean. The ending doesn’t really offer any definitely answers, leaving events ambiguous for the player to decide what they feel happened. I appreciate such a simple shooter having such an open ended story that encourages discussion.

The graphics are decent, levels aren’t that detailed and all have a core theme like jungle, desert, snow and so on. The music is exciting when the action gets going, and there is some good moments musically with bosses. I’m not playing this game as some AAA showcase, it’s all about the addicting gameplay and I was hooked for a good 30 hours I would say. It’s not easy, each good run can take 2 hours or more. Many times I would just go “one more” and play like 4 runs in a row and all of a sudden 4 hours went by.

Returnal succeeds in translating Housemargue’s addicting and challenging action into a third person rogue like game. It’s a game that rewards mastery of the weapons and management of the randomized elements. There is a part of the game where I felt I was hitting a wall over and over but slowly I broke through and it felt so great, I love games that have that difficulty curve. I only wish the design of the world and post game were better. I don’t think this is their best game as their older shooters felt so complete, here there are rogue games that do progression and compelling content so much better than Returnal but the shooting is some of the best you will find. Play it for the action.

Overall score: 8.2