Returnal PC Review

Housemarque started their rise to the top in 1996 with Super Stardust and held that position for almost two decades consecutively, but nothing stays the same forever. The developers decided to make the change from Top-Down Arcade Shooters to other genres, which brought us Returnal, Housemarque’s masterpiece and crowning achievement. The release of Returnal marks the beginning of a new era for the studio, but it seems they still maintained some of their original roots from the old Arcade Shooter genre.

The strange thing is, it’s a brilliant combination of Third Person Shooter mixed with just enough Arcade to push it over the top. But the wait is over and the once PlayStation exclusive, came to PC to blow away players with its inspired gameplay mechanics and story. It gives players the roguelike action that can draw in action seekers and story lovers alike, but it does come with a catch, game over means starting over.

 

Returnal puts you in the shoes of an ASTRA Scout, Selene Vassos. Her story starts with her mother, Theia, who dreamed of going into space and explore the stars. After an accident that crushed her mother’s dream, Selene picked where her mother left off and lived out her dream. However, history is doomed to repeat itself, and Selene’s scout ship for reasons unknown crash landed on planet Atropos, not the friendliest or most straightforward place in the galaxy. Atropos plays by different rules when it comes to time and space. Though that leaves you in a predicament involving a time-loop because if you die, you also start over again at the crash site with nothing but a few permanent upgrades.

In this roguelike shooter, your main objective is to find a way to survive and escape the planet Atropos by any means necessary while learning more about what happened to the previous inhabitants. You’re not going in defenseless, you start with your trusty pistol to help you fight what’s out there, but you’ll need to find better weapons and upgrades if you want any hope of surviving. But even more so, escaping. As you progress, you’ll discover more about what happened to the people of Atropos and your many previous iterations through voice logs and translated alien messages.

On Atropos, diamonds won’t help you but a good gun is a girl’s best friend. There are plenty of weapons to pick up as you progress, each bringing a unique play style with it and different ways to help you on your journey. Weapon capability, working similar to a kill count and experience gain combined, will give you massive benefits too in the form of better weapons dropping as you progress adding to the gameplay as you raise your weapon capability level.

 

The weapon alt-fire modes are a unique perk but also life-saving when in a tight spot and can mean the difference between progressing and starting over. Your alt-fire ability is similar to an ultimate ability, it comes with a cooldown but they can range from having the power to melt a champion tier enemy or clear a massive group of enemies. It redefines the meaning behind “power move”, but there is no single alt-fire ability linked to a specific gun. This forces you to be flexible and sometimes make the tough decisions between a gun you like and an alt-fire ability that can level the battleground. It’s all in the luck of the draw.

Encounters might seem instanced as you work your way through the biomes because they have a very linear design (similar to a dungeon crawler) when moving from one area to the next, but you are given alternate paths for more rewards or rest points along with the ability to explore and roam as you please. Each area/room is unique in the sense that you never know what you’ll run into. This is also what makes Returnal so interesting, and every new run is different, so it becomes highly unpredictable. The enemies in you’ll run into are alien-like creatures and turrets that also carry a fair resemblance to the biome you’re currently in. Naturally, because they’re alien in origin, they have more firepower, but their movements can be learned, and that’s where you gain the advantage over them.

One of the most important currencies in Returnal is called Ether, purely because of its versatility. Even though it’s rare to find, if you have enough stockpiled, it might make a huge difference in your current run if you spend it wisely. Though it’s not all run and gun to loot as much as you can, there is also some risk on the odd occasion. The risk in question is Malignancy, you’ll come across chests, health pickups, and much more at random that can be identified as Malignant.

 

It means you can spend your hard-earned Ether to clear the Malignancy, or you can take a chance and pick up the item, but that comes with a chance of earning yourself a drawback or debuff. They can range from minor health drops or taking more damage to more complex debuffs that become worse with certain actions but can usually be removed by completing the conditions they sometimes come with or finding the right item to do the job for you.

Parasites, a small but strange type of pickup, can be found all over as well, they can be seen as extremely useful, but they also bring a downside. As their names suggest, they feed off you, but these Parasites are more symbiotic in the sense where, you give up something in the form of a debuff similar to Malignancy, but they also give back to you through a buff.

It’s a give and take situation in this case. A little care with them goes a long way and with some smart playing, you won’t even notice the debuffs they bring. The key difference between a parasite and a malignancy is, the parasite shows you what you’re getting and giving up, while a malignancy is unknown until you take the gamble. Between Parasites and Malignancy, it becomes a matter of Risk vs. Reward, the risk isn’t always worth it, but that’s for you to decide.

As you progress into the next biomes, it’s not just a new environment to explore and survive, and you’re also greeted by new and different enemies when entering a new biome. Naturally, the change in enemies would mean their attacks and movements change too, and if you’re not careful, you might wake up back at the start again. Keeping on your toes along with maintaining an open mind will help you in the long run, but staying vigilant with what’s around you brings you more of the story as well.

 

To discover what happened to the long-gone civilization, you’ll find Xenoglyphs with short sections of alien writing but you’ll need Xenoglyph Ciphers scattered throughout the biomes to decipher what they mean. The Xeno-archives are also incredibly helpful in discovering more about their culture, practices, and how they inevitably came to an end.

Selene’s story seems to be scattered all over Atropos in the form of Audio Logs, each one telling you a bit more about her progress, mental state, deductions, and experiences from each cycle. You’ll learn that she’s been through thousands of cycles as mentioned in the Audio Logs and how she’s been handling her situation. But you can also find her home, the 20th Century House, that Atropos built from her memories to haunt her. To explore her home, you’ll need to find house keys hidden somewhere in the biome you’re currently in.

Apart from running and gunning for your life, the ability to go back and explore brings a whole new admiration when you pay attention to your surroundings. Housemarque went all in building the biomes you progress through, and the work definitely shows in the beauty each biome has. The biomes look carefully curated and designed to not be overbearing, but they all have a unique feeling to them that adds to the atmosphere of Returnal. So stopping to sightsee can have benefits too, because admiring the environment can also give you a moment to discover missed drops, and new gear and maybe sway you to take a chance with one of the more difficult challenges.

 

A lot of careful thought went into designing Selene and her suit, her suit, in particular, shows her current state with how it lights up to indicate your current suit’s integrity or health. Unfortunately, they did miss the mark slightly with Selene’s facial animations, in a cutscene, they look animated, but when you’re out exploring, you might not have much luck with getting anything more than her determined face.

Retunal’s sound engineering, though a bit over the top sometimes, is excellently done with how the dark electronic tones are mixed to bring just about everything we hear on Atropos to life. Loic Couthier (Supervising Sound Designer) and his team built an ambiance in a world that’s filled with so much darkness while emphasizing the dissonance and overall bleak world state in Returnal. We can’t forget about our protagonist Selene, voiced by British-Canadian actress Jane Perry as she followed Greg Louden’s (Returnal Narrative director) description of Selene having “a scientist’s mind” along with being “highly intelligent, driven to a fault, and relentless in pursuit of what she wants” to the last detail. Both play a huge part in the immersion into Returnal and really make you feel like you’re on Atropos!

The last major aspect is the online features. You can take part in single-player challenges for a spot on the leaderboards and bragging rights. However, the real innovation starts to shine is that you might not be able to bring a friend with you on your run, but you might find a corpse from their failed run. You’ll come across corpses from other failed cycles on your runs that can be scavenged or avenged. Scavenging does come with a cost though, but if you have the ether to spend and you’re willing to spend it, it can make a difference. The alternative is avenging the fallen scout from another cycle and fighting what took her down in the first place. This does bring an interesting twist and some randomness to the gameplay that plays into the Risk Vs Reward mechanic.

 

Overall, Returnal doesn’t exactly follow the standard formulation for a Roguelike game, while it takes it a step further with new twists and turns. You’ll need a keen eye and fast reflexes if you want to survive the dangers of Atropos as it throws you into a Metroidvania-style bullet hell filled to the brim with breathtaking sights and equally dangerous challenges. It’s a refreshing redesign of the Roguelike genre combined with Metroidvania amounts of bullets flying all over. Housemarque raised the bar with a beautiful game that can appeal to gamers from all walks of life.

Jay Claassen
Editor, NoobFeed