[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 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.

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

No other game I've played rewards perfect play (avoiding getting hit) as much as this one. And for this reason, it is incredibly difficult and frustrating at times being absolutely brutally punishing when you fail.

That said, the environments, presentation and moments when you do actually progress feel more empowering then anything. This is still worth checking out in my opinion for people that like roguelike gameplay and this is closer to what I wished Risk of Rain 2 was. Given it's utter difficulty and punishment, I may never finish this game completely but I still respect it for what it is.

A beautiful way to punish yourself, I guess?

Honestly, I died too many times playing this game. Look, some people are into experiencing pain - I get it - but just give us soft ones a difficulty option! As it is, I made it to the second boss, almost beat it first time, and then, as I died due to my own clumsiness once again, said out loud, "Well, that's enough for me."

The game is wonderfully crafted and a joy to play (until you die). It looks exactly how it should, the control of the character is precisely what you'd expect and feels intuitive as well as exciting, the sound is flawless, and the DualSense magic is magical. The story, from what I could piece together, seems weird, maybe? The level design is pretty interesting for being a bunch of "rooms" that are sort of randomly connected together. Finding new weapons and alien tech was a decent addition, though the randomness of what you discover and therefore had available to use on each run could be annoying. There were definitely enough projectiles.

I think it needed a bit more of the roguelike feature where you unlock a powerful thing (like the yellow sword) and you get to use it in the next run. Every run feels too much like starting over instead of building on the last one. Really, the only thing that improves after a run is your brain and who wants that?

"Oh hey, what's this?" DEAD

Review from thedonproject.com

Uma história intrigante demais e uma gameplay extremamente divertida. Não sou muito fã em jogos roguelike, mas realmente gostei de Returnal.Não apenas da jogabilidade, mas também da lore, é legal ver diferentes tipos de inimigos dependendo do bioma. Um jogo roguelike realmente bom, é difícil, mas não tão difícil. Eu poderia dizer que é como um jogo estilo souls é dificil porem quando se pega o ritmo já era, realmente recomendo este jogo, se você gosta de um jogo desafiador com uma boa lore, boa jogabilidade e uma boa história, este é o jogo. Os gráficos são bons e a atmosfera é incrível. Vale dizer que este não é um jogo para todos, assim como qualquer game souls ou roguelike, mas como eu disse, se você gosta de um jogo desafiador, este é um desses jogos.



Pontos Positivos:
- Combate
- Elementos de roguelike bem diferentes dos demais
- Narrativa muito bem contada


Pontos Negativos:
- NA



Versão utilizada para análise: PC

A game of soaring highs and absolutely soul-crushing lows. Some runs genuinely just feel insanely unfair due to just being fucked by the games RNG over and over again. There's only so much skill I can have before me winning or losing feels completely out of my hands. I really love how this game feels to play, the music is fantastic and I like the strange cosmic imagery, but I've been trying to hit credits since on and off this came out and I've never managed it. I came SO close this time but, admittedly, fucked it up. The story isn't really hitting for me either, I like an abstract vibes-based narrative but this is so obtuse that it almost comes off as obnoxious. After like 20 hours, Selene constantly spouting bizarre gibberish in logs just gets a little grating. ALSO, and maybe this contributed a fair bit to me dropping this again, but the PC port of this is pretty terrible. Constant microstuttering in a fast-paced game is so god damn annoying (and kinda nauseating), and I've had a couple of game breaking bugs that have seemingly just never been patched out.

Oh well. I will probably once again come back to this and try (and most likely fail) to beat it at some point in the future, but I've gotten almost right to the end and the story isn't enough for me to want to keep going through it all again.

It's not often that I get hooked on a roguelike for the story, normally I get invested for the mechanics. Returnal is one of the few cases where both are so intriguing that I can't help but want to keep playing, which is an incredible feat given that a standard loop will take upwards of an hour.

Unraveling the mystery of Atropos, and Selene herself, is such a driving force that even when I wasn't playing the game I was thinking about it, theorising what there is to find, piecing together clues from Audio Logs and Xenoglyphs, and it finds a happy middle ground of giving you just enough to connect dots, but not enough to see the full picture.

It's important to note as well that the moment-to-moment gameplay is incredibly satisfying, so that when there are lulls in the story it doesn't matter as much because its still just a blast playing it. Admittedly a couple of the bosses (or at least the paths getting to them when you loop), are difficult for difficulties sake, and feel like they're there just to hold you back and extend game time, especially at the half-way mark. But when you get a good loop, with great gear, and you're riding that wave of Level 5 Adrenaline, it feels like an utter dream.

Returnal really is one of the best showcase of the PS5 so far, utilising it's SSD, GPU, and the amazing DualSense, to create a title that's up there with God of War and Spiderman in terms of Sony's first-party quality

though it's aesthetically and narratively immaculate, it pains me to say that i don't like this game that much. i love everything this game brings to the table except its gameplay, because it is a very shitty roguelike. it lacks so many QOL features that you really need to make the genre work. you could argue QOL features would make it too easy when it's obviously going for a "difficult game to emphasis the oppressive and hopeless nature of overcoming the adversity" type of design, but i would disagree. your runs will get dominated by how good your drops are. and god help you if you get stuck with that shitty starting pistol because the game just doesn't give you any guns.

a regular issue i'd run into with this game is that i'd have runs that went extremely well or extremely poorly with very little middleground. this was almost always determined by if i got a good gun early and/or other consumables that were useful (and not useless ones like shocking springs). during those good runs, i'd have a lot of fun and feel that rare kind of stress that video games evoke that makes you feel good. meanwhile, when i had my bad runs, i would think that this was a stupid game masquerading as a brilliant one. that's not even mentioning how boss runs can be egregious and require so much time and effort to invest in that gets wasted when the game decides to give you dogshit to work with. the derelict citadel in general has some of the worst shit to deal with because you have an excessively long boss run combined with enemies that actively punish you for killing them with melee (the broken mech guys) or ones that will suicidebomb you if you don't focus your entire attention on killing them. there's challenging, and then there's just frustrating. this game does not walk that line even close to well.

and i know it's easy to comment "skill issue" or whatever but even when i was doing clean-up runs at the end of the game for the trophies and ostensibly had beaten the game, i was still getting runs that i couldn't get going because of drops. i think a very quick and easy band-aid solution to this would be to add the option for the player to pick between the god awful starting pistol and another randomly picked base gun. there's still bad guns (the shotgun, the disc gun) but at least they're not death sentences like the pistol. if we're going deeper, i think the game would either have to do a lot of restructuring to accommodate how actively unfun it can be to play (retool and balance enemies, change what secret areas can give out, make guns more guaranteed to spawn at certain locations, etc.). or, fuck it, just don't make it a roguelike. i genuinely love so much of this game, but i simultaneously detested its gameplay, and i often just wished it had been any other genre besides roguelike. i can imagine this game playing 20x better as a metroidvania with slightly tweaked mechanics. hell, maybe just turn it into a more platform-y type of third-person shooter like what control was going for. just, something had to be better than this.

i hate to belabor this point but i need to stress that this game plays worse than almost everyone i know has implied and i felt like i was taking crazy pills playing this mid-at-best roguelike formula. i found the setting and the themes of this game captivating, and they were truthfully what kept me going when this game repeatedly burned me and my time. there's a great, fantastic game buried underneath a lot of dirt here. i just wish i could've played that one instead of the one i got.