[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 started hating this game. It felt unfair and impossible to get through...until you beat the first boss and realize that the first part of the game is substantially harder than the rest.

The weapon variety is nice but most of them don't hold a candle to both the Carbine and Hollowseeker which are far above the rest due to their fast DPS and perks such as Leech Rounds which border on broken.

Aside from that, this is a great game that I wish Playstation were publishing more of its kind. Fast pace, brutal gameplay with great enemy variety and a good implementation of a skill ceiling, despite the aforementioned unbalanced progression.

Banger? Returnal's moment to moment gameplay as essentially a roguelike third person bullet hell is second to none. Fights are fast, hard, exhillerating. Traversal and mobility feels great. Builds vary enough to allow for experimentation and variance between runs. Finished off with some really strong bossfights (the guy playing the Organ is an all time great).

Wrapped into a mystery plot that stays vague, but gives you enough concrete information to theorize and interpret. the narrative sequences themselves are skillfully directed and lean into horror-vibes just the right amount.

The roguelike nature can be curse as well as blessing. Runs get long which means dying to a boss (looking at the 3rd biome here) can wipe out an hour+ of progress. While you unlock shortcuts, not all of them are viable as combing through every room of every level for upgrades is the optimal play, maximizing your chances of beating the boss this time. This leads to some pretty severe lulls in pacing, both gameplay and narrative, that drag down the overall experience a bit.

Didn’t expect to finish this in 2021 but here I am.

When you dive into Returnal, you are first taken by the incredible art direction, moody, Gigerish environments with an over abundance of particles and detail in the landscape. For a while I simply soaked in the atmosphere, some of the best in gaming. Then you really play it and you’re met with an over the shoulder bullet hell roguelite like a 3D enter the gungeon. Then you die. And like any good roguelite that happens a lot. You die and loop, die and loop and gain knowledge, permanent upgrades and grow a pool of items to help you get further and further.

It felt like this game was going to take ages to beat, and I briefly considered adding it to my rotation of Roguelikes I play, just picking it up here and there. But much like Hades, it’s narrative and mysteries it sets before you make it to where beating this is incredibly rewarding. Unlike other Roguelikes where narrative is an afterthought, it ties several of the mechanics into the story and rewards you abstractly for your effort in this regard. PT-style story sequences where you piece together clues of Selene’s background and the mysterious forces affecting her.

The resolution wasn’t super clear, but it does play it’s hand well throughout.

I would advise anyone scared off by its difficulty to stick with it as not only does it seem to soften its difficulty at the halfway point, it really does just take that big of roguelite luck and building to breeze through it. I was stuck in the first area for a long time, the next a little shorter, then rapidly went through the rest.

I feel like due to the type of thing it is, the scarcity of ps5s and some of its peers it’ll be relatively slept on but I think this is a great title to help justify my poor decision of early adopting a ps5.

Outstanding presentation
Unique gameplay
Brilliant story
A game that feels like a classic game while playing
This game is one of the best out there and the best PS5 game until now never though I would enjoy a game this challenging this much I’m glad people start appreciating this game more and more it deserves it all

A wonderful experience in so many fronts. Personally would've preferred if it leaned more heavily in its roguelike elements, but i understand why it's the way it is.

The gameplay is great and addictive, controls are tight, sound is amazing (specially with 3D audio!), visual design and graphical quality are both absurd, the storytelling isn't for everyone but if it's for you then you're in for a ride. Finally, if you have the means to use these, then the haptic feedback and adaptive triggers on the Dualsense act as the cherry on top, really pulling you in.

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.

Returnal disappointed me.

My first run was fantastic. Running through the different environments, fighting enemies, dodging the bullet hell, and overall just running around was a lot of fun. I figured "this is it, finally, a great roguelite".

I heard stories of this game being incredibly difficult, however I soon learnt that is not the case. Maybe on console this game is harder, or for people who are not used to playing this type of game, but I ended up completing my first ever run.
I then completed the second, the third, and fourth, and I got confused. Why isn't there new content? What am I missing?
I quickly found out that I had completed more or less everything in the game except for the secret ending. I started moving towards the secret ending too, but in the end I got burnt out.

While the moving, shooting, and core gameplay is really fun, there is little to no challenge or gameplay variation. The zones feel samey, and you've seen everything the game really has to offer after less than 6 hours. Other than a couple of cutscenes, the game really had nothing more to offer. I kept playing hoping there would be more, but no.

What a shame. I think the developers thought the game was a lot harder than it actually is. And maybe it could have been, but you more or less gain full health back in-between every single encounter. You can't get slowly trickled down like in most roguelites.
There is also almost nothing to unlock. Honestly this game could have been special, the core gameplay is there. Too bad it goes nowhere. It's like a writing prompt you wish someone would turn into a proper novel, but it's still just a 1 sentence writing prompt, this time for 60 bucks.

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

It's quite rare that I feel compelled enough by a roguelike to actually complete it, but I really enjoyed a lot about this game. The core gameplay is super fun and satisfying, with a ton of variety in enemy design to keep things interesting. Weapons are very varied as well, but only like half of them are actually viable choices. The electropylon weapon is so far above everything else though. It can straight up melt bosses without you even needing to aim properly lol.

I think the game is far more engaging in its early stages compared to later on however. Learning all the enemies and the fundamentals of the maps are very fun, and the first boss was the only one that really gave me any difficulty. That being said, the bosses on the whole are very solid in terms of visuals and spectacle, but most of them don't really pose much of a threat, the final one especially, which was quite disappointing.

Also, I feel like it was a really odd choice to have the game "finish" after act 2, when it doesn't really offer much of a conclusion at all. I would definitely advise people to finish act 3 if you want to get the most out of the story. Even then though, it's still very confusing and not explained particularly well. I did love most of the storytelling in the game though. There's lots of super interesting and surreal storytelling methods used and it really made me want to keep playing, even when I felt like the game was getting a bit repetitive towards the end (a common problem I have with roguelikes).

Returnal. Is a great game, and I absolutely recommend it.

For my roguelite enthusiasts, I'll put it this way. Imagine a AAA game built loosely around the Commando and their kit from Risk of Rain 2. Give the bosses Dark Souls levels of difficulty. String the areas together as if it were an action RPG. Boom. That'll get your mind pretty close to how Returnal plays, and man, it is fun.

One reason to enjoy it: The gameplay is so tight and refined. I played on a PS5 controller and thought that might impair how I normally play with M&K but it didn't. Guns feel impactful and all the while the music increases in intensity as the tension rises, as you attempt to clear rooms and waves of enemies without taking damage. It creates amazing spectacle encounters in every room and can often make you feel the pressure of your potential demise. Sure, there are still times you can live out your power fantasy (as roguelites tend to let you do), as an unkillable god-being, but it's these intense runs facing death itself that make your spontaneous god-runs feel oh so satisfying.

The other part about Returnal that really made me fall in love with it is the mystery. The more you play the more you (think you) understand. You'll find glyphs in your run and slowly translate them into strange little conundrums. You'll find ruins of civilization and strange creatures inhabiting this odd world. Death is a part of the lore as well, so you're trying to understand the time loop. Just when you think you understand this game it gives you a well-earned reveal that changes your entire perspective. Not everything is as it seems. The twists in here go harder than freakin' Shamylan and I lived for them. I wish I could share more, but it's just best if you find these glorious moments yourself... and trust me. Understanding more about the game will just cheapen the experience. It is a wild and exceptionally good ride.

That being said there is more for me to experience in Returnal that I have not experienced quite yet (2023 has been unpredictably amazing in terms of releases which has pressed me for time), but I don't think completing these will change my opinion. I certainly intend to return (heh) soon of course. They can't just tout a "true ending" without me finding it. But just know my marked 21 hours isn't the reaaal end of the game.

I imagine most will complete the campaign in about 25 or so hours, and on top of that, you have the endless mode which is incredibly satisfying as well. Capitalizes on the speed and thrill of combat without the travel time that can make the "metroid-ing" around the campaign a little tiresome from moment to moment. Also has its own conundrum of a narrative it follows, which is quite cool. Aside, but co-op was something I wanted to try, but never got around to. Would probably be fun.

As far as some lower notes go: Ran into one unavoidable bug that is 100% replicatable and happens every time (I posted about it in community forums and their website). Not the greatest PC port in general really. It worked for me way better than other reviewers but YMMV. I also... had a difficult time with the time allotment this game presents itself with. What I mean by that is... If I'm not sure I'll be gaming uninterrupted for like 2 hours I won't even bother to turn on Returnal paha. You can save and quit during a run at any time... but every time I do that in other roguelites I come back and die, so I'm incentivized per my own experiences to play one run all the way through to completion. Returnal is VAST. Runs can take hours. If you're stingy like me on saving and quitting you'll find it a bit difficult in that way as well.

But overall this is such an awesome game, with so many incredible high notes. The gameplay and progression feel great, the narrative mystery is excellent, and the presentation is absolutely top-notch. Because of the bugs and the lack of support on PC, it would be wise to wait for it to go on a bit of a deeper sale, but seriously, if you're looking for your next roguelite fix, I'm telling you right now, Returnal is a game you're not going to want to miss.

On a moment to moment level, terribly fun and engaging, but the more time I spend with it, the more my frustration grows.

Malfunctions are generally either meaningless or ruinous (especially when it can be entirely beyond your ability to fix), attacks can hit you from across the room or phase through a wall (with warning, yes, but hard to parse in the moment, especially if you're dealing with other chaos), the tracking of certain enemy attacks feels overturned in speed and/or accuracy, and worst of all, they've admitted the team didn't have a shared and cohesive vision of the story. There's a big difference between intentionally crafted ambiguity that allows you to take the meaning that is meaningful to you, and just throwing a mish mash of aesthetic ideas that look cool together. On top of that, runs are bit too long for how many times they want you to repeat this experience, the idea of actually unlocking all weapon traits or logbook entries is exhausting. I really wish they would have halved the biome lengths, especially if that would have allowed them to add another act.

But, despite all of the above, again, it's very fun!

Não sou muito fã de roguelike ou lite, mas esse jogo me surpreendeu bastante devido a sua gameplay rápida e precisa, o gênero torna o jogo muito desafiador porém não apelativo, ritmo muito bom e muito divertido de jogar, com a adição do coop, que foi como eu joguei, se tornou uma experiência bem memorável, a história é um pouco complicada de entender, porém a progressão e a jogabilidade misturada a bons gráficos faz esse jogo ser uma experiência bem interessante para quem busca um desafio seja solo ou coop. Jogasso!

Returnal stays great. Everything I loved about this game on PlayStation 5 absolutely holds up and it was a blast playing through this game again. It's just unfortunate that this PC port appears to have added some bugs which I never experienced on the original version. I have a high tolerance for most bugs, but when progression is concerned, I have zero tolerance. This game has a nasty habit of going to a black screen and killing your run entirely. I also personally experienced some performance issues which made certain fights more challenging than they should've been. In spite of these issues, I still had a great time revisiting Returnal and I'm excited to see what Housemarque does next.

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

I enjoyed Returnal until the exact moment I didn't, which is the halfway point when the game pulls the rug out from under you and goes "Sorry, you lose for story reasons, start over from scratch." It's one thing if a roguelike/lite resets your progress when you die, if you aren't good enough this run - that's kinda the genre. But it's another when that element is taken out of your hands. I had such a good setup and was enjoying the tight gameplay and tension the game had to offer, but in that instance, Returnal killed all momentum it had going for it. Try as I might, I couldn't muster enough enthusiasm to continue. A shame.

Innovative game I have to admit, never played 3D TPS rogulike before. It has some facilities and its highly repetetive even for a roguelike, storytelling is creative and the overall plot is really a big mistery with a room for interpretations. I honestly wasn't really that engaged into the story since 99% of the game was pure gameplay so it felt kinda hard and forced to learn the little pieces of plot by listening to some random voice lines from time to time. I might be underrating this game but its only because of story which I didn't find interesting enough.