Returnal review in progress: Strong narrative, engaging gameplay and captivating visuals
There’s a beautiful balance for just about everything in Returnal, right from the core gameplay to the minute details such as the variety of enemies, combat mechanics, and intensity.
Returnal was one of the first major PlayStation 5 exclusives to drop when Sony’s new-gen console launched. The award-winning title by studio Housemarque was launched in April 2021 and it was now released for PC last month.
Sony’s foray into PC gaming hasn’t started with Returnal though. The company has already released PC ports for other major games like Horizon Zero Dawn, Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection, God of War (2018), Marvel's Spider-Man and Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales.
Returnal is essentially a roguelike, and full disclosure, it’s the first major roguelike I’ve tried my hands on. For those in the same boat as me who felt that roguelikes are way too taxing, they’d be happy to know that it’s not the case with Returnal.
I’ve long been wanting to try out a roguelike and take on the permadeath challenge and when I got the opportunity to review Returnal, I was raring to go.
Beautiful balance between narrative and gameplay
There’s a beautiful balance for just about everything in Returnal, right from the core gameplay to the minute details such as the variety of enemies, combat mechanics, and intensity.
Returnal tells the story of Selene Vassos, a space explorer who landed on planet Atropos while following a strange "White Shadow" signal. Selene crash lands on the surface and finds herself trapped in a time-loop that resets each time she dies.
The lore of Returnal perfectly sets up its gameplay choice and it’s a story so far that has been told beautifully. Not once has it felt that the story is meant to serve its roguelike gameplay and it sits independently as a strong pillar in making this game entertaining and engaging.
Unique and fresh everytime you play
The repetitive nature of roguelike comes with its own rewards when you finally ace it and overcome a difficult obstacle in games of this genre. However, roguelike is not everyone’s cup of tea. You can soon feel demotivated to continue after several attempts of almost getting through a boss or getting far ahead just to be killed by a meagre enemy.
With Returnal, I haven’t faced that yet and it came to me as a wonderful surprise. I think that’s where Housemarque really nailed the gameplay mechanics of Returnal. Even for those who are trying the genre for the first time, the game’s procedurally-generated levels in each biome (6 in total) ensures that each time you die and reset, you’re bound to have a unique run.
It keeps the game from being monotonous and the ability to quickly transport throughout the place in a cycle also helps you manage your time well and get quickly from one biome to the next.
So far, I’ve explored two biomes out of a total six and the first boss fight with Phrike in the Overgrown Ruins biome was a healthy challenge. It took several attempts and I beat Phrike within two days of starting the game. I was surprised that Returnal had me hooked with the very first major fight, pushing me to keep playing on and on, run after run, to overcome the first hurdle.
Performance on PC
There’s several parts of the gameplay that I’ll shed more light on in the full review as well as how the PC port holds up technically. For now, I’ll summarise that if your setup meets the required specs (which I admit is demanding when it comes to the RAM), you’ll not find any issues in performance.
Several times gamers have a PC setup that even exceeds the requirements but still face stuttering issues, frame rate drops and more with no clear reasons other than a bad PC port for console games. That’s not been the case with Returnal. Housemarque and Climax Studios have ported their creation for PC cleanly and it runs smoothly, ensuring you’re engrossed in the bullet-hell madness of a fantastic game.
There’s a lot more to explore and dissect about Returnal and I’m genuinely looking forward to unravel more mysteries on Atropos.