While video games provide a lot of different options in terms of what one can play, part of the difficulty is in fact just honing in on one single thing to focus on.


So many things to focus on, so little time to do it in…

As much as I would love to continue on with my trek involving another replay of the Silent Hill 2 Remake (SH2R), I have some genuine doubts I will stay focused on the game for much longer, as I feel as if I’ve pretty much covered as much as I could of what the game has to offer, and I do find it a frightful difficulty to keep up a concerted focus on two major games at once…not that I can’t play more than two games at a time, hell, I have multiple titles I play daily at the moment, but an hour into an old title over here is an hour not played of a new title over there kind of thing, and until I change up my posting schedule so it is not a daily occurrence, I kind of have to keep moving, always on the look out for the next big idea I can write about.

As mentioned yesterday, I wasn’t quite sure about whether or not I was going to dive into another survival horror game before the end of Spooptober, but also wasn’t sure if I was ready for a new experience entirely yet, so I kind of parsed the difference in starting up a game I had forgotten I had squirreled away called Returnal, which was suppose to be a major Sony joint that came out a handful of years ago. I’m quite surprised that outside of an article I read in an Edge magazine recently, I’ve heard almost no one talk about this game since it launched, which makes me wonder if it was one of those games that ended up criminally underselling for what it delivered, or if it was always poised as some kind of sleeper hit of sorts. Since I wanted to remain blind, I didn’t do any digging on the game before I started her up, and just got finished with my first hour with the title.

Turns out Returnal is a third person roguelike, and one of the first screens makes it quite clear the game will be unforgiving, so I was fairly excited from moment one to get my ever loving ass kicked in the honeymoon phase of the getting to know the game more intimately. I was in fact just thinking about how I hadn’t been treated to a roguelike game that wasn’t of a 2D persuasion in I can’t even remember how long, so it was a ridiculously opportune preponderance in conjunction with regards to having Returnal to sink my teeth into. The entire premise of the game is you crash land on an unknown alien planet, and have to explore why you’re there, and that’s about all the exposition you get before you’re thrown to the space wolves. Returnal does have the whole sci-fi facade going on, with cosmic space horror being the flavor of the day, which is a nice change of pace from all of the more fantastically themed roguelikes I’ve played.

Pleasantly surprised that the character doesn’t feel like a glass cannon, as outside of my first death, which was to a much larger entity, she (the characters name is Selene) can take a hit or two before succumbing to damage. Obviously, a big hook of the game is discovering more and more about not only the planet you’re on, but how to eventually escape the death loop you find yourself in. A quick point of interest for those reading who are unaware of what roguelikes are, they are basically a genre of videogame where you die on a frequent basis, and every time you reset, the environment basically gets randomized, and you lose most of your equipment. I don’t usually go out of my way to explain what I would consider more basic elements of gameplay, but roguelikes come off to me as perhaps “taken for granted” knowledge among some of the more surly gamers, so there we are.

Part of the fun of the mystery surrounding Returnal, is due to the game leaning into the death loop “time reset” you keep experiencing, with Selene having experienced the loop far more times than you personally have, and clueing you into as much by leaving behind datalogs “from future runs”, informing you about parts of the game you have yet to experience yet, adding an excellent timey-wimeyness factor to the whole cosmic curiosity you’re attempting to unravel, which I’m always a big fan of. It will be fun to see just how deep the rabbit hole goes, in terms of just how crazy the narrative gets, as I’ve already discovered I’m being stalked by “The Astronaut”, who I have not yet seen firsthand, and have witnessed Selene’s childhood home materialize on this alien planet. Whether or not it is a hallucination or some kind of crazy spacetime continuum fluctuation remains to be seen, as anything seems up for grabs for what Returnal has in store for me.

The combat is simple but effective, as you start out with only a basic firearm, but quickly find more powerful weaponry as you kill enemies and explore. As mentioned, Selene has some fight in her, and not only does she move at a surprisingly expeditious rate, she is rather mobile, coming with a high top speed, and even a dodge to start. You can find equipment that powers you up, and I’ve already found a number of pieces to empower Selene that have already tipped the field of combat greatly in my favor, so while the game is a Roguleike in nature, and therefore will claim any number of your lives without trying, they definitely don’t skimp on giving you a fighting chance against any of the vicious alien entities you will be coming across.

Since it was getting fairly late in the day, and I had to get something written and posted before Midnight, I had to cease playing after only an hour of gameplay, which was a not yet concluded second run. It looks as if given some kind of stipulation, one is able to suspend their current gameplay loop without dying, but not all the time, as if I had quit, it looks like I would have restarted back at the crash site. It also seems as if there is co-op of some kind, but I didn’t mess with that yet at all, as I usually like to get some bearing before subjecting myself to an unsuspecting partner.

I can already tell the game has that “just one more run” quality about it, so in a similar spirit of other roguelikes that have come before it, it is likely to be an experience that beckons you to play relentlessly, in your quest to discover the ultimate answer to the death loop mystery, and eventually beyond that, just to see how long you can last among the lethal flora and fauna that exists in these alien wilds. Returnal is definitely a great candidate for a game I could continue to play in terms of future write-ups, so we’ll see there the game takes me, and all of the deaths that will follow.

~Pashford