Over the past ten years or ago, Rogue-likes have made a big splash in the indie gaming market. Games like Binding of Issac, Risk of Rain, Dead Cells, Slay the Spire, Hades, Splunkey, Rogue Legacy, and many many more have all created a buzz that many AAA-games have taken some sort of inspiration from. All of these games have several core elements that group them all together, procedural generation of levels, enemies, and powerups, losing everything when you die but maintaining some sort of currency or upgrades forever to make each run gradually easier, things of that nature. By now I'm sure we all have a pretty good idea of what makes a game a "Rogue-like".
So Returnal then.
A PS5 exclusive, Returnal is probably the closest thing to a AAA-Rogue-like that we've ever gotten. And something I was excited for, because while I do enjoy the indie Rogue-likes I've wondered what a big budget uber-graphic Rogue-like would look like. The answer is Returnal. And it looks....well it looks okay. I mean the graphics are fantastic sure, and this is certainly next-gen levels of detail. Unfortunately for me, the levels are too samey to really take it all in with any sort of awe for too long. I'll explain later.
So gameplay then, Returnal is a 3rd person shooter in which you explore a series of randomly generated rooms in a linear fashion, fighting enemies along the way in order to reach a boss at the end of the world. In this game each location is called a Biome, and I believe there are 5 or 6 Biomes in total. Which if you get really really good and a bit lucky you could probably beat the game fairly quickly, because 6 levels isn't a lot of location for a big AAA-game. Of course that's easy to say on paper, in practice Returnal keeps that typical Rogue-Like roadblock.....it's fucking hard.
Every enemy fights you back in basically one of two ways. Either filling your screen with bullet-hell projectiles or charge/jumping at you with powerful melee swings. You have a dodge on a short cooldown that will let you dodge through attacks and bullets, all the while you are firing your weapon as best as you can to thin the army of nightmares coming after you. Most enemies when you fight them in small groups of 1-3 don't pose much of a challenge, even the big elite enemies that are much more powerful are fairly easy to defeat if you can deal with them alone. The thing is.....they are never alone. Early in the game you'll only fight small groups, with a few rare exceptions, but later on big groups of 5+ become the norm and when you are trying to dodge bullet-hell garbage AND big leaping fucking monsters trying to crush your skull, shit gets hard almost to bullshit levels of hard.
What further compounds the difficulty in Returnal is the fact that unlock most Rogue-like games, there really isn't much "meta" progression. That progression in most Rogue-likes that lets you build permanent improvements into your character like more max health or more powerful guns from the start. While I'm only about 5 hours into the game and still "stuck" in the first Biome because the first boss is a fucking 3-phase dipshit, I have not yet found or seen anything that could be considered a permanent upgrade. There are a few things you keep every death like your primary pistol and a sword for melee attacks once you find them, but the game isn't very clear on what else you keep. I think you keep Ether fragments (which are a currency you spend on randomly found things in the world) and maybe chest keys, but otherwise you start from ground zero everytime.
Which brings me to Returnal's RNG. The levels are randomly stuck together, but the map itself is basically linear. Additionally there is no real reason to explore in the game because your mini map highlights every pick-up, weapon, chest, and collectible, with clear icons, on top of that the map clearly marks exactly where you are supposed to go at all times. So if you enter a room and your mini map has no icons, simply run through to the next room no reason to look around. Which honestly is probably a good thing because while the world looks cool and everything, the environment gets real samey real fucking quick. Which I ended up finding real boring. So the world around the gameplay is not that exciting after your first run or two.
Then there is the other problem with RNG-based difficult games. You can be fucked very quickly and very easily. This can happen one of two ways. Either you just get a bunch of shitty brutal combat rooms the moment your run begins before you've gotten any sort of passive upgrades or weapons to help. Or you have a fairly easy run to the boss room, but you've either got no real upgrades, or no new weapons that make any difference. Which means you are fighting a boss with a crippling handicap which never feels good. And remember the mini map shows you where everything is, so it's hard to miss things like potential pick ups.
Ok that's a lot of complaining, and if you read all that you are probably thinking that I find the game pretty mediocre. And yeah, in some ways I do.
But....when RNG isn't fucking you, and you get a good gun, damn the shit feels good. And that's the thing, the gameplay feels great, your character is responsive, the shoot feels good and the enemies aren't jerking around too much to make it a hinderance to fight them using a controller. The monsters are not going to be juking you and be hard to hit. The challenge they offer comes from the sheer movement that YOU have to do to avoid the bullet-hell firefights and ducking the big melee based bastards.
When things are going right, the game feels great. It's just unfortunate that you can really feel screwed over by bad RNG due to the lack of carry over upgrades that you'd find in a typical game like this.
Additionally the story is really neat here. It's like playing an Alien's game, with the way the weave some really interesting horror elements into the game as you try to figure out what is going on here and why you keep waking up on this planet every time you die. The mystery here is interesting, and keeps you wanting to find more recordings and story elements. Shame that they are few and far between, and at certain points you'll have seen everything the Biome can offer you until you finally beat the boss and get to the next area. Eventually making your runs, just runs and crossed fingers.
So at the end of my night of playing I'm conflicted. I can see a great experience here, but I also don't see the things I have come to expect from a game like this which yields some very frustrating moments. I can definitely see that a lot of people will pick this up and enjoy every moment, because there are buttons the game definitely pushes. But I can also see a lot of people bouncing off this title very very quickly due to the nature of the RNG and punishing lack of real progress after spending an hour plus to get to a boss only to be defeated quickly and forced back to the start with nothing to show for it.
So Returnal then.
A PS5 exclusive, Returnal is probably the closest thing to a AAA-Rogue-like that we've ever gotten. And something I was excited for, because while I do enjoy the indie Rogue-likes I've wondered what a big budget uber-graphic Rogue-like would look like. The answer is Returnal. And it looks....well it looks okay. I mean the graphics are fantastic sure, and this is certainly next-gen levels of detail. Unfortunately for me, the levels are too samey to really take it all in with any sort of awe for too long. I'll explain later.
So gameplay then, Returnal is a 3rd person shooter in which you explore a series of randomly generated rooms in a linear fashion, fighting enemies along the way in order to reach a boss at the end of the world. In this game each location is called a Biome, and I believe there are 5 or 6 Biomes in total. Which if you get really really good and a bit lucky you could probably beat the game fairly quickly, because 6 levels isn't a lot of location for a big AAA-game. Of course that's easy to say on paper, in practice Returnal keeps that typical Rogue-Like roadblock.....it's fucking hard.
Every enemy fights you back in basically one of two ways. Either filling your screen with bullet-hell projectiles or charge/jumping at you with powerful melee swings. You have a dodge on a short cooldown that will let you dodge through attacks and bullets, all the while you are firing your weapon as best as you can to thin the army of nightmares coming after you. Most enemies when you fight them in small groups of 1-3 don't pose much of a challenge, even the big elite enemies that are much more powerful are fairly easy to defeat if you can deal with them alone. The thing is.....they are never alone. Early in the game you'll only fight small groups, with a few rare exceptions, but later on big groups of 5+ become the norm and when you are trying to dodge bullet-hell garbage AND big leaping fucking monsters trying to crush your skull, shit gets hard almost to bullshit levels of hard.
What further compounds the difficulty in Returnal is the fact that unlock most Rogue-like games, there really isn't much "meta" progression. That progression in most Rogue-likes that lets you build permanent improvements into your character like more max health or more powerful guns from the start. While I'm only about 5 hours into the game and still "stuck" in the first Biome because the first boss is a fucking 3-phase dipshit, I have not yet found or seen anything that could be considered a permanent upgrade. There are a few things you keep every death like your primary pistol and a sword for melee attacks once you find them, but the game isn't very clear on what else you keep. I think you keep Ether fragments (which are a currency you spend on randomly found things in the world) and maybe chest keys, but otherwise you start from ground zero everytime.
Which brings me to Returnal's RNG. The levels are randomly stuck together, but the map itself is basically linear. Additionally there is no real reason to explore in the game because your mini map highlights every pick-up, weapon, chest, and collectible, with clear icons, on top of that the map clearly marks exactly where you are supposed to go at all times. So if you enter a room and your mini map has no icons, simply run through to the next room no reason to look around. Which honestly is probably a good thing because while the world looks cool and everything, the environment gets real samey real fucking quick. Which I ended up finding real boring. So the world around the gameplay is not that exciting after your first run or two.
Then there is the other problem with RNG-based difficult games. You can be fucked very quickly and very easily. This can happen one of two ways. Either you just get a bunch of shitty brutal combat rooms the moment your run begins before you've gotten any sort of passive upgrades or weapons to help. Or you have a fairly easy run to the boss room, but you've either got no real upgrades, or no new weapons that make any difference. Which means you are fighting a boss with a crippling handicap which never feels good. And remember the mini map shows you where everything is, so it's hard to miss things like potential pick ups.
Ok that's a lot of complaining, and if you read all that you are probably thinking that I find the game pretty mediocre. And yeah, in some ways I do.
But....when RNG isn't fucking you, and you get a good gun, damn the shit feels good. And that's the thing, the gameplay feels great, your character is responsive, the shoot feels good and the enemies aren't jerking around too much to make it a hinderance to fight them using a controller. The monsters are not going to be juking you and be hard to hit. The challenge they offer comes from the sheer movement that YOU have to do to avoid the bullet-hell firefights and ducking the big melee based bastards.
When things are going right, the game feels great. It's just unfortunate that you can really feel screwed over by bad RNG due to the lack of carry over upgrades that you'd find in a typical game like this.
Additionally the story is really neat here. It's like playing an Alien's game, with the way the weave some really interesting horror elements into the game as you try to figure out what is going on here and why you keep waking up on this planet every time you die. The mystery here is interesting, and keeps you wanting to find more recordings and story elements. Shame that they are few and far between, and at certain points you'll have seen everything the Biome can offer you until you finally beat the boss and get to the next area. Eventually making your runs, just runs and crossed fingers.
So at the end of my night of playing I'm conflicted. I can see a great experience here, but I also don't see the things I have come to expect from a game like this which yields some very frustrating moments. I can definitely see that a lot of people will pick this up and enjoy every moment, because there are buttons the game definitely pushes. But I can also see a lot of people bouncing off this title very very quickly due to the nature of the RNG and punishing lack of real progress after spending an hour plus to get to a boss only to be defeated quickly and forced back to the start with nothing to show for it.
