Lets make no mistake, indie games have such a vital and influential part in the gaming industry and I think Returnal is a proper example of that due to it following the footsteps of games like Binding of Isaac and Enter the Gungeon. I can't say it's necessarily derivative of titles like that as it has a enough of its own identity. Only played about an hour but I can tell there's just enough to see it as an inspired game. Of course, it plays pretty much like a roguelike. You go through an area to find items and get upgrades that make you OP either for just the round or gradually improve progress the whole game. You die, and you lose most of your progress just to get it all again. Apparently auto save is a thing, so say you find a shotgun and the game crashes, a mpa still saves that info. I can't speak much for the gunplay other than I enjoy it, but the presentation is superb. The world you play in feels like something right out of Annihilation (2018). I'd almost be surprised if Alex Garland, the director of the film and, AND former writer/producer for Ninja Theory's Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, didn't have a part in this game.
Only genuine criticism I have is how it only saves your current progress through putting your PS5 in rest mode, which isn't exactly ideal because the system hasn't been so good to me that rest mode almost always crashes on me. Of course, that should be a problem on the console's part, but the game encourages you to save said current progress through rest mode (funny because apparently a full run would take 90 minutes and most other roguelikes have a quicksave feature. Game's length isn't an excuse since I've seen friends take a whole hour to beat games like Risk of Rain 2 and games like Enter the Gungeon do have quicksave features.) I do think this game is worth looking into, but, ignoring my young naive young head, it's not exactly worth 70 dollars.
Returnal (PS5)
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VideoGameCritic
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Re: Returnal (PS5)
It always amazes me how some gamers are so desperate for new titles they are willing to put up with frequent bugs and crashes. I have no interest in being a beta tester.
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Crummylion
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Re: Returnal (PS5)
VideoGameCritic wrote:It always amazes me how some gamers are so desperate for new titles they are willing to put up with frequent bugs and crashes. I have no interest in being a beta tester.
I mean, the game works just fine from what I played. I was mostly speaking hypothetically in referring to the auto saving, cuz the only crashes I had are on the console's part when you put it in rest mode. This is something that happens a lot with OTHER games too. Still a fatal flaw when pausing for long sessions. Wouldn't be surprised if in-game glitches exist, but this is more of a console flaw, which annoys the hell out of me.