Returnal - Return All

garion333 wrote:

I have a feeling they're going to be forced to add some sort of save feature. I get what they're doing but not having any save ability to put the game down and come back seems a bridge too far.

Or Sony could fix the issues with Rest Mode; that would fix the problem with Returnal and every other game on the platform.

NB: I haven't had any issues with Rest Mode (mostly playing PS4 games at the moment; every PS4 game stored on an external Samsung T5), but I've continued to see enough complaints about it that AFAICT it continues to be an issue for some.

garion333 wrote:

I have a feeling they're going to be forced to add some sort of save feature. I get what they're doing but not having any save ability to put the game down and come back seems a bridge too far.

Their bound to patch this sooner or later. It would surely just take placing an artifact or something of the like somewhere on each biome that would let players save progress during a run.

From the Kotaku review

Here is a bit more about the save thing. Not to beat it even more but I can't imagine telling my son he can't play on the PS5 today because I need to leave my game running even though I am at work.

That’s not to say Returnal isn’t devoid of archaic bullsh*t, nor to absolve Returnal of said bullsh*t. Exhibit A: There is no official way to save and quit out of the game. A run in Returnal can last hours, especially if you’re combing through every room in every biome for as many resources as you can scrounge up. That you can’t save your game and pivot to something else smacks of a design decision from a prior, less accommodating era of gaming. If, for whatever reason, your PS5 turns off, you’re screwed, out potentially hours of carefully earned progress.

I can’t even begin to see the logic behind this strange decision. In a reviewer’s guide provided to Kotaku, Sony, Returnal’s publisher, suggested using the PS5’s “rest mode” as a workaround. You can pause the game at any point, and putting the console into “rest” will suspend your game. In my experience, this trick hasn’t failed. But I’m an edge case, having devoted nearly every hour of my free time over the past nine days toward playing this game. Most players likely won’t be in that position. Off the top of my head, I’m thinking of people who share a PS5, or people who work erratic schedules, or people who can otherwise only play video games in sporadic bursts. At the end of the day, designing the game without a save function at all sure feels like a callous choice meant to wring attention from players who might not always have that attention to spare.

I get their decision. If its like the Nex Machina or Resogun, you don't need a save because you'll be dead and starting over level 1 in 15 minute bursts anyways Personally I'm ok with it and very much looking forward to jumping ahead on the leaderboards only to see Spikeout quadruple my scores within a few days just like he did in the early resogun days

That being said in todays environment, I'm sure saves will come at some point and then the cry from hardcore fanboy saying how they're dumbing down the game will come loud and fast.

Carlbear95 wrote:

I get their decision. If its like the Nex Machina or Resogun, you don't need a save because you'll be dead and starting over level 1 in 15 minute bursts anyways Personally I'm ok with it and very much looking forward to jumping ahead on the leaderboards only to see Spikeout quadruple my scores within a few days just like he did in the early resogun days

That being said in todays environment, I'm sure saves will come at some point and then the cry from hardcore fanboy saying how they're dumbing down the game will come loud and fast.

Haha! I regularly had competition from RNRClown, my friend Alistair who we both went to school with & noticed you were on there too Carlbear, I was just happy more people were playing Resogun. I do love friend leaderboards, much more satisfying to see than worldwide ones. I hope Returnal has something similar.

If there's a big enough outcry with the game not having save points it will surely be addressed pretty swiftly.

According to Giant Bomb, the problem with the lack of save feature is that a successful run can last for as long as two hours.

Carlbear95 wrote:

I get their decision. If its like the Nex Machina or Resogun, you don't need a save because you'll be dead and starting over level 1 in 15 minute bursts anyways

For a counterexample - Sam Machkovech at ArsTechnica had a crash during a four-hour run where all the RNG gods were in his favor. That seems like the kind of situation where I want to die because it was my fault rather than the hardware's fault.

The ps5 can’t put a game in rest mode even if you open a different game? I’m pretty sure the series x does that.

garion333 wrote:

I have a feeling they're going to be forced to add some sort of save feature. I get what they're doing but not having any save ability to put the game down and come back seems a bridge too far.

Yeah, me too. There's just no reason to not have the game save along the way. Even if it's just autosaves between biomes, that would be enough. I expect that to get patched in before long. It's not much of an issue for me thanks to rest mode, but I'm not sharing my PS5 with any other players, and I would still like the option to quit a run part of the way in.

I'm very happy to see the positive praise across the board. From some brief skimming, it seems that many of the lower ones are fixated on difficulty and story. One of my favorite roguelites is Nuclear Throne, so I'm quite happy with a roguelite kicking my butt Still, I'm going to at least wait for details on a day 1 patch before buying because I have no interest in dealing with crashes an hour + into a run. That will aggravate me.

Sorry to bring it back to the cost once more, but one other tidbit I picked up from reviews was in regards to regional pricing. I can't say I enjoy a $10 price hike for most of Sony's 1st party stuff, but I'll pay it for titles that I'm excited about. I would be far less accommodating with how the price increase works out in other regions. This was from the Kotaku Australia review:

Take The Last of Us 2, which sold for $68 at launch. Or Ghost of Tsushima which also sold for $68. Both Sony exclusives, both less than 12 months old, both Game of the Year contenders and both marketed and budgeted accordingly. Returnal? It’s $106, almost $40 more. The official DualSense controller doesn’t even cost that much.

I didn't realize that Europe and Canada also went up closer to $25 per title than last gen. That's a steep hike.

I’m struggling with ‘Returnal,’ and I play ‘Dark Souls’ to relax

I can’t call this a review. I didn’t get very far in “Returnal,” and it’s not for lack of trying. The game is tough for me — and I play “Dark Souls” to relax.

It’s good that “Returnal,” a PlayStation 5 exclusive, is tough. That means it follows the rubric of the famously punishing rogue-lite genre, which asks players to start over from the beginning with modest improvements to their core abilities, sprinkled with an assortment of temporary buffs and features that last until your next failure. Rest assured, my failures came often and fast. I only made it to the second area of the game in time for the review period, so I won’t be scoring this game. Still, I’ve found there’s still plenty to talk about, and there’s plenty to like, as long as you know what you’re looking for.
I haven’t reached that destination, so it’s not for me to judge whether this journey is worth taking. However, it’s important to note that people enjoyed “Hades” because of the character arcs in that game. “Hades” starts with a premise that’s immediately sympathetic: This young guy, the protagonist, doesn’t want to live at home with his dad anymore. The player motivation connects immediately.

Furthermore, even failure in “Hades” led to some kind of narrative reward, whether it was Dusa’s coy flirtations or big daddy Hades slowly warming to his son’s desire to leave the underworld. Every death meant getting to know the cast of “Hades” better through dialogue.

“Returnal” has no such pleasantries, and that’s by design. Rather, its success is in creating an alien, ever-changing environment of absolute isolation. Selene feels lost and alone and determined in ways that will be familiar to anyone who’s watched Ellen Ripley carve up xenomorphs. But so far, that’s the only way I’ve seen her character defined. Being under duress can definitely reveal parts of one’s personality, but that alone doesn’t always make for a compelling character.

It’s wonderful to see Selene, a female protagonist who isn’t fresh out of college, take center stage in a game.

Oddly enough, the more I read, the more excited I am. As someone who cares little for story, the thought of a developer like Housemarque suddenly pivoting to a narrative based shooter had me worried.

Now its starting to sound like a PS5 optimized arcade game masquerading as a 3rd person shooter, by a developer that has done some exquisite pure arcade games in the past. Sign me up. Although I agree, $70 is not the pricepoint I usually associate with this sort of experience.

Carlbear95 wrote:

Oddly enough, the more I read, the more excited I am.

Me too.

It reads as an engaging experience in risk assessment and time management, towards reward and consequence. No safety net. With variety as we rebuild anew, on each run, to approach the ever-changing challenge. That is speaking to my Arcade and Nintendo upbringing so much so that I'm now certain I'll be missing out as a PS5 absentee.

It's certainly not for everyone minus the aforementioned accessibility options. Checkpoints. Saves. They'd be strange amongst an arcade roguelike combination. Nevertheless, they're nigh on a necessity these days to reach a broader audience. The choice would be great. Opt in. Opt out. Leaderboards can be split, or even toggled off.

I do wonder how it'll sell per the price and the niche approach. I may need to help out with a purchase even though I cannot yet play.

I'm going to stream it once midnight EST hits. You can find me here.

TheHarpoMarxist wrote:

I'm going to stream it once midnight EST hits. You can find me here.

I was watching, but without a Twitch account I couldn't comment. Thanks for the impressions, and the play-by-play.

There were more slower exploratory moments than I had expected, which balanced the more frantic moments of chaos rather well. Selene's movement looks fantastic. Crisp. Precise. (Especially when we consider you were dealing with a degree of controller drift!) I'm intrigued by the audio logs and the very out of place discovery towards the close of the stream. Envious be I. (Woah! I came over all Yoda there!)

Played for about an hour last night. First impressions were overall really positive, although I was surprised at how slow paced the game was during that first hour. There was much more down time than I expected, lots of exploration and taking time to understand the environment and navigate. Generally the exploration/navigation was fun, I find Selene's movement to be great and the light platforming elements were fun enough.

There weren't too many combat moments in my first hour but when I did get into combat I could immediately tell I was playing a Housemarque game. Aiming and shooting controls are tight, weapons are responsive and every encounter required I was engaged at all times. Housemarque is a master at this and even with the 3rd person perspective it seems like they nailed the combat here.

I'm a fan of roguelites and Returnal has some interesting mechanics. As you rack up kills without getting hit you get bonuses added which is a real nice incentive to keep moving and keeps you engaged in every battle. Even enemies I started getting familiar with required my full attention so I could keep combat chains going. Additionally there are a variety of power ups throughout the level but many of them seem to have pros and cons which I find really interesting. Some of them even have a quest system where once you complete some goal (e.g. kill x number of enemies) the negative effects are canceled. I liked these as it adds an interesting extra layer on top of everything.

Two things really impressed me:
* DualSense usage. This controller continues to impress and Returnal has some really cool usage. We've seen it in other games, mostly AstroBot, but the rain effect and the weapon triggers are all really satisfying. Aiming has you pull half way for scope and then you can pull through all the way to activate the secondary effect of your weapon. I never cease to be amazed that you can legitimately use a half trigger pull with this controller... so cool.
* Positional audio is fantastic. Third person introduces some new challenges with understanding enemy position and I found the audio extremely effective at communicating enemy position to me. Very frequently I would hear where an enemy was before I saw them.

Didn't love the mini map, though. The spaces are more vertical and more winding/interconnected than I expected. I thought it'd be fairly linear traversal but it almost seems to have Metroid-like doubling back to get to areas you couldn't access before. I found it difficult to get my bearing and often had to pull up the full map as the mini map seemed to struggle to communicate everything it needed to. There is a nice "scan the environment" button which helps you see exits in your current room which was nice but I wish the mini map was more useful.

Really looking forward to digging in more!

Wowza, quite a long look at the game from the devs.

This looks fun, but not enough for me to jump on it for $70 right away. I do look forward to playing it when sales roll around, and hopefully by then they'll have discovered ways to respect players' time a little better.

As far as PS5's Rest Mode goes, I've only been bitten by it once when forgetting to manually save after being done with a quest in Monster Hunter World before putting it into rest mode. The console updated itself the next day, rebooted, I lost the progress, and it did suck. Make sure to turn off auto-updates at the least (System > System Software > System Software Update and Settings) if you're depending on it to account for Returnal's lack of save and quit.

WizardM0de wrote:

As far as PS5's Rest Mode goes, I've only been bitten by it once when forgetting to manually save after being done with a quest in Monster Hunter World before putting it into rest mode. The console updated itself the next day, rebooted, I lost the progress, and it did suck. Make sure to turn off auto-updates at the least (System > System Software > System Software Update and Settings) if you're depending on it to account for Returnal's lack of save and quit.

Yes, I was surprised by that, too - my memory is the PS4 had an option to download but not install system updates until you gave the okay, but I can't find that option in the PS5 settings.

I think the thing people are more worried about, though, is when the PS5 won't come out of Rest Mode, or if it does the database needs to be rebuilt and they wind up losing games and saves; there've been enough reports of issues like that that people aren't willing to use Rest Mode for fear of seriously messing up their PS5.

Quick first impression from just over an hour's play last night. Crisp & Precise is exactly what I'd describe the movement as, it really is laser tight. There is definitely more exploration moments than I expected, I thought it was gonna be area to area madness packed with enemies & laser attacks coming at you but there's more downtime than you'd likely expect.

The map is very Metroid Prime like, which is a great thing. The mid air dash reminds me of last year's Doom Eternal but in third person. I love the hold 'O' for a longer dash or just tap for a shorter one.

The haptics are amazing, from Selene's ship crashing into the planet, you feel every bump & skid, the alternative fire weapons gives a release of feedback all around the dual sense. Getting pulled up by vines gives an appropriate pulse, very Half Life 2 btw.

Very positive, just like I expected to be honest. I don't know what half the things are that I've discovered yet so need to learn what they actually do on a deeper level.

The sound with headphones on is fantastic, the environment encapsulates you 360°

Excited to get back!

Is there an alternative button layout? Or a choice to remap the controls? I'm thinking towards that half trigger press, and I'm not sure I'd care to try. If it could at least be toggled to something else, like environment ping, or run. Having it for aim or alt-fire, I forget which, is risking input error.

Then I wonder about the resistance to go halfway, and if there's then additional force required for a full press. More force. More inputs. Not great for those with mobility challenges. Awesome for those without, I suppose. Hopefully it's subtle. Like hair trigger subtle.

Yeah, you can remap buttons if you want to, but honestly I think the base layout plays to the game's strengths quite well. Its a game that is TACTILE in a way that few games are, and though having the alt fire / aim both on L2 to double up its functionality initially feels unintuitive, that's only because most of us probably haven't used a controller that has ever done anything like this. There's a resistance point the clicks in half-way down and it makes it easy to squeeze the trigger where you need it to be. Its ultimately more efficient, we just don't have all of the wiring in our own neural pathways for something like this, because we don't have years and years of just about every game asking us to do it.

I'm finding it exponentially easier just a few runs in, and it helps with the thing that the controller does - which is make you feel like you are there by giving you one more "touch" sensation to engage with. For a medium that's primarily visually and auditory, having this extra dimension carried out so well is awesome.

That is awesome to hear. Thanks!

I can echo TheHarpoMarxist's sentiments on the controller usage in Returnal. If I hadn't played Astro Bot already and I was told a game relied on a half trigger pull for aiming functionality I would've thought it was going to be horrid. The range and response on the DualSense triggers continually blows me away. You can perfectly feel the stop point for aiming and it has just the right level of resistance, but then you can push through to use alt fire. I personally found it highly intuitive and it's an incredibly unique control system but one I could see opening up a ton of possibilities in many different genres.

I have heard the buttons can be remapped although I don't know to what degree mapping is customizable. Didn't dig into the options too much but Sony's first party games have been doing a pretty good job of supporting a wide variety of accessibility options lately so hopefully Returnal's control system is flexible enough to support configurations for a wide variety of gamers.

Just had two back to back crash right before 2nd boss where I was pretty confident I would be geared for. A bit frustrating so I'm putting this down until they add a save feature. Overall the game is great, but I don't understand that lack of saving. Losing hours of time is not enjoyable.

FYI, I started getting weird audio noises on the first crash. If you get something similar maybe pause and put PS5 to rest. Not sure if that will have any impact,.

Slytin wrote:

Just had two back to back crash right before 2nd boss where I was pretty confident I would be geared for. A bit frustrating so I'm putting this down until they add a save feature. Overall the game is great, but I don't understand that lack of saving. Losing hours of time is not enjoyable.

The crashing is the reason I was considering waiting for a bit before hopping in... but I am weak. My copy should arrive Monday.

On saving, Housemarque just tweeted this in response to a Reddit thread titled "No need to be toxic about people who need save-options!" - because of course people are being jerks about it:

Housemarque wrote:

We hear the community and we love you all. Nothing to announce now, but keep playing and enjoying the challenge as you can!

So hopefully that means a better save system will be on the way sometime in the near future.

I hope its soon, because the game is fantastic and deserves the praise. Sucks for it to be tarnished because of a silly save decision.

I've sunk 6 hours in now, getting to the first biome boss 3 times. I've stumbled dodging it's melee attacks in the last phase & it's arc red laser attack. It's making me react early & I'm getting hit when I should be more methodical & patient. I'll down it next we meet!

I've unlocked the blade which is devastating when you nail down the time & distance when striking enemies. The Lamiadon enemies which are airborne are troublesome when up close but when you dash off higher ground to where their coming up to meet you, a timely slice of the blade just goes through them like knife through a soft fruit. Dead in one hit, the same for the Kerberon enemies which fire the horizontal line of blue orbs at you. Closing the distance & unleashing your blade is so damn satisfying.

I love the design for the Atropian Turrets both visually & gameplay wise. You see them in areas before you acquire the blade, their shields protect them from your ranged weapon fire, all you can do is dodge their thick clusters of red orbs every 2-3 seconds. Its like an assault course, weaving left & right or dashing through the orbs, sometimes with other enemies mixed into the equation as well.

When you unlock the blade, their shields & structure both collapse in one ninja like swipe after previously being unable to destroy them. The blade is outstanding, to think if there's anything further on ahead that modifies this into something more powerful.....*drools*

I've become more accustomed to the gameplay style, which does feel very Nex Machina (with a good bit more breathing room in terms of exploration) but in full 3D. The jumping & third person viewpoint make it feel very different - dodging the assortment of lasers, orbs, giant tentacle beasts jumping towards you - vs the top down view of NM. Once you start using the jump in tandem with the dash you start to really feel the flow. It sounds stupid but I was using them solo, one or the other, disjointed at best.

It's a tough game, I've died loads but there's something magnetic about Returnal that you jump straight into the next loop with a lust for improving your skill, annihilating enemies that were once a thorn in your side & seeing what the next permanent upgrade is. The story from the small amount I've gotten is also well handled & intriguing.

Yeah I'm enjoying it. The blade did make a lot of difference but still having a hard time figuring out its range. I feel like you're supposed to use them for those manta-ray flying things, but more as a defensive parry. Also, I have such a hard time getting the reload on the starting side arm. I need to pay more attention to the ammo indicator. I fire it.. but the reload comes up and I hit fire too fast and "jam" it.

I've gotten to the 1st level boss once or twice... a 3rd time I just said "nah" let me find a few more upgrades, but I died. Also gotten to that horde-mode room a few times... haven't passed it yet but looking forward to see what comes out of it.

My copy arrived today, so brief impressions from just an hour of play:

  • Damn, this game is pretty. It's close to what I'd envision modern day Metroid might look like on a next-gen console. The map is also way more Metroid than I was expecting.
  • I feel like I've seen people talking about the haptics from the raindrops falling at the start of the game more than anything. It's a nice touch, but I'm more impressed by the feedback I'm noticing in combat, like the different kinds of vibration for getting hit, shooting, and notifying you when alt-fire is off cooldown.
  • Speaking of alt-fire, I'm loving the implementation of the adaptive triggers so far. It's strangely satisfying to have different tension levels on each trigger. I'm sure that I'll accidentally trigger alt-fire in a panic early on, but I'm hoping I can improve with practice.
  • The sound design is extremely good. I highly recommend trying with a pair of headphones if you aren't already.
  • Selene feels great to control. I'm not sure about dash on O though. I think I might try moving it to R1 for a while and see if that feels better.

1 gig patch dropped today. No notes - likely a general stability patch.