Returnal - Return All

Yes finally. And yes that suspend save is the obvious solution. A ton of GBA, DS and 3DS games had that!

I stared at the icon hard yesterday thinking about finishing it up, but having to stay committed put me off. Now I will patch and give it a shot.

Well... co-op update is out!

Never did play again after suspend save, but just fired it up today waiting for patch to download. I got to health critical in the first room. Haha. So I'm a little rusty.

Spikeout, or anybody else, message me if you want to play. Not sure what else new is added in this app, but at least if I could get back to the end and get the true epilogue that would be nice. I'll have to look up what I was missing for that, but I think I was close.

This is one of those games I enjoyed immensely, but I'm not sure I can get back into it after being away. Every skill I honed for it has probably evaporated.

Hehe yeah, it was definitely a thing I was into every day for a while and got good at. I hope it will come back.

Apparently the new mode is like a never-ending challenge thing. So maybe that would be a good sharpen your skills test. Hah.

Holy sh*t the tower is like it's own side story or supplemental campaign or whatever. Once you're there it has its own loop, recordings, xeno, artifacts, everything. And a special place like the house. Don't want to spoil but it came up right after my first run so you should find it quick.

Not sure if it's supposed to be done after main story, but maybe. Definitely a lot more excited to play it now. Thought it was just like the daily challenges extended. It does have scoreboard for how many floors you make. But seems a lot more involved than just that. This is cool.

I want to buy this game so much but I have such a backlog right now. One day Returnal.....

Hey, it's the thread I couldn't find.

I've been a Returnal player for (checks calendar) five days now. I'm not sure why I bought another roguelitke considering how poorly I've gotten along with them in the past. Just that big a Sony fanboy, I guess. But the movement is pretty smooth and fun.

I'd definitely be up for trying the co-op. I think Stele and I are Playstation friends already.

I have a date with Returnal sometime after I finish Elden Ring. It may be a while.

Stele wrote:

Well... co-op update is out!

Never did play again after suspend save, but just fired it up today waiting for patch to download. I got to health critical in the first room. Haha. So I'm a little rusty.

Spikeout, or anybody else, message me if you want to play. Not sure what else new is added in this app, but at least if I could get back to the end and get the true epilogue that would be nice. I'll have to look up what I was missing for that, but I think I was close.

I'm definitely up for this, let me know roughly what times your free over the next few days, see if we can link up. I can't wait to experience Returnal in co-op!

Message sent.

My 2nd tower attempt was pretty good. Got to 3rd area or whatever it's called. Boss repeated from first area in 2nd area but with new phase. Pretty fun.

Got the last fragment in the 6th area last night. Suspend save, couldn't finish the run yet. But hopefully I can turn it in today and maybe see the final scene.

Then back to the tower because it's really interesting.

Got the last house scene. Still can't get to the end of biome 6 again though. Even today I got my old favorite hollowseeker back and ran into a brutal room with healing tower in the back and 2 of those giant squid that spawn all the little bastards, and shoot those malfunction causing blasts at you. Just a pain in the ass.

I've had a few runs of the Tower Of Sisyphus now & it's a superb addition to the game. Its more fast paced in that you'll have less time in-between combat encounters but there's still plenty of the enemy free rooms where you can open chests, get artifacts or buy upgrades. You have 20 rooms in each phase, fighting a boss Algos at the end of each phase. I've beaten it's second form, every time you go to next phase Algos will get harder, adding more attacks etc

The difficulty does ramp up but not too steeply, I'm enjoying leveling up the weapon proficiencies. The new special weapon which you will eventually find is like an alien plasma rifle that you can only use temporarily, as a consumable, it's like a power up for a short period. There are many versions of it but the one I had was pelting out these orange orbs all over the place & obliterating anything hostile in my way.

It does take a while to get back into the swing of Returnal's blistering movement & the threats that are all around you, even using your dash invincibility frame to go through enemy lasers/orbs soon becomes an art.

I'm busting to try co-op mode Stele, hopefully this week at some point!

I did it!

Finally beat act 3 (act 2 plus sun fragments). But of course since my old trophy was bugged from months (9?) ago, I got the trophies for act 2 and act 3 at the same time. And the trophy for final boss finally registered too. Can't believe I beat him first try after so many months. And maybe 10 runs of not even making it through area 6 the last week. I did it with a rifle of all things. Health leech is still awesome. And the range is good so I could give myself room to dodge and keep firing non stop.

So now I'm just 4 trophies from platinum... Area 2, 3, 5, 6 full completions. I know I just need 1 more glyph cipher in 6, I got 19/20 on that last run. Not sure about the others as I haven't been in those zones lately. Every run I did this weekend was from area 4 to area 6 heh.

So clean up platinum or go to the tower? And of course try to co-op.

There was another patch today too, FYI. Haven't seen notes but I'm guessing bug fixes from new content?

Looks like Returnal is going to be part of Sony's new GamePass competitor.

Gratz Stele!

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Looks like Returnal is going to be part of Sony's new GamePass competitor.

Yes. I’ll have to weigh up whether to play it, and other games, through that tier of PS Plus for a year.

There’s an interview with Returnal’s director on this weeks PS I Love You. It starts around the 18.20 mark.

An interview with Housemarque.

Good stuff. Curious what the next game is.

Bump!

It took me way too long to come back to this for all kinds of reasons, but I finally have. I put the game down after maybe 6 hours of play when it first released because crashes and lack of suspend state.

Thankfully, none of that seems to be an issue anymore, plus the online portion is actually working now. I made it to the end of the 2nd biome last night for the first time, beat that boss, and cruised on through the 3rd biome as well. I suspended last night at the start of the next part because I lasted so much longer than I was expecting.

That 3rd biome boss fight was incredible. I almost died at the very end, but I pulled off some killer dodging at the end to make it through.

I had the parasite that doesn't let you pick up siliphium to heal but heals you after each kill as well as +75% repair efficiency, and I picked up the one that drops the health upgrade requirement from 3 resin to 2 early on. I felt extremely durable. Looking forward to seeing more tonight.

Edit: Oh, I also picked up the grappling hook finally last night. I was not expecting it to be such a huge new addition to combat! It feels amazing to dash back and forth across giant battle arenas with waves of enemies.

Dyni wrote:

Edit: Oh, I also picked up the grappling hook finally last night. I was not expecting it to be such a huge new addition to combat! It feels amazing to dash back and forth across giant battle arenas with waves of enemies.

The grapple was probably the biggest game-changing element for me. It makes such a huge difference in mobility and speed of action. Rooms that presented a slog before now have fast movement across vast distances. It REALLY makes a difference in the challenge wave rooms, too. You're invulnerable while grapple-zipping!

Tyrian wrote:

You're invulnerable while grapple-zipping!

I was wondering about that. I didn't think I had been hit while grappling yet, but i wasn't sure if I was actually invulnerable. Good to know.

Yeah total game changer. Great game, especially after all the QoL patches.

I think I got burned by early bugs. I looked everywhere a couple months back and could not find missing audio logs. Near release there was a bug with those logs and apparently it is stuck on my save file.

So I can't platinum without starting over. Very frustrating and I'm not really in the mood for that. But I still might go back and try to finish the new tower mode sometime

I started on this last night having picked it up with the new PS Plus levels. So far its great and i am VERY bad at it. Further updates to follow no doubt.

Looks like this is coming to PC Feb 15 so a few more people can play it

I tried this courtesy of Playstation+ and kept bouncing off of it. I just couldn't adjust to the difficulty. Once I made it to the first boss it was downhill from there. Might pick it up again at some point but the pile is large...

After about 9 hours of playing and a bunch of deaths I finally got past the first boss, Phrike.

Jesus this game is unforgiving. I figured he would be a pushover after the initial time I got to him. I ended up getting to the 3rd phase of his attacks without too much issue. But then it was like another two hours of frustrating deaths, and having to restart again before I was able to give him a second try. It probably took me another 7 or 8 tries before I was able to finish him off.

This game is so unforgiving and starting you almost from square 1 after you die is so crazy. But I'm loving the world, the mystery, and the combat. So push on.

I do hate the game puts you in unfair situations. In this new zone I was doing perfectly fine for quite a while. I had full health and a weapon I was comfortable with. Until the only way forward was through a pathway with crisscrossing lasers, and a floor that you take constant damage from. If you jump you take damage then fall to the floor and take even more damage as the "get up" animation plays out. Dash is disabled.

I came close to making it to the end of the hallway. If I didn't try jumping I would have. But would have lost almost all my health. I can't see how I would make it through there if I didn't have full health to begin with. It seems totally unfair as I didn't see any other way forward - and I could not go around (I checked).

Now I'm back at the beginning of the game which is such a gut punch. I do know I can skip right to the second world which is some consolation but wow, this game is unnecessarily punishing. Still I'm going to push on - well at least until Starfield unlocks.

Crawley wrote:

I do hate the game puts you in unfair situations. In this new zone I was doing perfectly fine for quite a while. I had full health and a weapon I was comfortable with. Until the only way forward was through a pathway with crisscrossing lasers, and a floor that you take constant damage from. If you jump you take damage then fall to the floor and take even more damage as the "get up" animation plays out. Dash is disabled.

Are you sure there was no other path forward here? I could be misremembering, but I thought the damaging floor with no dash sections were all optional, as you're supposed to move through them with an upgrade you receive later in the game that makes you immune to the floor damage. There are several paths in the first few stages that you won't be able to explore until you unlock certain upgrades.

Yeah, as I recall those rooms were just unusable until you got the upgrade. Then at that point you just have access to more RNG rolls for better stuff.

Well that's good to know about the upcoming perk and that hallway is supposed to be optional.

I walked around the room on the outside and didn't see any way in. It looked like there was a teleporter in there from the map icons. I figured that was where I needed to get to go to the next area as I didn't notice an obvious way to continue forward. Other than wandering into the desert area and I figured that was death as its not really on the map.

So next time I'll look even closer to see if I'm missing the way forward.