I’ve always been drawn to games like this. A momentary lapse of concentration in the heat of a fight can be enough to dispense with half your health bar, leaving you weakened before the next encounter.Īll of this is painful, but I always felt as if I had a chance – that next time I’d find out more about what the everliving hell had happened on this planet, or discover one of the rare artefacts or upgrades that Selene gets to keep, or squeak out of a fight that was very much not in my favour with a sliver of health and the sound of my heart pounding in my ears. You never know whether your next run will last two hours or 10 minutes. Because the planet changes every time, you never know whether the chamber ahead contains something useful, or a crowd of enemies that you’re not strong enough to face yet. But still I kept playing.Įverything in Returnal is a gamble, really. Over and over, I was sent back to the beginning. I kept coming across malignant items that caused my suit to malfunction when I picked them up, or falling through the floor to find a super-powerful mortar-firing turtle waiting for me, or opening chests to discover aggressive flying manta rays instead of a decent weapon. After that, it took me almost two days to get any further on every attempt I seemed plagued by bad luck or failing skill. By the time I got to the next boss, I was already struggling, and I flubbed it by sprinting into a pit trying to run away from a sword-wielding faceless alien that kept materialising behind my back. Unfortunately, my shotgun turned out to be next to useless in the desert, which was mostly populated by ominous floating cubes with tentacles. Movement and shooting are so fast in Returnal, so instinctive, that when things are going well you feel like the archdemon of bullet hell, surviving against the odds.
I danced through every altercation, dashing and jumping and sprinting around mesmerising patterns of plasma orbs and bullets to get up close.
#Metacritic returnal upgrade#
I found plenty of green pickups to refill and expand my health bar, and a weird alien machine-thing that resurrected me, and an upgrade for my suit that let me do more damage the closer Selene got to death. I got lucky with a weapon I found early on, a shotgun-style thing with a secondary-fire mode that sent a horizontal wall of pain towards encroaching creatures. My first afternoon with Returnal took me through that jungle, past a couple of truly terrifying boss creatures, and through a Stargate-style portal to the arid ruins of the planet’s second area, the Crimson Wastes, in one epic four-hour run. Every time Selene dies – and this will be very often – she finds herself back at the crash site, in the middle of a jungle that remixes itself subtly every time, having lost every useful weapon or trinket or ability modifying parasite that she gathered on the last run. You’ll explore, discover and fight your way through an unforgiving journey, where mystery stalks your every move.ĭesigned for extreme replayability, the procedural world of Returnal invites you to dust yourself off in the face of defeat and take on new, evolving challenges with every rebirth.If it moves, it will try to kill you, and you’d better shoot back. From high stakes, bullet hell-fuelled combat, to visceral twists and turns through stark and contrasting environments. Every loop offers new combinations, forcing you to push your boundaries and approach combat with a different strategy each time.īrought to life by stunning visual effects, the dark beauty of the decaying world around you is packed with explosive surprises. Through relentless roguelike gameplay, you’ll discover that just as the planet changes with every cycle, so do the items at your disposal. Again and again, she’s defeated – forced to restart her journey every time she dies. Isolated and alone, she finds herself fighting tooth and nail for survival. After crash-landing on this shape-shifting world, Selene must search through the barren landscape of an ancient civilization for her escape.
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