I strongly recommend: Returnal (Review - No Spoilers)

this video is brought to you by skillshare returnal what a game okay so first of all let's talk about spoilers i'm not going to share any story spoilers with you at all i'm only going to show you the first two bosses none of the rest i am going to show you five out of the six biomes because they've already been revealed in trailers i'm not revealing the final biome which makes me really sad because it's just [ __ ] incredible but i want you guys to see it for yourself for the first time so that's the spoiler warning on to the rest of the review so look this is gonna be a weird review because i love this game so much that i just started obsessing over its design and just like thinking about it all the time you know that meme that's like i bet he's thinking about other women and i'm over on the other side of the bed like is there enough synergy in return itemization or not that's me okay seriously i just found this to be such a fascinating game to play through and now to talk about because there's no other game like it i think it's brilliant but so many of its decisions are going to push people away and there's going to be so much discussion not just here in this review but elsewhere about whether or not those decisions were the right decisions when it comes to return all there's going to be three categories of people there's going to be people like myself who [ __ ] love it there's going to be people who just have no interest in it because it's not their cup of tea and then there's going to be this third category of people who want to love it but they just can't break through the structure the difficulty the repetitiveness or they just feel like return fundamentally fails to deliver as a roguelike which believe me is something we're going to talk a lot about but all of this discussion is very academic and i don't want it to undermine or confuse or money the central message of this review which is this game [ __ ] rocks there was this narrative or commentary recently that sony were risk averse in their releases preferring to play things safe and focus on big blockbusters with broad appeal return is the biggest lull no that sony could have served up as a response to that narrative an arcade roguelike hybrid that asks much of the player and gives little in the way of compromise it's totally unique punishingly difficult and a true showcase for all of the ps5's bells and whistles house mark have always had a cult following but they're about to hit the mainstream baby because turtle is some seriously cool [ __ ] [Music] let's start by talking about what return is since i know people still have a lot of questions about that at this point as i covered in my preview return is a third person sci-fi shooter with roguelike and metroidvania elements you play as celine who has crash-landed on this mysterious planet and she very quickly becomes aware that she's caught in this groundhog day style loop where every death sends her back to the start of her journey unlike groundhog day though things are a little bit different every time each time you return the area you explore is all jumbled around so while spaces you explore remain identical the order in which you explore those spaces changes the goal of each new biome of which there are six is to survive long enough to reach the end where you'll typically fight a boss and gain access to a new permanent metroidvania style power up that allows you to access the next biome and also opens up exploration and traversal opportunities in previous bibles the world that house mark have built here in maternal is astounding it is so mythic so monumental so otherworldly and so terrifying built by a near-extinct alien species return spaces are littered with machinery and architecture that could never have been designed with humans in mind it's too large too hostile too confusing to explore space in return is to get the distinct feeling that you just don't belong there but its hostility doesn't make it any less wondrous to take in exploring biomes for the first or second or third time you'll invariably discover new tile sets that will just force you to stop and look around the architecture the sky boxes the statues the flora and fauna it all coalesces to create this hypnotic dark beauty there's also a lot of range within these biomes there's an interesting link between four of them which borrows certain architectural features from each other but even despite this each bio manages to feel so distinct owing to its color palette its vegetation and its level layout the jump from the narrow confined starter ruins to the outdoor endless horizons of the red waist is such a stark shift not only visually but in terms of the experience of playing the game you'll explore differently you'll use terrain differently you'll fight differently each new zone brings a similar shift refreshing what it feels like to be playing returnal i have a lot of thoughts about returnal as a roguelike which we'll definitely talk about at the end but one thing it definitely gets right is that each biome feels like a fresh new chapter in your journey rather than just a reskin of space with a few new enemies thrown in exploring maternal six biomes is a process that becomes more rewarding the deeper you get into the game though there are some big diminishing returns that will eventually kick in exploration is never about where to go the map will always clearly mark for you which door leads to your objective and which door leads you to optional areas containing combat challenges or item pickups this clarity allows you to pace yourself very easily if you're pushing for a quick run to the next biome you know exactly where to go but if you're looking for some farm in preparation for the next boss you'll be able to ensure that you don't miss a single pickup because the map will tell you which doors to go through and it will also tell you where the pickups are like precisely where they are you may need to figure out how to get to them but you will always know where the pickups are as a result exploration is less about getting lost and problem solving and more about making decisions a really good example of this are the various puzzle rooms littered throughout the map some of them are traversal-based offering you the choice to navigate a set of obstacles or not you can just turn around and leave there are also timed events that pop up asking you to make quick decisions about which items you might want to pick up before all of the platforms collapse again it's about decision making a risk and reward formula that permeates much of the game including exploration one thing i loved was the way that the metroidvania unlocks you obtain open up new exploration opportunities each new unlock allows you to do another sweep of every preceding biome giving you access to entire sections that were previously unreachable this is really rewarding the first or second time you go through it but after some time you'll bump into the limits of the procedural generation and things can start to feel quite repetitive for this reason it's best to think of returner's world as one that you move through a few times in order to learn it not one that you endlessly return to in order to explore the biggest driving force pushing you forward in return is the mystery of celine and how she can escape this corrupted world this narrative is all fragmented never giving you long expository cutscenes that spell things out for you it's audiophiles clipped at different points in celine's life it's vast holographic chambers that tell tales of alien civilizations it's translated alien runes that tell the story of their fall it's flashback sequences or dream sequences or nightmares that frame and reframe events past present and future i always love this sort of storytelling i love looking at the shattered pieces and using my own imagination or problem solving to piece them back together and return all is just that from start to finish incidentally there are multiple endings for the game i unlocked two of them i've heard about a third from another reviewer but i'm not sure how to get that and i think there's at least one more after that either way return all story is not a one and done job it asks you to return to the experience to peel back more and more layers with additional completions without spoiling anything i will tell you that return narrative absolutely delivers it's far from the high point of the game but its reveals will deepen your appreciation of each new biome or monument you discover and armed with this new knowledge your subsequent visits to them will hit different i don't know exactly where to put this next section so i'm just going to drop it here return all really shows off the power of the ps5 the dual sense controller is really cool tech but pretty much only astros playroom has made use for it up to this point other games use some of its features like the adaptive triggers but not really and the haptic feedback is very much just like old-school rumble return is a ps5 exclusive made by a second party sony studio it was made to be played with the dual sense and you can tell the adaptive triggers are important because the left trigger will aim down sights if you push it down a little bit but it will arm your secondary fire if you push it down all the way the haptic feedback feels absolutely brilliant with each weapon taking on a distinct feeling in your hands because of the unique feedback that kicks in every time you fire it there's this one weapon that will fire a portal beam on occasion and when that kicks in it just feels so good in your hands because the feedback is communicating the power of that weapon to you better than any sound or visual cue ever could there's this bungee quote that i always remember and it's about weapon balancing and it's something along the lines of we don't always need to buff weapon damage we can make a weapon feel more powerful just by changing how it looks and sounds well i'd add to that feel and the dual sense haptic feedback goes a long way towards making return weapons feel so awesome to use load times there aren't any for real uh yeah everything's just instant here's an example of fast travel yep i wish i had some more words for this section but yeah how many ways can you say there are no load times visually this game is nuts i'm uploading in non hdr 1080p 60fps because 4k hdr is really not possible for a video of this length the file size becomes unmanageable when editing files at least for me working with australian internet etc etc plus youtube's compression is really [ __ ] okay the game you will play on your own ps5 on your 4k tv especially if it's hdr compatible will look orders of magnitude better than what you're seeing here it is such a beautiful game not only because of its density and detail but because of its lighting if you didn't know return is a ray trace enabled game and the combination of enemy bioluminescence and all the bullet held particles and laser beams just bouncing off everything every new combat sequence is this dazzling display of fireworks except the fireworks are all trying to kill you the cost of these spectacular visuals is high and it's a price that your ps5 can't afford or if it can then house markets could make it happen return runs at 4k resolution but does downscale dynamically and it does run at 60fps but it has some significant frame drops when the action heats up these are disruptive for two reasons firstly when frames drop motion blur kicks in and it kicks in hard i hate motion blur i hate it so much and return all uses motion blur to hide its frame drops most games do this by the way but it always sucks secondly and more importantly this game is about really fast reaction times and this game becomes harder to play when the action suddenly drops from like 60 fps to 30 fps or i don't know something like that digital foundry will tell us exactly either way i noticed this big time in some sections particularly in the ice biome it's not game breaking but it is game disruptive and it's a shame when set against what is an otherwise flawless technical showcase the jewel in return technical crown is something that we don't talk about much audio the audio in this game is incredible so you might have heard of the ps5 tempest engine which is essentially their name for 3d audio a technology that is pretty common stuff like dolby atmos etc but it isn't brought to the world of video games very often the ps5 has a sound processing chip dedicated to crunching sound data which means that developers have a lot more bandwidth to play with when it comes to sound and they have a purpose-built audio format provided by sony the tools are all there returnal is the first ps5 game to use them properly there's an overall soundscape that exists within return all that is just unmistakably unique this could sound really dumb but hear me out rice bubbles snap crackle and pop that is how i would describe this soundscape it feels so electrified like every individual sound can be heard so perfectly as an individual sound even when it's happening at the same time as like 10 other sounds you feel like superman with superhuman hearing like you can pass the soundscape in a way that mere mortals can't this is so important in this game because the sound does a huge amount of heavy lifting in a gameplay sense returns third-person perspective is not ideal given how utterly chaotic this game can get there's a reason that bullet hells are typically top-down or side-scrolling or isometric it's so you can see everything you can't see everything here it's just not possible given your perspective but what you can do is hear everything and there were dozens and dozens of times where i didn't need my eyes to know that a foe was behind me i could just hear it and then instinct would kick in and i'd move i'm sure many of you are probably thinking that like dude 3d audio exists in most games what are you talking about yes it does but believe me when i tell you that the level of precision here is is just a step up and you can't understand that until you actually experience it for yourself because you know youtube's video compression is not going to capture that you know what i mean so uh yeah i wish i could explain that better i wish i could showcase that better but uh yeah man you just you just got to experience it not since hans showdown have i experienced the soundscape as rich as detailed and as informative as this and hunt's showdown has the best sound design of any video game ever made hands down so yeah eternal sound is [ __ ] awesome finally i'd be remiss if i didn't briefly highlight return of soundtrack which is almost as important to exploration and combat as is the level design or the weapon design maternals haunting melodies waft over ruins as you explore them like wailing memories of the past and they seamlessly transition into tense pulsating tracks that have this metronomic quality to them like each beat is counting down to the moment of your death like many parts of return the strength of its soundtrack lives in a dozen little subtleties that you don't even notice at first but with the repetition that comes from the roguelike structure you'll eventually come to find and appreciate them alright so we've spoken about the environments the story the frame rate the sound let's talk about the best part of this game this is playing it fraternal feels like the end of an origin story for house mark the gameplay you're seeing on screen isn't some new direction for the studio it's actually the latest iteration of a formula that house mark have been perfecting since 1993 when stardust arrived on pc super stardust in 1996 would incorporate a third person perspective and the perspective would shift yet again in 2007 with super stardust hd introducing a novel orbital perspective that would later be adapted in house mark's most recognized title resogun house mark took all of this experience making bullet hell games into their next title nex machina see if the gameplay looks at all familiar [Music] while the screen is a lot more densely populated here the dna is unmistakable the color palette the particle effects the dash which grants you iframes the franticness of it all next machina was the warm-up round for return all one that allowed house mark to further refine a formula it was already a master of return combat didn't come out of nowhere it's made up of dozens of techniques and tricks that housemark have tested and retested over the entire life of their studio now pushed into a new perspective and a next-gen framework combat in return is first and foremost about precision not precision aim but rather precise movements and precise strategy on the aiming side there's a lot of aim assist that kicks in here you can turn it off but there's really no point in doing that i know it's this weird flex like oh i always turn him assist off man it's all right cool good luck with that have fun tell me how it goes this game just isn't built around the need for precise aiming it's about movement so putting that extra burden on yourself i mean you could do it but i just i don't think you're gonna arrive at a better more fun or even more satisfying experience if you do the core gameplay loop is movement where each enemy throws out a variety of projectiles at you that will force you to remain on your toes projectiles coming straight at you laser beams blocking off your exits ring bombs that land somewhere and expand outwards turrets that will lock onto you after a few seconds and track you as you move across the map and the best part is everything i've just described it happens all at once luckily celine handles like a dream that doesn't sound very good but you know what i mean she sprints she jumps she dodges and she grapples around with such immediacy that you can never blame sluggy or unresponsive controls for a death there's no animation locking here whatever celine is doing it can be immediately interrupted by any other action there's also a lot of depth to these movement tools as well jumps become longer the longer you press the button same goes for the dash which allows you to cover a sizeable amount of distance if you long press it and it also provides you iframes allowing you to phase through projectiles or barriers the grapple tool becomes essential in combat later on accelerating you to speeds that make it much more difficult for enemies to reach you and allowing you to reposition quickly if you're caught in a bad spot these movement tools are not just about defensive play though they're also very offensive and they need to be given returner's unique spin on push forward combat see enemies drop currency when they die and they drop it where they die so like moats in gambit you need to run over to the enemy's remains to pick them up if you choose to sit back and shoot stuff from a distance that works it's really safe but it's also very inefficient because your character is not becoming any stronger when you do this which will in turn make future encounters more difficult so you have to push into uncomfortable territory in order to play this game properly shielded enemies are the other thing shields cannot be broken with weapons unless your weapon has a very rare shield busting perk so you have to get in close with your melee weapon to pop shields and some of the enemies and turrets are located in places where there's no safe approach so you have to bait their attacks and then dodge at the exact precise moment and oh when you do it just feels so good i mentioned precise strategy a moment ago and this is kind of what i'm talking about every room is a new combat puzzle and the minute you walk in you're sizing it up and planning your route and ducking and weaving and shooting and then some surprise enemy pops up and the plan goes to [ __ ] and you need to improvise my favorite rooms are the ones where an enemy begins to spawn when you enter the room and those enemies are always really tough so what the game is saying to you is get ready for this and there are smaller enemies that have already spawned and this is your window to clear them out before the big guy arrives so you're like frantic at this point just tearing around the room trying to clear out as many enemies as you can because you know the job is going to get 20 times tougher in just a few short moments return really enshrines that arcade commitment to urgency and perfection there's an adrenaline system that kicks in for every three targets killed and each rank unlocks new abilities like a stronger melee attack or x-ray vision or a larger pickup radius etc it maxes out at level 5 15 enemies killed but it will reset if you get hit once any damage boom straight back to level zero it's well balanced though because you don't need high adrenaline levels to fight well but it rewards those with skill enough to maintain it same principle applies to the active reload now i know what's already happening people are watching this and they're like wow have you missed every single active reload while playing now you're thinking that because you're watching this footage and you're looking at the active reload bar and you're like well that's so easy how could he not be hitting this right when you're playing this game though this is essentially what you are seeing what i mean is this game is so chaotic so often that you're looking at every corner of the screen all the time and you're constantly engaging your peripheral vision the [ __ ] active reload is the last thing on your mind obviously highly skilled players are going to be able to walk and chew bubble gum at the same time certainly while i was playing it though active reload was not my focus but i'm glad it exists for other people weapons here are fantastic there's 10 of them each with totally unique profiles sidearms assault rifles shotguns single shots slug weapons rocket launchers and my personal favorite a weapon that is basically anarchy from destiny 2 allowing you to drop pylons on or near enemies which will conduct red lightning it looks awesome it's as strategic as it is powerful and it's just really fun to use weapons all have specific perks and this is really the only meta progression you carry with you when you die so when you pick up a weapon for the first time its perks are locked but then you kill stuff with the weapon and it will unlock the perks the next time you pick up the weapon the perks are immediately available the real magnificence of combat though lies in enemy design meeting these enemies for the first time they're the best moments in this entire game seeing their designs their tendrils the sounds they make i mean if we just slow down some footage look at this dude man it's incredible it's intimidating and it's terrifying when you figure out just how dangerous some of these enemies are we're going to talk about difficulty after this but the ai of these enemies is so strong the ferocity of them is crazy they just hunt you down with this bloodlust that feels so organic these enemies won't let you cheese them they will find a way to get you there's really nowhere to run or hide during combat you have to meet the challenge head on and you're always meaning it on the enemy's terms to help tilt the scales in your favor there are consumables artifacts and parasites you can pick up along the way some of these items just make you stronger no strings attached but many of them have a trade-off associated with them a parasite might heal you over time but it might also stop you from picking up any healing items a key you find on the ground might be useful but it might also trigger a malfunction in your suit which is a debuff that can only be cleared if you've met certain combat or pickup conditions most of the time you will pick up these items because the benefits provided outweigh their negatives as such return itemization is less about decision making and it's more about dealing with consequences in the next few sections i'm going to talk more critically about return but i just want to reiterate that this movement this combat these weapons these enemies this is all just it's it's so good i love it it's the best third-person bullet hell ever made and yeah it's a short list of competitors but i don't care this rocks it can be enjoyed while relying on its most basic elements alone and your appreciation for it only grows as you master its more advanced systems when i say i love this game it's because of all this stuff and none of the things that return on gets wrong diminishes how much i enjoyed this game's combat one of the most interesting discussions we can have about returnal is in relation to difficulty it's probably the central discussion in fact since the difficulty is going to be what either attracts people to this game or pushes them away from it so let's talk about that is return all hard question mark in my preview i commented that two hours in first biome down first boss down i wasn't finding the game particularly difficult that actually stayed the case for the entire first half of the game i really only died a handful of times during those first three biomes i killed every boss on either the first or second attempt i found return on to be quite cruisy up to that point and i thought house mark had taken a step back from their traditional commitment to really demanding gameplay because they were making something that would appeal to a broader audience i thought maybe sony had given them some marching orders because the game felt much easier than i expected given that it was a house marked title and because there's literally a warning at the start of the game that says this is a challenging game my perception of return was difficulty would immediately change when i stepped into the second half of the game biomes four five and six where the difficulty just j curves so hard that i was like is this the same game so yeah it gets hard but it gets hard in some ways that a lot of people are going to dislike and i think there's some problems with how graduated the difficulty curve is there are two components to return as difficulty moment-to-moment combat difficulty and overall game structure let's talk about structure first fraternal is a game of six biomes divided into two acts if you die during act one which is biomes one two or three you go back to the start of biome one if you die in act two you go back to the start of biome 4. act 1 feels pretty smooth because what it asks you to do is go from one end of each biome to the other and then kill a boss once you've done that you unlock a metroidvania powerup that lets you access the next biome and get back to it really quickly should you die all of this flows quite naturally it feels fine it feels reasonable for want of a better term in the second act things change each biome has two or three separate keys that have to be obtained in order to unlock the boss room so you need to journey through these biomes that get quite long because they have up to three different wings and if you die before you unlock the boss door you have to go back to the very start of the act biome number four so if you're clearing the fifth biome and you die on the third part of that biome you've maybe wasted i don't know like an hour maybe more and you have very little to show for that other than some like tiny amounts of meta progression some newly unlocked weapon perks etc i know we are all super bored of dark souls comparisons but they're useful in these sorts of discussions because dark souls is a kind of universal language we can use to discuss difficulty like we all get it even if you haven't played dark souls you probably get it at this point by process of osmosis in dark souls you push through a level but there are checkpoints along the way in the form of bonfires and then you get up to the boss and there's always a shortcut to get back there fast and you wipe on the boss a dozen or so times and then the boss dies imagine if you were playing dark souls and every time you died on a boss you had to clear a big part of the undead berg again which is the first area of dark souls and then the entirety of whatever new level you're trying to clear and then you have to kill the boss in one attempt and if you die at any point throughout all of this you have to do it all over again i hit some big walls during this part of the game because this gauntlet style structure is extremely punishing if you fail i had runs 30 minutes 45 minutes an hour or more where i was really pushing to break through the next unlock or the next boss and i would fall short and it would knock me on my ass and i'd just be like and the thought of having to go through all of that all over again was really discouraging this structure is made more demanding by the fact that there's no save system during your runs when you start a run your ps5 is locked to return or you cannot access any other games or apps you can put your ps5 into rest mode but you can't turn it off this becomes super fun when your game crashes which happened to be twice during my playthroughs both times when i'd gone back to previous biomes to farm upgrades in preparation for a boss push i lost one and a half hours of progress on each crash when that happened with almost nothing to show for it that was a real low point in my return journey i think it would have been smart for house mark to have arrived at some sort of system to let you turn off your ps5 or access another game or app or just something that protects you from crashes because the runs in this game can be very long and i think the absence of some sort of safe system hurts the game more than it helps it i'm not saying you should be able to save and load whenever you [ __ ] up because that would break the game but i think there should be something that takes the edge off this because right now it's a lot so at this point i've described a gauntlet style structure that sends you back to the very start of a run if you fail and i've said that it can be exhausting when you are not making progress the flip side to that point of view is that is really really [ __ ] satisfying when you get a boss down i mean just imagine what i described to you earlier in that dark souls example imagine how much more tense boss battles would become when the stakes are that high and you know that failure doesn't cost you five minutes it costs you 50 minutes imagine how your pulse quickens how you focus the [ __ ] up palms sweaty mom's spaghetti returner will put hairs on your chest and wherever else there might not be hairs yet conquest in return can feel biblical like they're gonna write songs about this victory that's a rare thing in video games it's the struggle that produces memories and return all totally nails that i will remember when i broke through these biomes for the first time because house mark made the journey towards those victories so long and hard return on structure is exhausting and anxiety inducing and i love it but a lot of other people won't so yeah you just have to know what you're getting yourself into before you plug down that 70 so that's the structural aspect of returnal's difficulty let's talk now about the moment-to-moment combat difficulty let's start by returning to that earlier question is return all hard okay so most of the time return all looks like this but then suddenly it looks like this when we ask is return all hard i think part of the answer to that question is most of the time no some of the time extremely return has three categories of enemies the first are your trash mobs they are low hp low damage output very numerous they fodder enemies that will give you a hard time at the beginning but after a few run-ins with them you'll have their number no problem the second category are the bosses now i've spoken to quite a few other reviewers during this review process and a number of them had difficulties with the bosses i personally didn't that's not a humble brag it's just a fact we're all good or bad at different things for some reason my brain is pretty comfortable with bullet hells and kind of see the gaps i actually killed most of the bosses on my first attempt some of them i needed two i never needed a third attempt on a boss i think bosses are quite easy because they're generally slow moving and present as easy targets so you can just sort of focus on dodging and the fireworks your mileage may vary but i think they're okay the third category of enemies are what i'd call the elite enemies and they're typically bigger enemies they have vastly more hp vastly more damage output shootout way more fireworks than lasers and to top it all off they are typically extremely mobile so in addition to dodging all of the [ __ ] they also jump on you or teleport behind you and just ko you these enemies are almost the sole reason why this game is hard because there's no checkpoints before these guys like if you get up to a boss you've always unlocked a shortcut to it so you can get back to it slightly faster but these elite enemies can appear at any point in time and they will just end your run there's often not even any way to prepare for it either because the game doesn't give you any warning when you're about to face one of these dudes and then you walk in and the room is locked down and you're just like oh [ __ ] mom spaghetti time let's go 30 seconds later splat i think the tuning of these enemies is disproportionate such that it has a disruptive impact on many parts of the game return all is a roguelike where you go through and collect upgrades to become stronger as you play though you'll eventually realize that you don't need to build towards like normal trash mob clearing because the trash mobs pose no threat to you instead all of your focus goes towards preparing for the next time you run into one of these elite enemies so for example there's an upgrade that gives you a 25 chance to explode your enemies corpses when they die that's cool but you just think to yourself what is the point of that i don't need that that doesn't help me kill elite enemies i'm not going to pick it up i think any roguelike that has you building towards boss or mini boss damage only has made some mistakes the big issue is just how much of a spike these enemies represent in the overall difficulty curve i'm almost on autopilot as i clear through a lot of space in return because as i said it's pretty easy most of the time as i'm doing it all i can think about is [ __ ] man i really hope i don't wipe on the next elite enemy i run into and i can go for like an hour just doing my thing and feeling comfortable and confident but then those enemies will just shrek me and then i'm like oh come on man the jump is so swift and huge that it almost feels unfair and it kind of cheapens everything else the process of clearing fodder enemies starts to feel less engaging and rewarding because you know where the real challenge lies and it ain't here now i'm not saying that those elite enemies should be easier by the way i'm not asking for an easier game what i'm saying is that return has a real lack of mid-tier enemies that are a little bit challenging but not super challenging it just feels like enemies are either fodder or like god mode bosses nothing in between and i think that a roguelike needs to manage that curve better because you want each new room to be engaging you want the player always focused and engaged on the here and now not thinking about a challenge coming an hour later return doesn't quite get that balance right so let's return to that question is returnal hard yes because its gauntlet style structure asks much of you and because elite enemies serve as intimidating roadblocks that will send you back to the start of those gauntlets more often than you'd like that's my little mini essay on difficulty the last thing i want to talk about is return as a roguelike and this is such a big discussion so bear with me on this but the central thesis i'm going to put forward is that returnal isn't really a very good roguelike but that doesn't mean it's not an amazing game so let's talk about that first of all i think it's important to recognize that there's lots of different definitions of the term roguelike or roguelite i'm going to refer to it as roguelikes here just because it's easier okay you still have people that believe that anything that is not ascii graphics can't be called a roguelike i think that's a little crazy but we're not going to argue about that now we're just going to agree that roguelike roguelite roguelike elements it's all become this melting pot that combines a whole bunch of different design elements like procedural generation permadeath meta progression build diversity non-linear non-sequential storytelling etc it's all mixed in there in different ways over the last few years there have been a number of roguelikes that have solidified some contemporary expectations for what people want out of roguelikes binding of isaac slay the spire dead cells risk of rain too and i think most influentially hades there's a bunch of others i've missed but you get the idea when people pick up a roguelike today i think they typically expect some or all of the following they typically expect something that offers a fair amount of variance during each run in terms of environments enemy layouts item locations etc two i think people expect a fair amount of flexibility and agency in their build choices people want to be able to pick up weapons abilities and items that provide a different experience from run to run like using a crossbow one run and a sword the next and they want those pickups to synergize together so that you can craft a unique build you're not just looking for random power you're looking to be able to direct that power towards certain parts of your build so that it feels targeted bespoke and fit for purpose number three i think people who settle up for a roguelike are looking for an experience that offers a lot of replayability and finally i think that roguelike fans are looking for something that is more about the journey than the destination the experience of progressing towards the goal should be more enjoyable than the satisfaction of reaching the goal i think that's the secret sauce that makes replayability possible so ostensibly return all is a roguelike because there are procedurally generated levels there are randomly placed items and pickups enemy placement is randomized and when you die you go back to the start of the act and you try again it ticks a lot of boxes but having finished the game now multiple times i think the roguelike label is gonna do this game more harm than good because i don't believe what this game is doing matches up with contemporary expectations for a roguelike for example let's talk about variations in level design enemy placement and item placement so return will send you back to the start of acts multiple times and you will very quickly begin to see how similar each level actually is there are a fairly limited number of tile sets that are jumbled around a little bit but you learn each of those tile sets really fast it's similar to warframe in addition the enemies that you'll encounter you'll meet most of them pretty quickly and they don't gain additional augments or modifiers to change their performance finally item locations are really static so after your first clear or whatever you definitely know where every chest or pickup is i think one of the biggest weaknesses of return all is the lack of agency that you have when building your character during a run the item pool is so huge and it's so bloated with substandard choices that it's really rare to arrive at a collection of items that you're like happy with in adverted commas there's never situations where you pick up one parasite that synergizes really well with your weapon perks or your artifacts all of the bonus power that these items provide are either straight stat bumps or they offer some discrete power bonus that is totally disconnected from any other power bonus so for example you have one weapon perk that does damage over time you'd think that there would be some kind of parasite or artifact or consumable or melee buff or something that would synergize with that amplify it heal you based on that dot damage apply a shield for every tick whatever that doesn't exist here so we're in most roguelikes you are picking and choosing your power ups to arrive at something that feels unique each run here in return all it really does feel like you're just picking up random stuff becoming generally stronger but never strong in specific ways that you can control or aim for that brings us to the third expectation people have when it comes to roguelikes replayability had return provided more variations in level layouts item placements or enemy modifiers or had it provided a more sophisticated build path that allowed people to craft unique impactful builds during each playthrough i think return would have had a lot of long-term replayability because the core combat in this game is so [ __ ] awesome that you just want to log on and see what the next run would be like in absence of those things return is not a game with a lot of long-term replayability as i said i finished it twice i've unlocked most of the things i did that in about 35 hours if i was a completionist i might be able to push this to 50 hours but that's about it i absolutely loved those 35 hours by the way don't get me wrong but i don't feel a strong pull back to the game because i've seen it all now and i know that the next time i suit up for a run it's going to be pretty similar to everything i've already experienced that's fine by the way i'm just saying it's not what a lot of people are expecting especially when the 70 price tag is factored in which i know is a big talking point around this game the most successful roguelikes of the last few years have been games where the destination matters far less than the journey like hades for example obviously i want to finish each run but if i don't that's okay because hades doesn't make you care that much about the destination there's like some story stuff that you get cool but if you die that's fine you don't really feel like you've lost or wasted any time when you die because the point of hades isn't to finish it it's to play it same with risk of rain or slay the spire or dead cells i think return all has very different dna because the variation per run is so limited and because of its gauntlet-like structure you're really focused on pushing through to the next milestone the next boss down the next metroidvania unlocked the next biome accessed dying in this game can feel so soul-destroying and it can be hard to pick yourself up again in preparation for another run i think most roguelikes are about being in them returnal is about pushing through it and that's going to be quite uncomfortable for people who are expecting something different so at this point you're like well it's a roguelike and you're saying it's not a very good roguelike so therefore it's not a very good game right no wrong absolutely not what i'm saying is that if you were to judge the way that return executes on its roguelike elements you're going to find better examples elsewhere in other games i don't think pigeonholing returnal into the roguelike category is particularly helpful having now beaten this game twice so if it's not a roguelike then what is it then it's just returnal man it's its own thing that borrows the procedural generation of the roguelike formula and the bullet hell sequences of an arcade game and the drip fed storytelling of a narrative survival horror and the crushing arse-reaming difficulty of a soul's like fraternal is that rare thing that we don't get much of these days especially in the aaa space it's something new something innovative something unique and if you come at me with this dumbass recall comparison i swear to god no return is not like anything else it's doing its own thing in its own way fearlessly putting forth a vision not every part of it works and many parts of it work perfectly but they're so declarative and uncompromising that they're going to push away a lot of people but that doesn't matter because return isn't trying to sell 30 million units it's trying to say something and i think it does return all says something with its design it says something with its structure it says something with its world it says something with the next gen technology it employs and most importantly for playstation it says that sony are not remotely interested in pulling back from risky things they have no interest in playing things safe sony's leadership team has this sort of midas touch they just know which horses to back and once they've chosen that horse they just let go of the reins and they let it run its own race however it wants to run it house mark ran their own race here and the result is something so superb so memorable and so iconic [Music] guys it's been a crazy kind of shitty year most of us have been locked inside our house the entire time most of us had never even heard of zoom a year ago and now we spend like 85 of our work week in zoo meetings talking for really long periods before we realized that we were on mute point is the world's a different place now we live differently we work differently and maybe you want to do something different with your life now maybe you want to start your own online business that makes and sells designer masks maybe you want to go outside and take photos of things maybe you want to become an artist or a writer a god forbid a youtuber whatever you want to do there's a good chance that skillshare can help make that dream a reality skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes for creative and curious people on topics including illustration design photography video freelancing and more on skillshare millions of members come together to find inspiration and take the next step in their creative journey skillshare's courses are put together by experts in their field and taking part in them allows you to connect with those creators and other students you get to build a community around the thing you're passionate about supercharging your ambition and creativity best of all skillshare is super affordable being less than ten dollars a month for an annual subscription to get started click the link in the description below and as an added bonus the first 1 000 people to click the link will get a free trial of skillshare premium thanks skillshare for sponsoring the video and thank you for watching it thanks for watching my video if you liked it give it a thumbs up if you didn't give it a thumbs down so i know to do better for next time if you enjoyed yourself consider subscribing and if you really enjoyed yourself maybe consider hitting that notification bell so you never miss a video you can see my patrons here on the left they're awesome they're amazing if you want to join them check out my patreon page thank you again i'll see you next time bye

Channel: Skill Up

Views: 609,216

Keywords: skill up, skill, up, gameplay, games, guide, returnal ps5 game, returnal gameplay details, returnal story, returnal gameplay mechanics, returnal info, returnal world, returnal weapons, returnal devices, returnal tools, returnal parasites, returnal obolites, returnal suit malfunctions, returnal multiplayer, returnal customizable controls, returnal dualsense features, returnal 3d audio, returnal, returnal review, returnal impressions

Id: XeS3KI9vgu8

Length: 44min 21sec (2661 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 29 2021