The Problem with Returnal.

ah eternal what am i gonna do with you you spicy little hot take generator you're like a reviewer's nightmare all right on the surface it all looks normal you got sony shiny new little toy he got the first triple a title from house mark these guys have been around a long time 26 years and they do a very specific thing very very well old school high intensity arcade style shooters and i like their stuff if you know how smart you know what you're getting into and it's it's nice now i'm not big on buying games at launch you know games are expensive there's always a problem with the games that needs to be patched in you know return was no different with regards to that uh i don't recommend it generally that's i guess hot take one right there if you want to look at it that way really i can think you know maybe a handful of games that i've picked up at launch and they really have to be something i want to play and this caught my eye and i wasn't disappointed now i'm back at work after a rather lovely lovely weekend i'm chatting with a buddy oh so how's the new game good stuff good good stuff nine out of ten i'm telling you what's it like and words just start to happen bullet hell roguelike procedural generation and i quickly start to realize that i'm doing a piss-poor job actually describing this game to him i'm just here throwing out random game titles in a vain attempt to describe this thing to him and nothing i've just kind of created this frankenstein's monster of gibberish that makes the game seem more miserable than fun and this is a fellow player of the games i'm speaking with someone who knows this stuff a little more closely than your average consumer and looking at him i just don't know if he'd like it just it does so many little things that makes it very difficult to recommend let's see retro gamers sure all day return is retro as hell but who else to try hard get good squad i don't know maybe just return with those six different things in a very specific way that makes it very very hard to reasonably recommend to just anyone you know i'm used to that it's not like it's the first time i've ever loved a game that i really can't recommend seriously now i play weird games all the time i've been gaming for over 35 years i'm a big old nerd at this point i don't even care if a game is necessarily good whatever that's supposed to mean it's almost arbitrary what will interest me i don't even know anymore as long as it's trying something so when you know the hot new title comes out i'll just wait for it to go on sale or scavenge or whatever you know my friends are here playing the red dead or the first of us i don't know maybe waiting on the newest fifa maybe and i'm just over here doing this [Applause] so i'm used to playing random junk i'm pretty sure my friends are not going to care for however this one's a little different return isn't random junk this game is good it's really good it just exists in this weird place in the market aaa titles don't take these kind of risks and i'm kind of surprised this game exists at all now we all know sony it loves its big blockbusters and returnal certainly looks like another one of those it's got the graphics frame rates all that other jargon that you put in the back of a game box i suppose but there's problems here big problems that core gameplay loop and its underlying mechanics what you're going to do with the controller in your hands this game certainly has the visual dna of a big aaa title but in reality it's more like this this thing is an indie game gameplay wise it doesn't do anything particularly unique or original what is new about it is it's very reality returnal is a retro style action shooter with the budget and price tag of your typical aaa game and that's my problem with the whole thing because if you actually understood any of the words i used earlier to describe the game well congratulations buddy you are not the average consumer to the game buying public words like aaa might as well mean summer blockbuster indy that has no meaning whatsoever to anybody it doesn't matter i'm not here to actually define any of these words if you get them good for you if you don't that kind of highlights the whole point i'm trying to make with this thing in the first place ads for the game don't properly communicate what you're getting into it just looks like a third-person shooter with this creepy sci-fi horror vibe to it which it is it is also brutal and uncompromising and makes some peculiar design choices to make it inaccessible to most players it is deliberately difficult and that's cool that's another hot take to put on the skillet right there i'm not here to give my opinion on it then there's the time investment latest update patch 45 days after launch and still no save and quit option you expect me to sit there for an indefinite amount of time play through entire chunks of your game with no expectation that i might need to go you know do stuff no just put the ps5 to rest and hope it doesn't crash thank you no no it's just no no this is so dumb one out of ten right here can't recommend end of review who thought this was a good idea they should be demoted stinky stupid nes games had passwords some of them were even fancy enough to have battery saves are you kidding me this game has few enough checkpoints with the whole perma-like and rogue crap and all that other nonsense what's the point of this this doesn't make the game more engaging or challenging just less convenient to play i just can't think of that many people that would like this sort of game can tolerate its difficulty and just have huge chunks of their day available to sit down and actually enjoy it i don't know who is this for exactly regardless what is the point of a review anyway if it's some sort of glorified proclamation on whether or not someone likes a game i guess that's pretty easy return is great slap a number on it hit upload call it a day you're good but if the point of a review is to inform the viewer the potential buyer if you will then you have to put that aside a bit and take all factors into consideration price being one of them an honest review of eternal would ironically read a bit like a warning against it is return good short answer yes it's a master class of gaming sensibilities rarely given this kind of spotlight i think the spotlight comes at too high a cost however returnal is very risky not only is it a new triple-aip but essentially a whole new genre being introduced into the aaa space at an experimental new aaa price it's a bit like sports games in some regards for as good as those games may be i'm not sure how many people outside sports fans themselves actually buy them but sports already have millions of fans ready to buy their games returnal is a complete unknown i have no idea how well it'll sell and it is hard to find solid data with digital sales on even if it is doing well i do know that there are many many people that like games that play like returnal just those games don't usually retail for seventy dollars is returnal worth seventy dollars that's the problem i have and the same problem i had talking with my buddy the only people i'd recommend this game to at full price are those that i already know would like it anyway everyone else i'm not sure without sitting down and talking to you for a chunk of time and finding out what kind of games you like my short answer would be wait on a sale it is a great game i'm just not sure i could recommend and now it is time for the shameless self promotion like and subscribe and appease the algorithm

Channel: Zoznerol

Views: 23,362

Keywords: Returnal, PS5, gaming, reviews

Id: fWZsvoMDAlI

Length: 11min 15sec (675 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 17 2021