Why I Stopped Worrying About Dying and Fell in Love with Returnal

so i am a huge fan of house mark i've loved their games over the years but to be honest i did not love returnal when i first started playing now with that being said i have since went back to the game and to be totally honest with you guys i have truly fell in love with it it is finally clicked for me and it's certainly one of the best games i've played this year and really a standout on the ps5 which i know that's what the review said at the time but as i've gotten older i just don't have as much time to immediately sink into games right when they come out and beat them very quickly like i used to by the way people of the internet if you are new here i'm retrorecontour and i'm just a dad who loves games and the stories they tell we post videos every week here on youtube and today we are talking all about returnal and my experience so far of thinking that i kind of liked it too i don't really like this game too absolutely loving this game so today i kind of just want to walk you through my story with the game so far and what my experience has been like and then if any of you are kind of still on the fence about the game or maybe you tried it and didn't love it and you kind of wondered should i pick it back up maybe this will help you decide whether or not you should and this is some footage straight from my ps5 a lot of what you're seeing here is going to be the second biome there's not going to be any boss spoilers but there will be spoilers for various parts of the level so if you don't want to see anything at all then you might just want to listen but there will be no major spoilers in this video so as i mentioned in the opening i've been a pretty big fan of house mart for a while now i absolutely loved rezo gun it was my most played game on the ps4 at launch like i just played a ton of rezzo gun and for a while my claim to fame is i was actually top 10 in the high scores on rezo gun that's how much i got into it and if you haven't played resogun before it's not really a top down shooter it's more kind of like a shooter from the side i'm not even really sure what the correct technical name for it is but it's like that old school classic arcade style of game where you're really just playing for high scores yes you can beat the game but after that after you beat the game it's all about trying to perfect your run and master it i enjoyed super stardust enjoyed dead nation enjoyed outland several of their other games as well but by far the one that really stood out for me was rezo gun so being such a huge fan of house mark i absolutely knew i was going to play return on knew i was going to purchase it for ps5 and was really excited about this change for them because they actually put out an article i can't remember if it was like a blog post or what it was but house mark put out a piece basically telling everyone that they felt arcade was dead and as a result of that they were going to have to shift and the types of games they make were going to have to change in order for them to survive and i really thought it was a fascinating piece because even me as someone who had played all of their games or almost all their games rather i could see that they were never super popular and despite me loving them so much and recognizing the immense quality of the gameplay because trust me guys if you haven't had a chance to play some of their older games definitely look back through their library and give some of them a shot because the gameplay which at the end of the day that's really what it's all about right even when they weren't so worried about story or anything like that the gameplay was top notch so i knew going in that return would absolutely have top-notch gameplay even though it was a shift it was going third person it wasn't that side-scrolling or a top-down shooter anymore i got it on launch day actually streamed it a little bit i've even posted some videos here on the channel about it and while i enjoyed it like it just didn't click for me i i saw the signs i saw little glimpses of oh i can see house mark's dna in this i made a video of how i thought it really compared to metroid especially metroid prime and when it first launched there was a lot of talk around the game's difficulty and i certainly thought it was a difficult game but to the age i'm at right now with working on a youtube channel having a wife kids full-time job all that stuff i'm really not so concerned with difficulty as i am concerned with how a game respects your time and at least early on i honestly didn't feel like it was very respectful of my time because you would just you know go so far and spend a couple of hours playing only to have your progress instantly reset the moment that you die i mean everything goes back to the beginning and this is coming from someone who is a huge fan of the souls games i've platinum bloodborne i i know that formula and i'm totally okay with having to play and learn and get better and get better and get better or get good as they say right but for whatever reason i just was not digging the gameplay loop of return and keep in mind this is all taking place in the first level i never made it outside of the first level i shouldn't say never eventually i did make it to the first boss and i think i beat him on the third try maybe but after i beat him i kind of just like like put the game down and didn't touch it for a while well here in recent weeks i actually don't even know what made me decide to pick it up and start playing again but i saw it in my ps5 across the menu bar there i was like you know what let's jump back into eternal and as i made my way through the second biome and died and had to go back through the first biome again it started to click with me and i started to learn things i started to pick up on things that i had missed before and so where before i thought you know what this game isn't being very respectful of my time by the fact that all my progress is reset instead what i started to see is no i've been focusing on the wrong things things that i thought were important maybe weren't as important as i first thought because just to give you an example when i first started out the game and i think this is how most people would start out the game you know i'm going through every single room i'm opening each chest that i can i'm trying to kill all the enemies i'm grabbing every item i'm trying to figure out what the items even do i'm not really sure what the best weapons are there are so many little components of return on where you're just like how does this even fit together i don't even know what this thing does and on a lot of these things it intentionally does not tell you there's also a lot of risk reward with a lot of the choices that you make and when i say choices i am speaking strictly in terms of gameplay choices although this certainly has more of a story than past house mart games the choices i'm talking about are not related to the story at all so i just don't want you to get the wrong idea there and there was just something about when i made it to the end of that second biome and i finally beat that second biome boss that i really started to see even more of that house mark dna and rather than seeing this as like a third person action game suddenly i started to see it as more of that classic house mark style of trying to perfect your run trying to make each run as good as you can possibly make it and being able to recognize sometimes early on that you know what this isn't working out i don't have the right materials that i need i may even need to just completely reset this run and as far as where i'm at now i'm actually in the third biome now just last night i made it to the boss third biome by far my favorite one so far absolutely loving this one i really should have beaten the boss but by the time i got to him my health was so low and i actually didn't have any healing items at all so i was kind of like well you know what i'm gonna go in here and we're just gonna try this and i think i got a pretty good handle of how he works and what weapons might be good for him so next time i'm already feeling confident about going in to that fight and it's just such a stark contrast of when i started the game and i would die and i felt like i lost so much progress even though i lost a lot of the things that i had gained throughout and not to give away too much but there are some things that you get to keep you don't get to keep most of the things but there are a few key items along the way as you make it to different biomes that you will get to keep but all that being said early on when i would die after a two plus hour run it just felt so agonizing this even though i put a lot of time into it last night i don't feel that way at all in fact i'm really looking forward to jumping back in because of how much i learned on the last run and how i think it's gonna help me make an even better run this next time and that right there is really for me the gameplay loop of returnal and what makes it so compelling and so strong yeah the story is interesting honestly for me like the story that i could do without it it's fine you know it's like an interesting story i'm kind of curious to see where it goes at the end but for me it's that gameplay loop of going into this completely reorganized area which by the way it does seem to be randomly generated there are times where you'll go in and you'll recognize certain parts of the level like oh yeah i remember this but it'll be in a different spot than how it was before so even when you go into a room that's completely new because of the knowledge that you've gained on past runs and because of your understanding of the game you feel way more confident going in i know it sounds weird it sounds cliche like come on right like the knowledge gained it's like no i want items i want upgrades but it's hard to explain it really is that knowledge that you get by playing the game to where you feel truly confident going in this next time like oh dude i'm going to absolutely crush this level this time i've got all the information i need if i can get a few good drops in terms of items in terms of weapons we are going to be set so actually i haven't beaten the game yet i can't wait to possibly do another one of these videos after i've beaten it but i just wanted to make this one now to kind of let you guys know where my thoughts are there may be some others out there who are kind of on the fence who put the game away and are like i don't really get it it got crazy high review scores and you haven't went back to it i would say go back to return give it another shot at least get through the second biome and then see if things start to click a little bit more for you they certainly have for me and i'm really having a blast with it as always guys thank you all so much for watching i'll talk to you again soon

Channel: RetroRaconteur

Views: 30,487

Keywords: RetroRaconteur, returnal housemarque, returnal ps5, ps5, ps5 returnal, is returnal worth it?, is returnal good?, is returnal hard?, should i play returnal?, returnal, ps5 games

Id: R3YFUB0jrG4

Length: 9min 48sec (588 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 22 2021