[Software] PS5 exclusive Returnal is weird and brilliant – and Sony needs more like it

[Agent47]

 

 

Returnal is weird. Brilliant, but undoubtedly bizarre. While the PS5 exclusive is a masterclass in blending the ever-changing levels and permadeath of roguelikes into a game that otherwise looks like a blockbuster third-person shooter, it’s not the kind of game you typically expect on this scale from Sony.

Returnal features a lot of the things we expect from modern first-party PlayStation games: stunning visuals, a strong narrative element and a focus on single-player. But there’s no getting around the idea that it’s very different from the PS4 exclusive action-adventures we saw explode in po[CENSORED]rity last generation. It's slightly surprising that Sony is putting something this unashamedly hardcore at the center of its early PS5 exclusive releases. 

But, given this week's news that Sony has signed an exclusive partnership with a studio composed of former Destiny developers to make a new multiplayer game for PS5 - a genre the publisher tends to avoid - it sounds like this is part of a bigger strategy for PS5. It feels like Sony is branching out with the types of games it's making - and it’s about time.

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To say Sony hasn’t dipped its toes in the waters of the weird before would be a disservice. After all, Kojima Productions' atmospheric delivery-based adventure Death Stranding landed on PS4 less than two years ago. But that was something of an outlier among Sony’s big hitters on the console, and, to all intents and purposes, it was still a narrative-driven action game.
The PS4 era saw Sony having success with a host of fairly safe, but critically acclaimed, exclusives such as God of War, The Last of Us 2, Uncharted 4 and Marvel’s Spider-Man. While each game definitely has its own personality, there is arguably a format at work here: narrative-driven, single-player, action-adventure. 

It’s a formula that works, and Microsoft no doubt wishes it had a comparable high-quality set of exclusives. But Sony hasn't done loads to deviate from this format, other than with games like Bloodborne and the Demon’s Souls remake.

So when I jumped into Returnal for the first time, I expected a similar offering once again – an action-adventure, with a heap of story alongside, even if developer Housemarque's past work prepared me for more of a focus on shooting things. Instead, I was taken aback by how difficult and dynamic Returnal actually is, and I'm somewhat pleasantly surprised that Sony took the risk of publishing it. The game feels like a breath of fresh air.

Returnal lets players step into the boots of space pilot Selene, who crashes her ship, Helios, on an alien planet called Atropos. But Atropos is stuck in a time loop, meaning that each time Selene dies – and she will die frequently – she begins a new life cycle starting at the crash site. Equipped with a high-tech suit, Selene sets out to battle her way across Atropos and break the loop, which will allow her to escape.
But this isn’t a simple case of Selene having to work her way through the same map again and again; instead, with each reset cycle, the world changes. Each biome (of which there are six) is made up of ‘rooms,’ much like dungeons, but when the cycle resets the order of these rooms - and the enemies lurking within - changes. 

It’s the first time we’ve seen Sony give its blockbuster limelight to a game such as this, and - from what we’ve played so far - it pays off massively. Returnal benefits from its immersive storytelling and captivating environments filled with bizarre creatures, while its ever-changing world keeps gameplay fresh from cycle to cycle. It’s a concept that should be infuriating - and at times it is - but mostly, it keeps you motivated to keep coming back for more.

But it’s the PS5 that truly makes Returnal shine. The futuristic shooter makes excellent use of the PS5’s super-fast SSD to make your inevitable death as painless as possible, while the implementation of the DualSense controller’s haptic feedback and adaptive trigger features, particularly when paired with headphones allowing for PS5 3D spatial audio to kick in, makes for a staggeringly immersive experience.

Returnal proves that Sony can showcase the PS5’s capabilities and still experiment with different genres – and that maybe it's thinking about a more diverse range of exclusives for its newest hardware. And it looks like it’s only the start of things to come.