---
title: "Returnal is fantastic and you should play it"
date: 2023-04-21
series: reviews
tags:
  - steam
  - ps5
  - masterpiece
hero:
  ai: Ligne Claire
  file: another-battle
  prompt: 1girl, hoodie, pants, sword, portal, landscape, cyberpunk, space needle
---

The gift of life is small, fleeting, and marvelous. In Returnal you
play as Selene, an astronaut that crashed on a planet named Atropos.
She explores the planet a little bit and the local fauna attacks her.
Selene tragically dies in the process, the credits start to roll, and
you just ponder for a moment that Selene's gift of life was just
terminated by an uncaring world. The credits speed up, the camera
pulls back and

Selene wakes up at her crash site just like you did before.

She came back. She explores again and finds her decaying dead body
with a recording next to it. She didn't remember making a recording,
you didn't see Selene making a recording in-game. But it's there.

Selene plays the recording and you hear her voice. It _was_ her. You
are sure of it. She is sure of it.

She explores more. She dies. She comes back. She explores more. She
dies. She comes back. She keeps coming back every time she dies.

Returnal is a science fiction philosophical roguelite third-person
action-adventure game for the PlayStation 5 and PC. It is nearly
flawless and is easily one of the best games I've played in recent
memory.

<XeblogConv name="Numa" mood="delet">
  You're just putting random words together at this point, there's no way any of
  that makes sense.
</XeblogConv>
<XeblogConv name="Cadey" mood="coffee">
  Do you know of a better way to describe Returnal then?
</XeblogConv>
<XeblogConv name="Numa" mood="thinking">
  Good point. That's reasonable yeah.
</XeblogConv>

Combat flows like a hot knife through alien butter. The enemies are
all visually distinct with their own attack patterns, ideal strategies
to take out, and weapons that are good against them. Combat flows more
smoothly than Metal Gear Rising: Revengance, which is something I
didn't even know was possible.

In the game Selene has one weapon and you can get better weapons by
killing enemies to gain proficency. However, the weapons themselves
can't be upgraded. You can upgrade various perks of the weapons, but
not the weapon damage itself. You need to swap out for new weapons as
you go along. To play Returnal is to be in a ballet of risk analysis
as you swap through weapons, artifacts, parasites, and consumables on
the fly; making sure you have what you need to take on the challenges
being thrown at you next.

I could wax philosophical about this game all day, but I honestly
believe that I should leave the rest for you to discover. This game is
a 10/10 masterpiece. My only complaint is that I can't play it on my
Steam Deck.

It's worth playing, but if you feel like a lot of the nuance and
metaphor is going over your head, [Returnal is a Hell of Our Own
Creation](https://youtu.be/fimmD9EtVd0) by Jacob Geller is a fantastic
overview of a lot of the finer points that you will miss at first. Be
warned, there are spoilers.

I did have to turn the settings down on my PC to play this, but I also
got a 4080 while I was playing this game. The 4080 does _wonders_ for
this game, but I can't quite max it out yet. Need to figure out why.

Overall, I wish there were more games like this. I can't wait to see
what this studio makes next. Hopefully with Steam Deck support next
time.

<XeblogConv standalone name="Mara" mood="hacker">
  Fun fact: this post was originally drafted on paper. What you're reading is
  the third draft of this post. The first draft is available below in case it's
  interesting to you.
</XeblogConv>

<XeblogToot url="https://pony.social/@cadey/110234374591597923"></XeblogToot>
