REVIEW: Returnal (PC) delivers out-of-the-ordinary quality and gameplay

return, genre game roguelike, the critically acclaimed, award-winning debut on April 30, 2021 exclusively for PlayStation 5, finally arrives on PCs today. Created by Housemarque and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment, the game works with cycles, where each time the character dies, he restarts his journey on the planet, but always with different equipment and “phases”. It is a loop temporal from where only those who have blood in their eyes come out.

The game style, in a free definition, is composed of cycles of trial and error, where with each new attempt, caused by an error, the character acquires knowledge and resources, but returns from the beginning and needs to adapt again to the environment.

Captivating setting and story

Returnal's story portrays Selene, an astronaut who is on a space mission and accidentally crash landed on a planet called Atropos. Her suit identifies a signal emitted there, and her goal is to find it. Upon starting her journey, Selene is faced with a dark, humid planet full of traps from the aliens who made their home there. She also finds traces of communication from the civilization that previously inhabited the planet, which makes us curious to know what happened to that “xenocivilization”.

During the search for the signal, Selene is faced with several alien threats and at these points the game also assumes the style bullethell, which brings adrenaline and emotion to the game. Whenever she dies, the main character returns inside her ship that just crashed on Atropos, but remembering everything she has lived on the planet in the last cycle. During the journey there are traces of her last “life” and recordings that she herself had already made, which help guide the next steps in the game.

Returnal is of unique difficulty and can result in many sleepless nights for those who want to clear it, since only one cycle can last several hours, but it is also exciting, sinister and fun in the same proportion as it is long. Sony's game has several parts of its history that need to be understood and this arouses curiosity and the desire to play non-stop. No wonder it was considered the best game of the year by the BAFTA Games Awards 2022.

Returnal gameplay on PC

Due to the super realistic graphics and the amount of effects, colors and textures present in Returnal, it is understandable that it consumes a good amount of PC resources and that the settings need to be good for the Sony game to run smoothly. In this Review, a Predator Helios 300 was used, with a 7th generation i7, 16GB of RAM and dedicated video with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060.

In these settings, the game ran very well in maximum quality, with small crashes in the most "footprints", where there were many aliens releasing powers, shots from all sides and movement on the screen, but nothing that disturbed the gameplay. About glitch ou bugs, it only happened once, when the head of one of the aliens got stuck in a portal between two “environments” and it was possible to kill it without it attacking me.

The Sony game has online multiplayer and collaborative modes, where you can share your journey with other players. Furthermore, it is possible to play Returnal on PC with keyboard and mouse or with a console controller. For those who are already used to playing on the computer, the result with the peripherals is great and very intuitive, I didn't notice crashes or lagging, but, particularly, I found the experience of using a control (from PS4) better, I believe that more because of the immersion that the vibration of the control provides.

One point of the gameplay that I noticed is that there were reports that on the PS5 there was no pause menu and it was not possible to save progress if you had to exit Returnal, even if you had not died. On the PC there is a menu that presents, in addition to options for sound, image and online modes, options to suspend the game, saving the cycle.

In summary, the gameplay on the computer is incredible and fluid and despite the graphics and image and sound quality, the game runs very smoothly: all the features of the PS5 game have been adapted. It's a very difficult game that requires a lot of free time, as well as attention to detail, some marksmanship and a little bit of luck, but it certainly doesn't disappoint anyone who has seen or played the game on PlayStation 5.

Game Design and sound design

Returnal brings an almost cinematic look and is very inspired by futuristic and fantastic aesthetics. The main character, Selene, has a very striking feature which is heterochromia, highlighting this aesthetic. The aliens we meet along the way are detailed and seem to be related to the Octopus species, although there are several different types, including flying, fire-breathing, etc. The powers they emanate have light and strong colors that draw attention to danger.

There are also many textures on the planet, which is sometimes a jungle, sometimes chambers with statues of gods from the civilization that occupied it, and these textures are so well rendered that they make us feel disgusted with some goo and freshness when visualizing leaves swaying with the wind.

Sound is an element that greatly influences the immersion of the game and even instructs the player in certain scenes. The noises related to the environment are very realistic and in moments of tension or imminent danger, the music becomes louder and with faster beats, already awakening us to a state of attention.

There are few lines in the game, most are Selene's recordings, but it is possible to understand very well and it is possible to feel what the character wants to convey through her tone of voice. A Housemarque e Sony They did an impeccable job on the game design. Returnal has incredible sound design and what I found most interesting is that elements called cursed, in addition to having a different color, emanate sounds of voices in distress, leaving even an item in the game with that sinister feeling.

Conclusion

Sony's game delivers quality, gameplay and an incredible immersive experience, now for PC gamers. Despite the high difficulty and the possibility of taking a long time to finish the game, which can be a problem for some, the game is so captivating, full of suspense and elements that arouse our curiosity to know what comes next. very hard to put it down, not to mention the feeling of being in the cinema co-creating a Steven Spilberg movie.

As Features collaboration and multiplayer make the fun shareable with friends and it's a full plate for a stream of gameplay full of emotion. It is definitely a game that deserves attention from those who like Roguelike games and appreciate a good suspense mixed with a lot of action and exploration.

You can find Returnal for PC at Steam for R $ 249,90.

Check also the review we did of Returnal for PS5 here at Showmetech.

See also: REVIEW: Hogwarts Legacy breathes new life into the wizarding world

Text proofread by: Pedro Bomfim