Returnal

Returnal is a third-person shooter video game featuring roguelike elements and falling under the psychological horror genre. In a futuristic science fiction setting, the player controls Selene Vassos (Jane Perry), a space pilot, equipped with a suit and armed with high-tech weapons, who is stranded on the alien planet Atropos and stuck in a time loop. After every death, Selene is resurrected, following a pattern of traversing foreign environments and combating extraterrestrial entities with growing visions in an ever changing world.

The game is split into two halves, each consisting of three biomes. If the player dies during a run, they are sent to the beginning of the half. Selene has the ability to dash and can later unlock a grappling hook that lets her shoot to predefined points in a room. The xenomorph enemies launch arcade-like geometric arrangements and colors of energy, lines, fireballs in expanding spiral, square and spherical arrays, hoops, lasers which require strategy to navigate.

Disobeying orders, ASTRA Corporation pilot and explorer Selene Vassos attempts to land on the off-limits planet of Atropos to investigate what she dubs the "White Shadow" signal, which somehow seems familiar to her. Upon arrival, Selene's ship, Helios, suffers heavy damage and crash lands. Unable to contact ASTRA, Selene explores the planet and is shocked when she comes across corpses of herself. She learns that every time she dies, time loops back to the moment she crashed, sending her back to her starting point. The planet seems to change with every loop, and Selene begins experiencing vivid visions.

Resolving to find the source of the White Shadow, Selene presses on, fighting hostile alien lifeforms and scavenging alien technology left over from the advanced, extinct alien civilization that used to reside on Atropos. As she tracks the White Shadow, Selene comes across what appears to be a replica of her childhood home. Every time she enters it, she recalls old memories and repeatedly encounters an astronaut wearing an antique space suit. Selene eventually learns that she apparently used an alien weapon to paradoxically shoot down her own ship, thus making herself responsible for her being marooned on Atropos.

Returnal was developed by the Finnish firm Housemarque and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. The game was in development for more than four years. It takes advantage of the PlayStation 5's DualSense controller and Tempest Engine to support advanced haptic feedback, 3D spatial audio, and real-time ray tracing effects, enhancing the player's immersion and experience. With the increased processing power and inclusion of a custom solid state drive storage in the PlayStation 5, the game features reduced loading times and a wide variety of enemies, visual effects, and objects within gameplay scenes.

Additionally, the game runs at 4K resolution and 60 frames per second. Returnal's native resolution is around 1080p. The developers used temporal upsampling to get to 1440p and then checkerboard rendering to get to 4K. Returnal also features an original score composed primarily by Bobby Krlic.

Returnal received "generally favorable" reviews from critics according to review aggregator website Metacritic.

In a review for IGN, Mitchell Saltzman enjoyed how the gameplay integrated with the story, writing that "It makes Selene an interesting protagonist who's in this weird repeating-but-different scenario along with us." Saltzman criticized the need to replay sections in order to reach a higher weapon proficiency, saying that it made the game "ridiculously difficult" and the only way the player could succeed was by grinding to reach a higher level. Writing for The Guardian, Keza MacDonald gave the game a positive review, praising Returnal for its challenging difficulty, its rewarding combat, and engaging gameplay loop. MacDonald also praised the game for its visual and audio design, writing that "The planet looks and sounds extraordinary, each new area a distinctive biotechnological nightmare."