Topic: Returnal

The feeling that I'm getting from the numerous reviews I have watched is that this is gonna be patched quite a lot (on top of the day 1) in future to sort out some balancing.

I'm sure it's absolutely great now but I am starting to think it might be a better experience in a couple of months.

@Kidfried I've never actually played a rogue-like (or rogue-lite for that matter) so I'm not in the know on the subject. Its only been with the releases of Hades and now Returnal that I'm interested in trying the genre.

As I've mentioned before, with my current backlog its very rare that I play any game at launch anymore though (although Returnal has been tempting)... I currently have it pencilled in for September next year. The urge to play could well become too all-consuming before that though.

Started playing last night and I think so far I've died 3 times. Really enjoyed what I played though but had to give it up at 2am as I was never going to get out of bed to get the kids to school in the morning. The movement is excellent though and I love the way you can easily get out of tight situations by jumping and dashing. I've got stuck in a few tight fights and managed to get out using the alt-fire too so a great addition to the standard fire on a weapon. It is painful to have to go back to the pistol when you get killed but it's quite fun to go back through the initial stages again and start gathering some upgrades to take on something bigger. Can't wait to play more later.

Mine's out for delivery. C'mon mr. delivery man, hand it over already (I won't be able to play it before 5 pm anyway but I could at least install it and download the patch).

@Voltan Hope you get it soon so you can get installing. I was going to wait until today to play but after all the good press just had to get into it. I knew it was going to be a challenge to give up last night as well with the not being able to save. I got to about 1.30 and I was actually hoping something would kill me just so that I could go to bed. Luckily I'm not that good so I was dispatched eventually. I just had a quick read of the tips and tricks guide on here just in case I missed anything but I think I pretty much understand how all the mechanics work, I just need to get better!

@Kidfried @render How well does the soft squeeze/hard squeeze work for the shoulder buttons?

Installing mine now. Almost 80Gb

@Thrillho I'd say I agree with @Kidfried, it works really well. I've still yet to fully get to grips with when it's ready after the cool down period but it seems more intuitive to use the same button for a few things rather than having to hit L1 or R1 or something like that. The shooting in general is really satisfying, especially when you get one of the more powerful weapons. I was quite enjoying the Spitmaw Blaster last night and I think I had Blast Shell and Trackerswarm as Alt-Fires at some point and both of those seemed really powerful.

Not sure I've managed to do an overload yet as I've been more focused on just keeping out of trouble but I'll try that out a little later to see if I can actually manage it.

It's like an old school 80's shmup imho but with a huge lick of 21st century paint.
And the dualsense actually comes alive !

@Kidfried @render So does the DualSense trigger give you some resistance and then lock or click somehow to notify you that your at the half-squeeze point? Then pushing down for a full squeeze is some additional hard resistance? Does the right trigger also have a soft and hard squeeze function?

I’m hoping to pick up my preorder in store after work today. Unfortunately I haven’t had the time to finish Control yet so I’m torn about whether to start this day 1 or try to mop up the last of Control and play this next week. I think I might try to finish Control first, but it’s pretty tempting.

@Th3solution If you've ever played Destruction Allstars then it's a bit like what you get with that when you get in a car and pull the trigger down fast. It kind of locks a little so that you can put enough pressure on it to use the zoom in function and then you have to pull more to get it to then charge your Alt-Fire. You then pull on R2 to release it. I'm trying to think back to when I was playing last night now and I think there's a little resistance on R2 but not so much that it gets in the way and it doesn't have two positions just the one. With the pistol though you can keep pulling the trigger for fast firing or hold it down for slower so it might be that other weapons work differently like that as well. The haptics are quite good for feedback although I think I've been too busy with what's going on to notice the specifics.

@Kidfried Yeah, I think I read somewhere that the two games have some kind of common development personnel. I could be imaging that but I think someone or some team from Control did some assistance on the Returnal project.

I get what you’re saying, as it might be a little bit of overload of a lot of similar gameplay if I go back to back. If I’d have been wise I’d probably have waited on Control to play later, but I was ravenous for a true PS5 experience last week and started it up on a whim, expecting that it may not stick with me, and I was hooked pretty immediately. I’ll see how it goes, because I’m having such a fantastic time with Control that I might just feel inclined to gobble up more of the same.

And my perception is that Returnal’s arcade style personality would probably make it a game that is a good one to pop in and out of from time to time — play for a few days with several runs, then take a break from and play something else, then come back and play for another few days again, etc. Or do you think the ‘git gud’ requirement of learning the mechanics will mean it’s a game that is difficult to pick up after a long hiatus away from it? (Like a Soulsborne is)

@Kidfried @Th3solution That's a good point they are similar in a number of ways, especially movement wise. I really enjoyed Control so that's probably why I like Returnal. It's fast paced but gives you chance to catch your breath and I liked exploring the environments. There's definitely a good level of difficulty to Control as well, especially in those early stages so that mirror this again.

The thing that will make the big difference though is that you don't lose all your stuff in Control and there are plenty of checkpoints so it's never too far back to try again. Hopefully it's going to be too painful to get back to places in Returnal but at the moment I've not played enough to know.

Installing now - playing immediately after work

@Voltan Awesome!! Let us know what you think 😃

Sure will!

Btw, I'm listening to an interview with Housemarque at IGN now and apparently the game also uses ray tracing for spatial audio. Cool!

@Voltan Good find, will have to check that out. When I played last night I just used the TV speakers but I will have to plug some headphones in later to see what the 3D audio is like. I usually play games like this with the wife as she likes the story elements so usually don't use headphones for that reason. It would be great if the 3D audio worked via TV speakers or you could have headphones and TV audio at the same time.

@Kidfried @render Thanks for your replies.

I love what I’ve read about this game so far. When I get a PS5 I’ll pick this up too. Because there is not allot of PS5 exclusives so they’ll get 69.95 for the game from me at least. Later on, we can wait for used copies of games to play.

Ok so I have a cheap ass 4K TV but none of the YouTube videos do the game justice anyway. It looks great, sounds great, plays great.
I died 3 times in 1:30h so I definitely need to git gud. So far every run brings some new stuff to discover. I've found the house on the 3rd but it was locked. Don't have the melee weapon yet so some areas are closed off by barriers.
Ima do another run brb.

Edit: welp, this one was just 15 mintues