Topic: Returnal

Does anyone know if there are actually plans to add a save feature? I can’t rely on suspend and can’t always play for hours on end…but the game is on sale and would buy it if not for that.

@Mega-Gazz Not that I’ve heard. This seems to be the hill that they’re willing to die on…. despite games like Enter the Gungeon having the ability to suspend after each floor and Dark Souls saving without the ability to save scum.

Even Nethack had a save feature. I feel like installing Rogue just to prove that it had one too.

Housemarque did say they were looking into it but that was not long after release and its gone quiet. I'm another who is refusing to get it without one

Platinum done!

@JohnnyShoulder congrats!! I've moved on , I got 2 surveys done, and realized that I was never going to be able to finish all of them. Loved the time that I had with it, will come back in a month or two, but for now, I'm taking a break.

@JohnnyShoulder wahoo! Good work. Now take a much needed break to prep for Hades.

@Just_2_milky @Th3solution Cheers guys! Yeah I almost gave up a few times myself, and most other games I probably would have not bothered. But it feels so good to play I couldn't keep away. I was still enjoying it for the main and wouldn't keep playing otherwise as I don't feel it is worth souring my overall experience just to get a platinum.

I doubt I'll be getting Hades at launch Sol, but will get to it eventually when the mood strikes me.

@JohnnyShoulder Hey well done 👍. I still remember how good it was to get the platinum. It’s an awesome one to add to the collection.

@render Cheers bud

Back in the saddle with Returnal.
Any tips on approaching Biome 5? I know a lot have said they struggled with it, so what’s the best strategy?

I can breeze (more or less) through Biome 4 and get my integrity built pretty well and collect power up. It takes me an hour or two, but I’m right beefy by the time I go to 5. Yet I struggle there and I’ve only been able to get 1 out of the 3 keys so far. The challenge room just wiped me so quick this last time, even with an astronaut. I think I didn’t have a good enough weapon - I was using a Hollowseeker just because I’m trying to switch out to level up traits on whatever I come across, and it just so happens that’s what I had. I think maybe I need a Pylon driver or Lobber in there so I can just shoot and then focus on dodging while the damage occurs. Having to aim when you’re swarmed is just not efficient.

@velio84 That’s sound advice. Sometimes I forget to grapple in the heat of the moment.

The enemies by themselves aren’t too bad, but the room full of them is hard to avoid without dodging right into a purple expanding laser ring.

@Th3solution I did the challenge room first but I guess it will work either way. First and you’ve not wasted the time if you get killed and last and you’ve potentially got more integrity etc.

Weapons wise it would be the usual options for me. Hollowseeker with portal beam, pylon or lobber. Anything which will do damage when you are hiding. Also if you can then take some portal consumables or ground spikes as they can be useful in the challenge room.

Totally agree with @velio84 with the grapples though, they will make the job a lot easier. Also getting your timing right with the severed and not panicking with the drones. Most of the time you can just walk / strafe out of the way.

@Th3solution Apart from what has already been said, i always did the challenge room last so my stats were beefed up a bit more. Rotgland Lobber or Electropylon Driver I found the most useful for Biome 5. I found it a bit easier than Biome 3 as I was able to hide more using the environment (aswell as backing out of doorways).

Welp. Had my first full fledged crash today.
And not just a crash but a total freezing of my PS5.

I was in Biome 5, at the first leg of the journey in the second third room down my first doorway from the hub. I had just cleared the big room with the really hard severed dude. Then cleared the multiple other tentacle lion enemies and drones. Picked up a new carbine and was starting to use it in the next room on some more lion creatures and mid-dash the screen just froze and my entire PS5 became unresponsive. I couldn’t even exit the game or shut down the console normally.

My run was decent, but I hadn’t even got to the first key yet so I’m not as upset about that. My bigger concern is the health of my PS5! So I had to hold the front power button for like 10 seconds and it did force the console to shut down. (I waited like 10-15 minutes though before trying that, hoping the console was just “thinking” and would come out of it on its own but it was clear that it was completely frozen). I held my breath and pressed the power button again and after an uncomfortable delay and hearing the console whirr off and on a couple times I got a screen that said the console was fixing itself and it would take a few minutes. I’m assuming it’s doing some kind of disk repair or database rebuild.

I checked my game saves and it appears Returnal saved my game immediately before that onto my console, but the cloud save is still the one from last night when I put the console to rest overnight and resumed the run today.

So do you think I should delete my current save and use the cloud back up? I definitely don’t want to end up with a corrupted save in the cloud. Although, I guess I can’t be sure the save from last night isn’t corrupted too.
Also, I’m wondering if I should delete the game app and re-load the game from disc and the update patch. 🤔 Or is this just “normal” for the game to do this from time to time and I’ve merely been lucky so far?
I’m leaning toward just rolling with the file as is and even just use my current save and see what happens. I’ll disable auto-cloud sync first, just in case the the save file is corrupted to avoid it overwriting the current one in the cloud.

What a nightmare. I’ve had smooth sailing, technologically speaking, this whole time until I got to Biome 5. Since getting to B5 I’ve got those weird errors a couple times at the respawn point, which appeared to just resolve with clicking ok in the error box and the game just goes fine after that. But I never got those before and I surely never had a crash like this.

My playtime is at 1 day 18 hours. So like 42 hours. Just now having this issue. Any advice or anyone have similar issues? Any fixes or workarounds?

@Th3solution I had a couple of crashes but no freezes with the game and just carried on as normal.

Definitely disable the auto-sync before you do ANYTHING else, and then manually upload it at known good points.

In the very late stages of playing the game, when I was working on the last few glyphs etc, I had a few crashes that did affect my save - on at least one occasion, it was corrupted and the PS5 dug a really old one out of god knows where to restore as a backup. Another time, it was just missing the latest day or so of progress.

So yeah - isolate your cloud save to keep it safe, then see if everything's intact with your current save. It probably will be, but if not then you can restore the cloud one.

@Th3solution As from before, unless it keeps happening and your are not able to play the game, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Good advice from Jigsaw that you could follow. Don't think there is a need to re-install the game or anything like that. If the file save was corrupted you wouldn't be able to use it either.

And yeah you are quite lucky only to have 2 or so crashes. I've only had a handful myself, but I think almost every game has crashed on me so far going back to when I had my ps4. Think I've had a similar crash with another game but not with Returnal. Maybe I've become more accustomed to them due to playing Cyberpunk! 😂

I'm more amazed at how low your play time is, feels like it should be a lot higher lol.

@Th3solution I had a few crashes and one which resulted in a restore of an old save. I was able to carry on though and had just lost a bit of progress but not much. I’d agree with others here not to worry too much if it’s not happening all the time.

Like @JohnnyShoulder said that playtime is pretty good. I can’t remember what mine was now but it wasn’t as good as I hoped.

I read an article at the weekend written by someone who said they weren’t much of a gamer but got into Sekiro and ended up taking 2 years and 300 hours to complete it. They’d taken breaks from the game and had a corrupted save in that time but even so that’s amazing patience.

@Thrillho @JigsawPieces @JohnnyShoulder @render
Appreciate the counsel. I disabled auto-sync for the game and I just shut my console down for the night and watched some Olympics 😅
But I have a feeling all will be well with my PS5 and the save after hearing everyone’s experience. Seems that even with the latest update that crashes still occur, so that reassuring.

I’m just not used to full on freezes of my console like that and so I mildly freaked out. In 7+ years of having a PS4 with thousands and thousands of hours of usage, I probably had a hard crash like this with an auto disc repair like maybe 3 times.

I had used rest mode twice on that same run yesterday. I hadn’t planned on it but the run kept going on and I thought - why not keep this going? But I’m properly spooked with getting too reliant on rest mode now. Definitely won’t use it more than once per run now going forward.

Interestingly, when I use rest mode and come back to the game I always have a message when I boot back up that the game disconnected from online. All it takes is just click “connect to online” and it’s back quickly connected and seeing other dead scouts, being able to use the community deposit in the fabricator room, etc. However during the ill-fated run last night when I jumped back into the game from rest mode it had not disconnected from online, even though it had been dormant for 3-4 hours. Weird. Not sure that’s significant or not.

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And as far as my total playtime, I thought 40ish hours was pretty fair for what I’d figure is being a little over half way through the game. I think @Voltan had beat the entire game by 40 hours if memory serves, but I’m moseying at a slower pace. It’s just that the last two weeks I’ve only managed about 3-4 hours per weekend with the game is all. So my progress has slowed even more. I’m estimating I’m on pace for about 60-70 hours to completion maybe?

I have felt like my skills haven’t diminished though, despite my sporadic game time. Like I said, I wasn’t even properly invested in my run yesterday — was just monkeying around and found that before I knew it I had a decent run going into B5.

With my weekend over, it’s unlikely I’ll devote time to the game again for a while, but we’ll see. I’m going to experiment with my game save today after work though.