Returnal — What Is It About?

Returnal puts you in the shoes of Selene, an astronaut who lands on an off-limits planet named Atropos in order to discover the origins of a mysterious signal dubbed the “White Shadow”. What follows is a surprisingly in-depth story that manages to meld the roguelike gameplay mechanics into the narrative, giving a clever reason as to why Selene keeps “respawning”.

As for the aforementioned gameplay, Returnal is a constant struggle for survival, with wave after wave of enemies out for Selene’s blood, providing some tense, bullet hell gameplay. Players will need to be constantly on the offensive, but have quick reflexes to avoid the constant bombardments of enemy fire, which thankfully is simple to perform due to how agile Selene is! PC players will be glad to know that the online co-op portion of Returnal — which was originally added as a post-launch update for PlayStation 5 — will be available day one. Two guns are better than one, especially when stuck on a particularly nasty boss encounter!

You’ll be constantly on the move through a variety of procedurally generated sci-fi environments, which not only adds to the replay value (which is great considering the game’s difficulty) but also ensures Returnal will be very hard to master. Thankfully, some equipment carries over between runs, cutting down the time players spend in previously completed biomes, with the likes of the grappling hook being essential to quickly finishing earlier levels. When you factor in the risk and reward system, it may seem good to fly through these levels to return to where you died, but that could lead to some useful weapons and items being missed!