Returnal
Returnal has recently been in the spotlight due to a number of issues that could involve corruption and cancellation of bailouts. For this reason, many users have expressed their opinions on social networks, fearing for their matches. Yesterday the development house of the work, Housemarque, revealed updates on the issue, announcing the release date of the new patch. The software house has confirmed that the Returnal patch 1.3.6 has been released today, at 13:00 (Italian time).This update will serve to ensure greater stability of the software, in order to avoid the 'arising of further unpleasant situations. With a tweet, Housemarque revealed all the contents of patch 1.3.6, including the long-awaited solution to the error that could lead to the deletion of save files. The list of changes continues with a generic "multiple stability improvements that could result in rare crashes", probably referring to the crashes that have been affecting PS5 games recently.
Problems with the pre suits have been fixed. -order, which could occasionally block objects and doors. The list continues with improvements to the care system, which may not work properly, and to the use of custom buttons for the controller. Beyond these, many other minor changes have been made to Returnal that we hope will greatly improve the overall gaming experience. Finally, Housemarque recommends deactivating the automatic update in order to keep the already activated races active.
Also ..
-Fixed issue with corrupted save game.
Reminder : To keep active runs, turn off auto-update.
- Housemarque (@Housemarque) May 7, 2021
In short, it is really a fairly substantial patch, which we recommend you install to avoid any problems with the title. The software house has proved to be more than active on social media, in order to stay close to the players by offering them solutions in the event that particular bugs occur. Just a few days ago, in fact, he had warned users not to leave the console in rest mode, in order to avoid losing the saves. Please let us know if you're playing Returnal with a comment, and if you're interested, you can read our review!
You can buy Returnal for PlayStation 5 on Amazon by clicking here.
Did'Returnal' Really Have to Be a Roguelike Game?
© Courtesy PS5’s first major exclusive'Returnal' has you starting from scratch each time you die. It’s a punishing—and unnecessary—concept.It’s kind of tricky to explain what a roguelike video game is to someone who hasn’t already played one. Although, if your family had a Super Nintendo, you may be acquainted with the genre already. Remember, back then, in games like Duck Tales or Contra, when you died, you really died? Until games started allowing you to save your progress, when you hit that game over screen, your game was really over.
Now, imagine that old logic applied to games of the modern day. Since consoles are unimaginably more powerful than they were back in the early'90s, games like Spelunky and The Binding of Isaac, two touchstones for the roguelike genre, are able to factor in novel mechanics such as levels designed at random (which in the gaming industry is called procedural generation), and allow players to retain what I guess are commonly known as power-ups (or boons, buffs, augments, upgrades, etc.) each time they die. So although you’re dying constantly, there’s a feedback loop of reassessment, refinement, and growth that eventually results in you feeling unstoppably powerful. After all the time spent getting your a** kicked, that utter dominance is extremely cathartic.
One title in this new genre, which is all of the sudden becoming way more mainstream than its esoteric roots, won a bunch of Game of the Year awards in 2020: Supergiant Games’ Hades. Unlike the huge majority of roguelike games before it, Hades managed to accomplish the proverbial feat of walking and chewing gum at the same time (do people still say that?)—there was a story in Hades, and it was a damn good one. The act of dying and being reborn at the very start of the title was woven into the Greek Olympian narrative, meaning every time you washed up on the shores of the Underworld, you got a bit of story and character payoff too.
So that brings us to Returnal, which is among the first of the highly anticipated exclusives for the PlayStation 5, as well as a massively risky experiment in the roguelike genre. Returnal, I assume, is an effort to merge the worlds of super-expensive, prestige PlayStation gaming (this thing costs 70 dollars), with the still-relatively-little-known roguelike phenomenon. Sure, if you’re someone who lives and breathes video games, you’re going to think I’m insane for talking about roguelikes like they’re basement punk bands. But over the past few weeks that I’ve been playing Returnal, I was legitimately surprised how few people I asked had ever even heard of this genre. To mainstream players, it’s very new!
Returnal, like Hades, tries its best to make use of the prickly roguelike setup for an ambitious narrative. Keep in mind, at the time of writing, despite the hours I’ve sunk into this ungodly difficult game, I’m still barely past the first boss. But, the short of the story is, you’re an astronaut named Selene who crash lands on a planet that, for whatever spooky reason, will not let her die. Or, rather, when she dies, you crash land again, and have to start over, again, and again, and again. There really is no escape.
Something from the past is sprouting up to life for Selene on this planet that looks like the demon spawn of H.R. Giger and H.P. Lovecraft, with fauna that resembles, curiously enough, the aliens of Edge of Tomorrow, which sort of is the movie equivalent of a roguelike video game. Over the course of the first few hours of my playthrough, I was totally on board with Returnal’s riff on the roguelike format. It just seemed to make sense. Selene has no idea why she keeps coming back to life and reliving her disastrous space-ship collision. She’s searching for answers, and each time she returns, she’s better equipped to navigate the landscape—like I mentioned before, you retain a degree of upgrades from session to session, so there is a feeling of progress. At least, at first.
Now I’m close to eight hours into Returnal, and I just can’t bring myself to continue playing. I used the word ungodly to describe the title’s difficulty because it truly does feel like you are trapped on a planet from hell, cursed to run through the same thorny rooms of energy-beam-blasting bad guys for hours on end. I’m getting little carrots of story from challenge to challenge, but there’s just not enough in here to keep me stoked about what happens next. As I clenched my jaw and slammed my DualSense controller down for the umpteenth time last night, I started to wonder: Does this game even have to be a roguelike? Does the permanent death setup enhance, or at least even accommodate, the story the developers at Housemarque are trying to tell? What would happen if Selene died, but came back to life right in the same place, or in a spot not so far from where she croaked? Sure, it’s against roguelike laws, but wouldn’t that...still tell a story of rebirth?
© Courtesy selectJoin Esquire SelectI think so. I do! I’ve seen a lot of criticism about Returnal, from comments about its broken saving system, to its intimidating difficulty curve, to the blatant fact that a single run of the game could take close to four hours and leave you with almost nothing to carry over into the next session. And, sure, asking a roguelike game to just, well, not be so roguelike may sound like an unfair argument. It’s not like I’m asking MLB The Show to not be a sports game, though!
Returnal feels first and foremost like a traditional third-person shooter. Hell, that’s how the game was marketed (the term“roguelike” was oddly absent from the bulk of Returnal’s promotional material). Before the roguelike conceit, before anything, Returnal is a video game that gives you a gun and a destination, and some obstacles for getting there. It has metroidvania vibes (that’s another whole subgenre for a separate article), bullet hell gameplay (see the previous parenthetical), there’s a lot of platforming, and then there’s the fact that you have to start from the top every damn time.
To me, it feels like the fantastic and similarly otherworldly Control from Remedy Entertainment in 2019. Control took us through all sorts of surreal and challenging narrative environments—but it was carried out in a way that didn’t punish us so much for dying. That’s kind of how video games work, don’t they? Even as they become more film-like, even as they immerse us so much more in their stories, players still die. And then come back. Right? Doesn’t that already accomplish Returnal’s main premise of a planet on which an astronaut is constantly dying and coming back to life? I’m asking a lot of questions now, but I think you understand where I’m leading you.
Sure, later in Returnal, the way in which you can skip from area to area gets quicker and more efficient. But these opening hours, man, they’re brutal. And not just because they’re difficult. The drain just doesn’t feel worth the effort. Of course you could tell a story about rebirth without dooming a player to claw out, red-faced and exhausted, from the game’s first moments each time they die.
I described Returnal as“risky” because I do think PlayStation knew it'd lose some fans after selling this game at $70 and expecting players to stomach something this over-the-top challenging—or unrewarding. Reviews have ranged from trepidatious to positive with a few outliers, but as PS5 owners spend more time with Returnal, we’ll see if this big risky game pays off. I think, as the roguelike genre becomes utilized by these gigantic first-party blockbuster studios, it’s important to keep in mind what makes a game like Hades work. Not only does the story feel like it couldn’t be told in any other way, but Hades is always giving you a meaningful reward—a big nugget of story, a new weapon, something—for all your effort.
If it were up to me, I’d drop the roguelike thing completely and just let players enjoy the lush and mysterious planets of Returnal like they would any other game. I’d probably be playing it right now if that were the setup.