Can you see the White Shadow too? – review of the game “Returnal”

Established in the mid-1990s, the Finnish Housemarque was for a long time difficult to be considered a developer with ambitions to reach the top league in the industry. However, the situation changed dramatically almost two years ago, with the premiere of their first high-budget production – one that was supposed to announce the strength of the entire group of exclusive titles for the new platform, PlayStation 5.

 

Returnal somehow fulfilled the assumptions and hopes placed in it, even despite the relatively limited target group. Hellishly difficult, focused on constantly improving one’s own skills gameplay and roguelike structure reached over half a million recipients in less than three months – and Sony, cooperating with the Finns, was satisfied with the result so much that it decided to buy an independent studio. For the game itself, however, this was by no means the end of the journey – subsequent successively transferred console titles quickly ignited hopes that the same would happen with Returnal , and the more and more rumors circulating on the web were soon confirmed with official information – indeed, we were waiting for a story Selena Vassos for PC.

Beyond the boundaries of reality

And this one, without trying it on, is undoubtedly something that fans of the darker varieties of science fiction could definitely sharpen their teeth on. In the production of Housemarque, we play the role of the aforementioned Selene, an astronaut subordinate to the ASTRA corporation, who, following a mysterious transmission known as the “White Shadow”, goes to Atropos – one of the planets forbidden to explore, against the orders of her superiors. However, the landing attempt ends in a disaster, and the inability to send an SOS message forces the heroine to abandon the wreckage and try to get close to the source of the mysterious signal. As it turns out, this task will be much more complicated than it might seem at first, especially since Selene will soon find a body belonging to … herself, and further facts will clearly indicate that that a woman has become an involuntary participant in an endless cycle of death and rebirth. Breaking it may be the only chance to find a way out of Atropos.

As enigmatic as the above draft of Returnal’s plot may sound, it is really only the tip of the iceberg of symbols and metaphors that the creators have hidden in the subsequent stages of Selene’s journey. Although over time, further clues discovered on the way to a full understanding of the heroine’s situation will more and more clearly suggest in which direction the whole thing is heading, the script is constructed in such a way as to constantly lead the viewer by the nose in search of answers. These, even in the final fragments of the story, are not the most obvious and are subject to any interpretation – so it’s enough to say that in terms of the presented story, Returnal is at the forefront of those titles that are supposed to engage the recipient in independently spinning various theories.

The core of the whole adventure conceived in this way perfectly harmonizes with the stuffy atmosphere of the presented world, strongly inspired at first glance by what we saw, for example, in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus . Time-worn ruins, monumental sculptures and mysterious technologies left by an alien civilization are shrouded in mystery, irresistibly giving the impression of secrets buried in the distant past to be discovered. Housemarque’s production promises a lot in this regard and can rise to the occasion in terms of creating the right mood – undoubtedly constituting the necessary motivation to keep going despite all adversities.

A gameplay masterpiece

In addition to the intriguing plot, it is this constant push forward that is exactly what constitutes the essence of the Finnish developer’s production. Returnal is equally representative of the roguelike and bullet hell genres, with procedurally generated sequences of rooms, tons of enemies to kill and the need to dynamically maneuver between the constantly fired volleys of bullets at the player. Despite the crazy pace at times, the gameplay here is diablo fluid and somewhat resembles the solutions used in Control , only tweaked to the limit – to survive, you need to be in constant motion, combine ranged attacks with melee attacks and instant dodging to the sides.

With the help to survive all this storm, there are collectibles that appear here and there during our journey, modifying Selene’s statistics in a certain way. In addition to items related to the main plot and acquired during the progress in the story, we will find, for example, consumables that provide specific benefits, such as health regeneration or the exchange of enemy bullets for an in-game currency called obolite, or artifacts that provide bonuses to the statistics of our suit. There are also parasites, usually offering both positive and negative traits. In addition, we will collect the previously mentioned obolite left by enemies, which will be used to buy more interesting upgrades, or resin, which extends our health bar. All of this can also occur in a contaminated version, making that picking up these items will involve the risk of negative modifiers. On top of all of this, there’s also the issue of Selene’s increasing skills. With each kill, the weapon will gain a level of efficiency, which will allow you to find their stronger variants. A series of kills without taking any damage, in turn, results in an increase in the level of adrenaline, which allows you to move faster or scan the environment more effectively.

Although it all sounds extremely complicated, it is not necessarily that the production of Housemarque from the very beginning requires us to memorize everything on the fly and cat’s agility – the entry threshold here is relatively low, subsequent elements appear gradually, and the level of difficulty increases as you traverse subsequent variants world of Atropos, referred to here as biomes. Each of them (there are six of them in total) are completely different variants of opponents and a diametrically different setting – we will find here both the rust-red desert and the underwater depths. Each of the levels requires a slightly different tactic, but there are also common points between them. These include, for example, optional rooms – including those from which we will not be able to get out until we defeat a certain number of waves of enemies, or focused on skilful avoidance of traps. For dealing with them, there are rewards that make the game especially easier, but the difficulty level in their case is much higher than in the “standard” areas. Considering that at the end of each biome there is an extremely difficult boss fight,Returnal requires the player to constantly focus and calculate whether the hard earned life points are worth risking for an uncertain reward.

live. fight. die. repeat

This is all the more important because the main course of the menu proposed by the Finns in Returnal , and at the same time the thing that will make some players rebound from the adventure, is the issue of resetting almost the entire progress at the time of Selene’s death. Each death here means a merciless return to the initial state, depriving the character of all non-story improvements and returning to the room where we started the adventure.

Imagine surviving the massive attacks of all sorts of enemies, only to finally stand at the gate leading to the boss fight, equipped with upgraded gear and with a health bar wide enough to talk about a double chance of survival. You get through the first and second rounds of fighting the thug without too much trouble, but in the third round he suddenly switches from a ranged attack to a direct charge. You were not prepared for this. you die. Selene wakes up at the site of the shipwreck, and before you is an entire previously tamed biome to repeat.

If the above sounds like a recipe for throwing a pad against the wall … then it is, because Returnal is definitely not a production for the impatient. In order to have fun with it, it should be assumed that each distance covered here from rebirth to the moment of death (referred to in the game as a cycle) is to increase our own skills. So it’s kind of constant trial and error, in the hope of working out the right tactics to finally go a step further. For those who like this type of gameplay, the production of Finns also has an additional mode in the form of an endless tower of challenges, where we can compare our results with the achievements of other players.

However, justice must be given to Housemarque that despite the game reset mechanics, Returnalit doesn’t leave us completely out in the cold. Although it is useless to look for customary checkpoints here, at some point we come to a point in the plot after which, in the event of death, the game will return us to the beginning of the fourth biome instead of the first. Breaking through the waves of enemies in subsequent cycles will also be facilitated by some plot items, which are the only ones that remain in our inventory after death, or machines called reconstructors, allowing you to save a character within a given biome and one session, and then respawn after death without losing progress. It is also worth noting that defeating the boss opens a shortcut to the next biome – so even if we fall a bit further, after resetting the cycle with the most difficult opponent, we will not have to face it again.

All this, of course, does not make Returnal an easy game, but it means that in most cases we can talk about a production that is fair to the recipient – one in which calculated gameplay is rewarded, and failures happen because of your own mistakes.

Other worlds

Although the above description shows an image of a game refined in the smallest detail, the work of the Finnish developer also has its ears. Problems can be caused by the not entirely legible three-dimensional map, which can be rotated and zoomed in any way, but each time it is launched, the starting position adjusts to the direction in which the player is facing – so initially in the tangle of corridors and rooms you can simply lose your bearings .

Certainly, the balance of weapons is not necessarily successful – there are enough of them that everyone will find their favorite, but the vast majority of them are either too weak or too slow to be considered an even playing field. For this reason, it can be irritating that in Returnal a lot depends on RNG. Perhaps during a given cycle we will be randomly selected such a layout of biome rooms and such weapons or items to collect that we will collect the necessary upgrades relatively quickly – next time the situation may be completely different and we will swear like a shoemaker, getting tired in theoretically easy sections of the game.

While the second aspect in particular can significantly affect the gameplay experience, it’s hard to deny Selene’s adventure that even when it comes to testing the player’s patience, she has something magnetizing about her. Subsequent panic recordings of previous versions of the heroine collected along the way, slowly revealing the past of an alien civilization by reading enigmatic notes are emphasized here by an excellent audiovisual setting, definitely drawing a lot of inspiration from science fiction horror classics. Individual biomes are designed with a flourish and, although completely different from each other, are elements closely related to a specific vision, and the riot of colors that attacks the eyes during firefights is in many cases madness impossible to process through the eyes. The same applies to the audio issue – regardless of whether

What is also important for the PC version, a bad word cannot be said about the game’s stability. There would be nothing worse than sudden crashes resetting all progress, but fortunately, nothing like that happens here – everything works smoothly and without unpleasant surprises, exactly as it should be in the case of high-budget productions.

Endurance test

And that’s why Returnal is a special case – on the one hand, it’s a game clearly targeting the AAA segment, which is usually intended for a mass audience hungry for an invested adventure, and on the other – due to its genre affiliation, it can certainly evoke extreme emotions. For these reasons, the final rating will be much more dependent on individual preferences than in the case of other games. If you can grit your teeth and have enough time to treat the work of the Finns from Housemarque as their challenge, its technical refinement and a story worth exploring will definitely reward you. Fans of games understood as stress-free entertainment to the most satisfying in Returnalmoments, however, they may simply not last – and they should take this into account before making a purchase decision.