I think the idea of Triple-A being a genre is quite interesting-depressing. More than any other generation that is starting to feel like dead end time as all the really interesting stuff just isn’t even intersecting the cutting edge of Triple-A any more. The PS5 feels like a different planet to me. One on which people have played a high budget remake of one of my favourite games (Demon’s Souls) and never talk about it despite having nothing else to play.
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I’m seeing a lot that indicates that this game starts off strong but starts to get very dull 10 hours in. Similar to something like Echo in other words.
I don’t see anything wrong with that, not every game needs to last more an a weekend or even be good until the win condition. It’s just the $70 price and the fact that there’s little else to play on PS5 that leads people to expect more.
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Hey just a heads up apparently the latest patch can corrupt your save files
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It has held up for me but yeah, it might be the launch drought and my being into the blend of shmuppy 3rd person action, staring at particle effects, and Control’s fragmented-text Lovecraft archeology dig mixing in some unreliable narrator stuff.
What little I played of nu-demon’s souls just seems to confirm it’s the same game with a new ugly paint job and is unnecessary except as a tech demo.
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I can see this, but at the same time don’t really mind that side of it. Because Returnal actually feels to me kinda of like a PS2 game. Despite the production values relative to their last games (which I’m not sure are really that much better than top tier current gen games, let alone work as an examplar of “next gen AAA” which seems to be a conversation point for some reason), I think Housemarque does not actually stray very far from their roots and ultimately Returnal is maybe too honest compared to most roguelites. It’s like one of those PS2 games that has the trappings of some recent game design trend but it’s scope narrows in on one particular idea that becomes more important than whatever the original selling point was supposed to be. In this case, Returnal is too much of a gamey third person shooter.
The randomized elements are actually very minor in the grand scheme of how a run plays out and you can literally ignore almost all of it if you want. The most meaningful randomization is enemy layouts, but the truly main skill is how good you are at playing this as a regular third person shooter.
There are three main types of items that affect what should be your playstyle: artifacts, parasites, and “maligned” drops that cause “malfunctions”.
Artifacts are like equipment; they each have a positive affect that greatly changes something about your stats or abilities. But artifacts are hard to come by, appearing randomly in chests or the equivalent of shops. Both of those are just too uncommon for artifacts to be a reliable gameplay modifier every run. And you can opt to not pick any of them up if you want.
Parasites are the more common type of equipment and come with a buff and a debuff. But the buffs feel too week compared to the paired debuffs and the trade off rarely feels worth it. The debuffs feel like true modifiers (you take fall damage, or active reload causes you to take damage) while the buffs are stuff like, uh- I can’t even remember. So you can choose to just not pick any of these up.
Maligned drops are things like chests or life recovery items that have a chance of causing a major debuff, but these debuffs can be removed by doing some sort of task like X number of melee kills or picking up a parasite. But again, the negative effect just feels like it far outweighs whatever benefit you’re trying to get. If you get a malfunction past your first two, you instead start losing artifacts. But that only matters is you are finding artifacts in the first place. So you can also just avoid picking these up too.
If artifacts were more common I can see the rogue lite elements being more important and more fun. But as is, I kind of ignore most of it and just play it like a shooter. And it’s pretty fun on that level.
So yeah, if you’re not really into the game as a shooter then I don’t see any of these other elements being enough to hold your interest. But I can see it being a fun game to see how tight of a run you can get- as a plain old shooter.
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I’m about 12 hours in at this point and I’m still enjoying this game, but I’ve hit a brick wall with progression. I’m certainly getting better at reading enemy attacks / maintaining adrenaline but I just haven’t been able to get over the hump in the second area. I’ll have good runs going and be working my way up the mountain, then get absolutely creamed in a room. The game as a shooter is fun enough that I keep coming back to it, but I could see myself running out of steam if I don’t start feeling some real progression soon.
Like drem says above the random elements of the game feel almost inconsequential, until it isn’t and it ruins a run. I had a really good run going with the “5% health syphon for each adrenaline level” artifact and a spitmaw with decent perks, but I went for some item (a resin I think) that gave me a malfunction of “75% less damage when at full health” which meant I would get up to full health with the artifact, then not be able to do anything until I took a hit, rinse repeat. Eventually ran into a room with a ton of flying enemies, a green shield tower, and two crabs and just got totally overwhelmed when they all converged directly on me and I couldn’t do enough damage to clear a path and got stomped to death in seconds.
I haven’t seen a spaceman figure since I got the first one at the house, maybe 2 hours in. Am I missing something?
they’ll start turning up randomly after that first one you get. i started seeing them a lot in the big fabricator rooms where you have 4 different things to buy, although they can just turn up in chests as well.
and yeah a bad pull on a room (healing tower plus a really mean selection of high tier monsters) can ruin a run in a heartbeat, can be a little much sometimes.
i had a run yesterday that had me beat the third boss, the fourth boss, and then going much further than that. after 3 hours i was exhausted and just kind of let myself die since i dont trust just suspending the game with all the goofy updates kicking you out (i know you can turn that feature off but ehh, i was tired)
Thanks! Weird, I’ve never seen one in those rooms but getting one instead of the blade balancer (which I see ALL THE TIME) would be a huge benefit.
I’d guess that it’s more likely to drop from a chest that would also give you a malfunction maybe? I avoid malfunction items 99% of the time for the exact reasons drem mentioned above, which is maybe why I’ve never gotten one (I only ever seem to get guns from chests). Maybe I’ll try rolling those dice more in the future.
I just unlocked the electropylon driver. Very weird gun! I have no idea how to use it properly. Upon unlocking it, the next three rooms I entered were swarming with flying enemies. I can see how this thing would work on ground enemies, but I had immense difficulty trying to hit aerial ones with it. Anyone have any tips?
Between this, the rocket launcher, and the grenade launcher, I’m finding a bunch of the midgame unlockable guns kind of weak and hard to use.
So since I can’t play this I watched someone else play it for 14 hours now. Game rules pretty hard at least when you know what you’re doing. The guy I’m watching died twice and then made it through the second and third area, where he died before the boss. Couple more deaths and he beat the third boss. I really love what they did with the story in this game and even though I felt like I had figured it almost all out by the second time you go in the 20th century house the game keeps throwing curve balls. Now I’m wondering if I’m right. I’ll definitely watch the rest of the playthrough.
Guess that means I won’t buy this game if I get a PS5 eventually but whatever, saves me 70 bucks. I might still get it when it’s cheap at some point
Nice, I think I know exactly where you are in the game. Are you trying to shoot on target or next to the targets to draw a web? From what I’ve seen (not played) you can still shoot directly at flying enemies, like maybe even one shot for each, and it will draw the string between them and kill them both, if you’re fast enough. It’s a pretty buff weapon and totally wrecks at the point you first get it.
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Yeah, I first tried to create a web around them but had a tough time in these giant caverns where there aren’t really features to connect high-up webs to. I also tried shooting directly to no avail, but I didn’t realize you have to shoot two monsters to draw the web between them. I’ll give that a try, thanks!
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Wow, that surprises me! You said caverns? You didn’t get the gun in a jungle environment? It seems there’s a huge difference in experiences from player to player. I mean I knew that scenes like the ones in the old house vary a lot. Seems like it’s really hard to see everything that’s in the game, for sure. That’s pretty exciting!
Oh no, I did get it there. But even in that environment the spaces are wide enough to make it hard to string up webs above ground level.
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i don’t disagree at all although i found the electropylon nets worked well on the 4th boss. i just finished the game with the pistol of all things.
idk if the game just got a lot easier after the third boss or it started clicking for me but it only took one run after beating the third area to hit the credits.
although now i see there’s a secret Third Act after ‘finishing’ the game, that’s cool
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I feel like biome 3 is a point where I should probably start playing through biome 1 and 2 for upgrades because geeze, those guys pack a punch. I also don’t have a good sense for how to deal with a large group of the rocket launcher drones. Between the rockets requiring tighter dodgers and everything having kamikaze attacks anf circular explosions, in getting creamed out there.
I’ve been through the first 4 biomes and much of the 5th, and I have to say that so far 3 was the hardest by far.
The 3rd is crushing me too - my current strategy is to mess around in the 1st until I at least find the room with the big artifact fabricator and get at least a couple of artifacts before diving into the third.
Also, I noticed the big proficiency upgrade you get at the beginning of each biome is not cumulative as far as I can tell, so there’s no real need to grind proficiency before diving into the next biome. It will always just send you to 4 or 5 proficiency for the second biome or 9 or 10 for the third.
I’ve come around a bit on both malfunctions and parasites. I’m not sure they adjusted the negative affects in a recent patch or something but I’ve been getting fairly good drops from malfunction chests with malfunctions that were fairly easy to get rid of. I still wouldn’t risk one late into a good progression run but especially at the beginning I’ve been getting powered up a lot faster in the first biome and having better luck in the third.
I decided to do a full run through of Biomes 1 and 2 before going to three and wow, what a difference getting upgrades makes. Not sure if it’s the artifacts or I got lucky with a high bonus damage weapon, but getting 200+% health was a life saver on the boss of Biome 3. Granted I still died when it was a few hits away from dying, but running through Biome 3 itself became a breeze because I could actually destroy enemies at a reasonable speed.
Boss 3 is a neat design in it’s presentation. It’s attacks are presented in a way to make it seem like there’s a lot more going on than there really is, making the battle feel a bit larger scale or chaotic. But then it ends up escalating in a way I was not expecting.
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I JUST cleared the 3rd biome late last night on my second go around with the boss. I agree that the fight progresses in a really fun way right up through the third phase.
The whole thing was on a “ok this is the last one tonight I swear” run that I was convinced was totally doomed from the beginning, so I kept expecting to get killed but just kept barely sneaking by room after room until it was way past when I shoudl have went to bed. I stuck with a level 8 Rotgland Lobber throughout pretty much the whole thing. I was passing up level 15 weapons by the end for my trusty little lobber.
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