What happens when you take a talented but independent development team and give them the resources to create something important? The answer to this question is precisely Returnal. Released for PS5 in 2021, the spectacular and challenging roguelike shooter from Housemarque It remains today one of the most interesting next-gen PlayStation exclusives, but things could have been different.
The Finnish studio, which until then had created excellent shooters such as Resogun, Alienation and Nex Machina, had to announce the abandonment of that genre of video games due to the poor response obtained. So Sony's intervention was the most classic of sliding doors; But talent and courage were not lacking in Harry Krueger and his companions, who took the opportunity to prove their worth, so much so that they later gained entry to PlayStation Studios.
In short, it is a story made of opportunity and commitment, experience and a pinch of luck, which developed behind the scenes of this ambitious project, which after almost a couple of years is ready to lead even the owners of the Windows platform. a fascinating but lethal journey towards the planet Atropos and the mysteries of the human mind: we will tell you in Return Review for PC.
History: the eternal return
La history from Returnal is that of Selene Vassos, an astronaut who explores the universe on behalf of the ASTRA Corporation, but is surprised while chasing a strangely familiar signal aboard her spaceship, Helios, and ends up crashing on the planet Atropos. Unable to leave again, the woman soon realizes that there is something very strange in this place.
It's not simply about the monstrous and deadly creatures that inhabit it, no: there is a kind of field that envelops the planet, trapping those on its surface in a time loop which "rewinds" every time the visitor dies. Is there any way to escape? Selene is not sure, but surrender is not an option: weapon in hand, the astronaut decides to discover the truth about Atropos and that signal in the only way apparently possible, that is, by fighting.
The narrative sector of Returnal, mysterious and suggestive, which somehow emerges, reveals new details about the protagonist and her epic as we manage to progress through the campaign, telling them through audio files left by Selene herself in a previous failed attempt (a theme, uh, recurring in the title Housemarque) or in the context of dream sequences that closely resemble hallucinations.
However, waking up from this nightmare seems impossible: whether the protagonist keeps her eyes open or not, everything around her the planet changes and evolves, disordering the arrangement of its different scenarios in an attempt to take us by surprise but also giving us time to observe this strange world, its terrible traps and the tense and heavy atmosphere that accompanies us at every step.
Structure: purebred roguelike
La structure of Returnal is convincingly inspired by the roguelike genre, while presenting certain elements that can be preserved between attempts and which therefore place Housemarque's game more precisely in the orbit of productions. Roguelite: a fundamental aspect to give the progression complete meaning and obtain adequate satisfaction from it.
Every time you die you have to start over.It is true, but specific skills, upgrades and items are at our disposal, in addition to the possibility of using teleportation to quickly reach the areas that we have already explored, without having to defeat again the difficult bosses that initially blocked access.
As in everything roguelike, The element of luck is present and sometimes predominant.: depending on the weapons and improvements that we find during a game, this can be more or less complex regardless of our personal ability to face the threats and eliminate the numerous enemies that will attack us, losing the minimum possible amount of integrity of the game. suit, that is, our vital energy.
There is also an extra factor represented by experience and familiarity with what is happening around Selene: before we can reach the end of this journey, we will have to be patient to leave aside dozens and dozens of failed attempts, which however will be useful even to teach us something about Atropos.
The PC version of Returnal also immediately includes the ability to suspend a cycle to pick up later, which was missing from the launch on PS5 and which makes the experience a little less cruel than the debut, as well as the Tower of Sisyphus and the a cooperative, which however only supports cross-play between Steam and Epic Games Store users.
Gameplay: Fear and Loathing
Il game of Returnal is an absolute frenzy: an extraordinarily dynamic third-person shooting system, which catapults us into increasingly difficult scenarios, surrounded by enemies who will try to eliminate us by all means and who will surely hit their target if we stay still, acting the shooter of the game. mechanically statically instead of using theRun and gun approach with bullet hell implications. imagined by the developers.
"Shoot and shoot, shoot and spin, whatever you want will come true" in the PlayStation-exclusive campaign, which also makes phenomenal use of the haptic feedback that PC provides on PC Dual Sense Controller and the variable resistance of the triggers, the latter fundamentally linked to shooting since the firing mode of the equipped weapon depends on the pressure of the left trigger. If you prefer the classic combo mouse and keyboardHowever, you won't have any problems using it.
As for the weapons, we will find different weapons along the way, equipped with different levels and appendages, and we will be able to specialize in their use to improve their statistics and therefore their effectiveness, in combination with a huge number of improvements, parasites (yes) and consumables that we They will give some kind of advantage, although it is almost always destined to disappear in the event of defeat.
The experience of the Return, however, would be little without the hostile environment that characterizes it, composed of monstrous and deadly creatures that will not stop pointing their projectiles at us, filling the screen with blue, red or green balloons while we try to take advantage of the jump, the run and possibly the Atropic Sword of the protagonist to dodge attacks and sink our own, whether they are short. -lived or long distance. In this sense the five boss They play a fundamental role, with their different phases and intricate attack patterns to memorize.
Technical realization and PC version
On a technical level, Returnal marks a very clear change of pace for Housemarque, which, as mentioned, found itself dealing with a large-scale project for the first time and did not fail, to stay on topic. The atmospheres linked to the different settings, the clear references to Lovecraftian cosmic horror and the design of both the settings and the enemies are extremely convincing, as is theimmersive sound system of the experience, which on PC is compatible with Dolby Atmos technology.
If you remember, the PS5 version of the game used some unusual solutions in terms of resolution and effects to maintain a mostly stable 60 frames per second, rendering the graphics at true 1080p which were then rebuilt at 1440p and upscaled to 2160p, also resorting to ray tracing just to improve the lighting system and the three. Dimensional dynamics of audio.
Therefore, we were very curious to know how the game would perform on PC, and we must say that we still have some doubts regarding mysterious warnings and errors which seem to be related in particular to the use of the RTX 3070: initially the card is not recognized by the system, which however presents the standard options and allows easy gaming in 4K, with all settings at maximum, scoring... 147 fps?
Despite our disbelief, we were ready to enthusiastically launch into building a monument to Climax Studios, the team that made the conversion, when a doubt arose, which was later resolved with video captures: apparently the options said 2160p, but in reality The game ran at only 720p. Once the real values are recovered, we are back on the ground in terms of performance, despite finding a truly complete and scalable system.
The PC version of Returnal allows you to modify the resolution and vertical synchronization, establishing a possible limit for the frames per second, supports ultra-wide monitors (21:9 but also 32:9) and is equipped with four main presets (Epic, Max, Med and Min) which, however, can be customized by adjusting the individual elements: display optimization (from dynamic resolution up to manual scaler, from DLSS to FSR, via VRS and NIS) and lighting quality, shadows, ambient occlusion, ray traced shadows, reflections (screen space or ray traced), models, textures, volumetric fog, particles, antialiasing, depth field, film grain, blooming and HDR.
In short, we have a wide range of possibilities to fine-tune the experience and scale it to different configurations, then checking everything through an excellent internal reference point, which divides the tests based on the situations that arise during the campaign and indicates for each item the degree of commitment of the CPU and GPU, as well as obviously the total frames per second. Even the percentage of actual resolution compared to the output is revealed in the presence of enhancement technologies.
Net of two large patches (one of 2 GB and another of 3 GB) released during our Returnal test, in the absence of NVIDIA drivers optimized for the game and with the doubts that we told you at the beginning of the paragraph, we can say that a great conversion job, which in a similar way to what was said in the review of Dead Space for PC is presented as the best version of the Housemarque title, capable of more convincingly improving resolution, frame rate and effects depending on the hardware you have.
In our case, with the aforementioned RTX 3070, an Intel Core i5 13500 processor, 16 GB of DDR5 RAM and SSD, using the Epic preset you have to opt for a 1440p with DLSS set to "balanced" for stable 60fps, although at times subject to obvious stuttering. In such a complex and frenetic game it is necessary to consider a generous surplus of performance to cope with the busiest sequences, but switching to the Max preset it seems that you can play well even in 4K with balanced DLSS: not bad for a medium level. -Last year's range video card.
PC system requirements
Test setup
- Processor: Intel Core i5 13500
- Video card: NVIDIA RTX 3070
- Memory: 16GB RAM
- Operating system: Windows 11
Minimum requirements
- Procesador: Intel Core i5 6400, AMD Ryzen 5 1500X
- Scheda video: NVIDIA GTX 1060, AMD RX 580
- Memory: 16GB RAM
- Storage: 60 GB of space required
- Operating system: Windows 10 64-bit
Recommended requirements
- Procesador: Intel Core i7 8700, AMD Ryzen 7 2700X
- Video card: NVIDIA RTX 2070, AMD RX 6700 XT
- Memory: 16GB RAM
- Storage: 60 GB of space required
- Operating system: Windows 10 64-bit
Conclusions
Tested version PC with Windows digital delivery Steam, epic games store Price 59,99 € Holygamerz.com 8.5 Readers (46) 7.9 your voteReturnal presents itself as an absolutely fascinating and convincing roguelike shooting experience also on PC, thanks to the presence of all the features added during construction on PS5, to more animated effects on a visual level, but also and above all to a wide range of settings (complete with an internal benchmark to test them from time to time) that allow you to scale the game in various settings, where possible, and find the best compromise for facing Atropos's deadly traps without dying from a fall sudden in frames per second.
PRO
- Fast-paced, challenging and spectacular game.
- Scenarios as fascinating as they are insidious, great atmosphere
- Visually superior, robust and scalable PC version
AGAINST
- Inevitably frustrating
- The procedural system has its known limitations
- Some small bugs to solve on PC
