Returnal - PC Release Imminent

[mediocrepoet]

won't be touching this with my aging 1080gtx. but super excited to play/buy whenever I upgrade

For frame of reference, it plays pretty flawlessly on relatively high settings (everything but ray tracing IIRC, I'd have to look at what it's actually set at to be more specific) on a 2070S.

 

[KIss My Ass]

They could have put a 2B-type character in it or I dno told an AI to design an "attractive female in a Space Suit" and went with the first result. As far as I'm concerned these studios send out their own games to die for being retarded. I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up with like a portion of the player-base of something like this: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1178830/Bright_Memory_Infinite/

Now that game has a protagonist I can, ahem, get behind. Well done studio I never heard of for being more intelligent than AAA devs. I'm gonna purchase that one down the line.

 

[toro]

Just finished the game. It's a mixed experience: the gameplay is addictive but the satisfaction factor is low because there is no resolution.

I had one perfect run in which the best artefacts simply dropped one after another which basically meant that I've almost finished the entire game in one sitting (5h). However in the end I've failed because the last boss has a gimmick (light Bed of Chaos). I took a break and killed him on second try.

Random screenshots

Spoiler

Edit:
For some reason the gameplay reminded me of MDK because frankly it felt like that at some points. Very old and solid design in this regard.
The bosses are probably inspired by Nier but I might be wrong as I didn't finish that game.
The game is not really hard and it doesn't require a lot of skill on PC because the Kb&M is better for FPS than a gamepad.
In this regard the game has some autoaim feature because the console users have special needs.

Edit 2:
It looks like I didn't finish the entire game. There is one additional act. Wtf!?

 

[toro]

Just finished another run. Almost flawless.

It looks like the game has a secret ending or Act3 however it depends on finding 6 pieces of a key ... which is basically bullshit cause it depends on RNG.

The gameplay is excellent, this is what Hyper Drifter Light 2 should have been.

On the other hand the story is basically pretentious shit. Quote from google: "the story of Returnal is Selene's process of grief, which unfortunately loops back endlessly until she is able to accept her fate". It really stinks the entire experience.

The story, the multiplayer, the replayability are not great and at some point the atmosphere is starting to become a drag.

In the end, I would recommend the game but not for more than 20 potatoes. It's good, it's addictive but it's not great.

Anyway, I'm done with it. Fuck Selene and her mental issues.

Spoiler

 

[Ezekiel]

Played an hour.

Having not played shooters in a while because they're almost all in first-person view (Shit by default.) or slow third-person, I'm bothered about the lack of analog movement with a keyboard. Didn't used to care, but now I think of how unimaginative the console manufacturers are for funding so many 3D shooting games and never coming up with a fusion between analog navigation and the speed and precision of something like a mouse. This game lets you use a mouse and controller at the same time, doesn't deactivate one when the other is used, as is so common. Feels rather nice, but my controllers are too heavy to use with one hand for so long. The Wii nunchuck doesn't have enough buttons... PC game peripheral designers and PC players are such cowards.

Thought lack of shoulder swapping would be totally fine in a shooter with such open environments, but it does bother me after all. I am blinded when coming around objects from the right, as is always the case in games where the character is so far on the left.

 

[Ezekiel]

Now that I spent thirty dollars on a roguelike, maybe I'll remember what they are, how much time they consume and be more careful about spending money on them in the future.

 

[Ezekiel]

I can't decide if I find the world pretty or too demonic. Occasionally, I am reminded of "Blame!," the 1997 to 2003 manga by Tsutomu Nihei, but the environments there were more beautiful. The roguelike elements (all the upgrades and downgrades) clash with the serious story and realistic character design, though.

I wish there were NPCs to speak with or characters who appear in cutscenes, if not humans, then creatures and machines. Gone Home, Dear Esther, Returnal, it's always the same: the monologues, audio logs and journals get tiresome. I never feel that involved. Even the generic (for video games) dream constructs based on Selene's memories have no one.

I'm convinced Sony has a blueprint that studios have to follow when porting to Windows, for every one of them to have problems with walking with a keyboard. Days Gone and Horizon made it a freaking toggle and Returnal doesn't even have the option. I'm guessing God of War 2018 has a walk button because it's a walk and talk game.

 

[Ezekiel]

Some good the Atmos mix is when the speech is mixed so quietly that you can't hear her half the time.

It's not hard!

 

[Ezekiel]

C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Returnal\Steam\Saved

Save-scummed right before Ixion and Nemesis, the bosses of their areas, but haven't had to overwrite my save file yet (meaning I didn't die after backing up the save). Don't have the time to get back to bosses over and over. Demon's Souls was better about shortcuts (but wasn't a roguelike, to be fair).

 

[Ezekiel]

I wish there were NPCs to speak with or characters who appear in cutscenes, if not humans, then creatures and machines. Gone Home, Dear Esther, Returnal, it's always the same: the monologues, audio logs and journals get tiresome. I never feel that involved. Even the generic (for video games) dream constructs based on Selene's memories have no one.

Oh, and Hellblade. No NPCs or cutscenes with characters in them there either (except her lover, in a few memories, face barely visible, only really an outline of his body and his voice IIRC, so it's whatever), making her psychological journey rather one-note and boring with no one there to, uhm... help put it in perspective or bounce her thoughts off of. Imagine that edgy Lars von Trier movie about the serial killer with only himself to talk to. Lame. Edit: House That Jack Built. Didn't think it was very good, but would have been worse without the old man.

This game is awesome. It feels like an actual evolution of bullet hell shooters in a way that's relatively fresh, along with nice visuals, gameplay that's oddly similar to Nex Machina despite being in a different perspective and with an actual setting and atmosphere.

I haven't experienced any real microstutters or anything that I've noticed, but I'm also not trying to get any raytracing out of it, so there's that. Technically my card can do it, realistically, I'd probably want to invest in a newer card to have decent gameplay while having raytracing in pretty much anything.

I wish you couldn't dodge through projectiles and that the game was balanced for that limitation. That's not proper bullet hell. In MUSHA, Thunderforce IV and Gley Lancer I can't just go through the dangers (without a shield).

 

[luj1]

Recturnal

 

[Ezekiel]

Recturnal

It's a bad name. A really bad name. There is a reason the word is rare/obsolete. (Looked it up so that no one could make fun of me, say, "That's a real word, moron!")

 

[toro]

Recturnal

It's a bad name. A really bad name. There is a reason the word is rare/obsolete. (Looked it up so that no one could make fun of me, say, "That's a real word, moron!")

It doesn't matter. The name, the protagonist, the story are retarded but the gameplay is superb.

 

[Ezekiel]

Beat the organ/musical boss, reached the snow area. Still haven't had to overwrite my save file after save-scumming (backing up before bosses). All this realism and I can't see my footprints. I remember that even the N64 had footprints. The mountain in Majora's Mask, I think.

 

[Ezekiel]

Underwater world is cool and makes me again want a good Little Mermaid game.

Protagonist is embarrassing. So much cringe coming from her mouth.

 

[toro]

Underwater world is cool and makes me again want a good Little Mermaid game.

Protagonist is embarrassing. So much cringe coming from her mouth.

Yeah. Nobody cares about her. How about the gameplay?

 

[Ezekiel]

Underwater world is cool and makes me again want a good Little Mermaid game.

Protagonist is embarrassing. So much cringe coming from her mouth.

Yeah. Nobody cares about her. How about the gameplay?

Good.

I overwrote my save for the first time this morning. Twice before the same room. Before the second of the three rings that you need to get the item that lets you go underwater. Only felt a little bad about it. I have other things to do.

Imagine playing this with a controller and the default aim assist, with dash and melee assigned to shit buttons L3 and R3. Imagine thinking that pressing the stick down immediately before or while pushing it to the radius feels good. Clearly, the developers want more buttons, if they keep using those shit buttons for important actions (on top of cycling through items/weapons, often in only one direction, and radial menus that slow or pause the game). But still the controller engineers stick to this four button diamond that takes up the whole thumb and put the only two other buttons for that side at the top of the controller (R1 and R2). A flat pad with analog navigation that keeps the hand in a resting position would make more sense for all these modern games that prioritize camera movement/aiming so much and have all these actions, since it wouldn't waste all those digits just being carried.

Then you can also make aiming efficient with something like a mouse. If developers still built their games around the limitations of analog aiming, then I wouldn't complain about it. If they still put in fixed/cinematic cams and auto-aim in games that aren't really shooters. But almost every AAA game they make now is either a shooter or an over the shoulder type thing with such limited field of view that you constantly need to adjust the cam. Either you increase the sensitivity of the stick, which lets you whip the camera around faster, but makes it harder to then hone in, making you overshoot even if you are as careful as possible. Or you reduce the sensitivity of the stick, which means you have to drag the camera longer to get to your target. The stick severely lacks range.

 

[motherfucker]

What is the point of this game? RoR2 but no sexy robots?

 

[mediocrepoet]

What is the point of this game? RoR2 but no sexy robots?

Bullet hell shooter roguelike but a TPS.

 

[911 Jumper]

> Returnal's third anniversary tomorrow (30 April 2021)
> Yellow typeface on text
> [Part of] Selene's unfortunate face in the image

 

[ciox]

Double obolites weekend!

 

[911 Jumper]

Sony's XDEV tweeted this a few hours ago

 

[911 Jumper]

NO

 

[agris]

I have a Dolby Atmos 7.1.2 setup hooked up to my PC so I really appreciate the effort they're putting into the audio. The amount of games that support Atmos is slowly increasing but this is definitely the best game to do it so far. Anyone play through Ascension? I only did the base game on a friend's PS5.
https://www.dolby.com/experience/games/

I have two height speakers as well and find Atmos a bit gimmicky with only half the recommended speakers above me. Would love to sit under the middle of four, but my back is already against the wall and I couldn't destroy the ceiling of this apartment anyway. They hang from two arms from the wall above me when I sit. It's supposed to be much more three-dimensional when you're surrounded. Then again, I barely listen to Atmos tracks. When there are multiple options in a movie, I almost always choose the older sound mix. I also disable the Atmos speakers when upmixing two-channel surround mixes. But, yeah, nice to see more Atmos games on PC. I thought it was dying, then was surprised by Atmos in Callisto Protocol (a bad game).

You may be interested in this thread if you aren't already aware of it. Despite there being a lot of console discussion, there's plenty of people with computers hooked into high-end HT systems.

Somewhere after page ~135, there's a discussion of how the "Atmos" system implemented in many cross-platform Xbox/PC games is not actually atmos, i.e. not actually dynamic object-based audio decoding. But rather a poor-man's version of it. Some crumbs of the discussion are here.

I'll also add that some studios just cannot produce good surround mixes in their games, much like movie studios. Prey (2017) was the worst implementation of non-atmos surround I've ever heard in my life, I self-ejected from the helicopter at the start and uninstalled it.

 

[d1r]

Is there a mod out there which fixes the protags face? Might try it out then.