#Returnal digital deluxe full#

Returnal is a hard game, but it rewards you handsomely for playing well and for making smart choices, which is always a great feeling.

Also, if you pick up health items while you’re at max life it actually adds to your total health capacity. There’s an adrenaline meter that builds up as you score kills and grants up to five stacking buffs, but they all disappear when you take a single hit. Learning those behaviors is important, because Returnal really, really encourages you to avoid getting hit. There’s an excellent variety of enemies in Returnal, and even when it resorts to using the same character model in a different environment, there’s always something different in their behavior that makes them a completely new challenge. All the usual staples are here: the directional dash that makes you momentarily invulnerable to damage, the enemies that shoot a barrage of bullets that are just slow enough for you to outrun, the ones that shoot just a straight-up wall of bullets you have to dodge through, the jerks that fire a locked-on laser beam at you if you can’t kill them in time, and then there’s the mega-assholes that do a little bit of everything. Returnal takes the bullet-hell stylings of the likes of Resogun, Nex Machina, and Super Stardust HD, and transplants them into a third-person shooter. Selene is an interesting protagonist who’s in this weird repeating-but-different scenario along with us.While the story focus may be a surprise given Housemarque’s previous games, the tight and responsive gun play is right on brand.

#Returnal digital deluxe full#

It’s not quite as elegant of a solution as Hades’ home base full of characters that always have something new to say to you based on your successes, failures, and overall progress, but it’s an admirable effort nonetheless. Housemarque deserves praise for finding a unique and compelling way to incorporate an interesting story in a genre that makes storytelling rather difficult. It makes Selene an interesting protagonist who’s in this weird repeating-but-different scenario along with us, and it’s all way deeper than I would ever expect a roguelike’s story to be.