Depending on how much you press down on the triggers, you will be able to choose alternate fire modes for your weapons or ADS, which may take some getting used to but will likely become second nature after a few waves of wading through the bullet hells.Īll of this makes Returnal sound like a game pretty much custom-bred in a laboratory just for me, like someone over at Sony has been syringing out bits of my brain while I sleep and then leaving them in a petri dish to see what weirdness grows. Returnal will also make good use of all the PS5’s most innovative features, such as 3D audio (I can sense the synthwave already), haptic feedback, and, perhaps most excitingly of all, adaptive triggers. I can’t think of many games where you play as a middle-aged female astronaut with heterochromia, can you? Returnal PS5

It also appears as if it’s their first game that will put as much as an emphasis on characters and story as it does action, along with an “unconventional” main character who I am excited to discover more about. In Returnal, the camera has been wedged over the shoulder of Selene (a bit of a PlayStation Studios calling card at this point) and the presentation in general is far more cinematic than the likes of Nex Machina and Resogun, which had much more of an indie feel. Basically a 3D roguelike (inject it), Returnal looks like a step up in scale for Housemarque from their previous efforts, which were almost universally top-down or side-scrolling shooters. You will play as Selene, an Astra space scout who finds themselves trapped on an alien planet in an endless loop in which they die again and again while searching for a way off the strange world. Returnal, a sci-fi game from the arcade maestros at Housemarque, is due to release this March exclusively on PS5, and it ticks pretty much every single one of my personal boxes. In amidst all of the returning franchises and shiny open worlds that will no doubt go down in PlayStation history over the next few years, one PS5 game has stood out to me above all the rest, though I worry I might be in the minority - and by some distance, too.

Returnal digital deluxe