drahkon

My second run ended at the first boss. Here's how it happened: First of all, that run was a lot more difficult than my first. Secondly, I never had more than 50% of my HP, mainly because of one fungus-slinging, teleporting motherfucker who I simply can't deal with I don't know why...I understand its attacks, its movement, its fuckness, but it keeps beating the shit out of me. Anyways, I reached the boss, but needed healing so I decided to explore a little more and thankfully found a healing item. Sadly, it came with the chance of giving you a negative effect. Had no choice, so I picked it up. And lo and behold: My dash cooldown was increased by 2.5 seconds. Those malfunctions can be removed by certain actions like opening a chest, using keys, or in this case melee-kill three enemies. Too bad, so sad...I already explored every nook and cranny that's available to me so I had to face the boss. Probably don't need to tell you that the malfunction proved to be pretty devastating... There it was, my first real encounter with Returnal's risk-reward system. I've talked about it before, but I have to say it again: The DualSense is a game-changer. It's part of the gameplay. Granted, you'd be fine without its function as there are both visual and audio cues, but it adds another layer never seen before. While Astro's Playroom was "just" a showcase for the controller, Returnal actually makes use of it in ways that I've never experienced before. Screw better graphics, screw SSD, you name it...the DualSense is truly next-gen! It's early days still, but I'm calling it now: Housemarque has brought their arcade-gameplay into a 3D-world and it's perfect. It just works. Regarding the rogue-lite elements: there's a reason why they are there: the narrative. It was necessary for Housemarque to build the game like that in order to tell the story. Now, are these elements good? I'd say so. You can't compare them to The Binding of Isaac or Enter the Gungeon where different item/weapon combinations give crazy synergies. In Returnal they work on a more subtle level. Sometimes it's just stats (increased weapon damage, more health, etc.), sometimes it's consumables that can change the dynamic of a fight, sometimes it's a different weapon. The game's focus is gunplay/movement and the rogue-lite system is "simply" a necessary addition. And it works perfectly.

2 hours and 20 minutes. That's the time for my first run. It ended in the second area right after an intense 3-wave battle. Barely survived and then died to some random enemies Here's how I would describe my experience, so far: My first wow moment: And I still got them reflexes: Some impressions: the DualSense is a revelation aside from the cool "gimmicky" stuff like feeling raindrops through the controller, the haptic feedback is actually relevant for gameplay; you can feel where enemies are about to attack from - something that was new to me but I internalized it very quickly because it just makes sense and therefore feels natural adaptive triggers are marvelous in this - while the right one barely has any resistance (it's only used for shooting and reloading), the left one is responsible for either aiming or alt-fire: push to the first resistance and you zoom in a bit; push through and you activate alt-fire mode - it's simple, yet effective and so much fun to do once you get used to it there's so much going on, but you're always in control it's a mixture of great sound-design (3D Audio is incredible) and the aforementioned directional haptic feedback another example: alt-fire cooldown; you can either look at the HUD, listen to audio cues or use L2 and the controller vibrates depending on how much cooldown is left performance is smooth the game's gorgeous music and sound effects are amazing it's creepy but I can handle it story so far has been very mysterious and cryptic, but I guess it'll unfold over several runs enemies are a joy to fight (the first boss was super cool) IT'S FUN! Time to sleep, though, as some responsibilities have come up that need to be dealt with later. But once these are out of my mind I'll get right back to playing Returnal

It's ridiculous how beautiful this is. And it just looks like a blast to play.

We were all way off with our indie game predictions Happy to see a next gen version of the first Subnautica coming our way

As a part of humanity I feel offended

What the fuck did I just watch?

"Go play Returnal!" WELL, SIR, I'D LOVE TO Edit: Good to know there's a day one patch. Downloading now Three hours, my friends. THREE HOURS. AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH. I feel like a kid who wakes up Christmas morning knowing full well that a video game is waiting under the tree

An hour later and the game has been reviewed extremely well Again, I'm sooooo happy for Housemarque Cannot wait to dive in. 9 hours to go...

Just be sure to know: If you decide to never buy it, I will never speak to you again.

Not going to watch any but it seems to be reviewing very well. So happy for Housemarque.

Interesting read: Housemarque's Next Awesome Arcade Action Game Releases Tomorrow!

That stat is just crazy. Especially when you really think about the PS2 games' sales...1.5 billion physical games have been sold back then

Interesting. Very interesting. But don't release it anytime soon...we all know why

I hate that it says "playable in 6 hours and 6 minutes" on my PS5...we all know it's a bug and that it'll reset to a countdown 'til midnight

I told you...there's no other choice.

THE SIIIIIINS NEVER DIE CAN'T WASH THE BLOOD OFF OUR HANDS

Her voice is simply outstanding.

Isn't that a good thing? You always have a million games to play

Ohhhhh Wreckfest? Awesome. Always wanted to try it. Battlefield V I can go without Stranded Deep? No idea. Definitely a rather slow month, especially after all the awesome months recently. I guess with Returnal releasing soon they didn't wanna take away too much attention from it

Preposterous! My hype has been rising non-stop

Food? Bought! Drinks? Bought! Time off from work? Done deal! Am I ready? FUCK YEAH!

PSVita... I'll never let it go I think this is the biggest factor for their success. And it's been clear right from the start that PS5 will go a similar way, thankfully.

Indeed. For me the relation between "pandemic creating an increase demand" and "pandemic causing supply constraints" is particularly interesting. It's obivous that this pandemic has turned more people to gaming, in turn increasing demand, but I wonder if it's more impactful on numbers than supply constraints. That's true. Most of my digital library consists of indie games which don't get physical releases very often. Still, I prefer digital "ownership" (if you can even call it that) over gaming subscriptions. Not to say that I see the value in the latter (I do have a PS+ subscription after all).