I finally finished Returnal for the 1st time. What a great game, what a journey on Atropos !
I am a casual gamer but I love challenging games (and I hate easy games). I am not immune against frustration, I just deal with it and I always comeback wiser, stronger. I avoided all spoilers as much as I could so each victory against enemies, bosses was duly earned!
IMHO, Returnal's intro is a work of art : it is not perfect (there seems to be some fps drops at some points), but the way they mixed the visuals, the mysterious soundtrack and the haptic feedback is something that I greatly, greatly appreciated. I want more intros like this.
Returnal cemented my love for the PS5 controller. Playing regular games with a "dead" controller is an experience that I can easily forego. I have always been eager for more feedback from video games. When I was interested in military flight sims, I used to own a Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 Joystick. That was decades ago...
It is now an habit, but the sound quality and sound design in PS5 games outclasses all my previous gaming experiences. The audio chip in my PC's motherboard and regular PC games in my backlog simply cannot match the experiences I have with the PS5. I purchased a licence for Dolby Atmos for headphones last year but I am still waiting for a truly great audio experience on my PC. Maybe Ori and the Blind Forest, or Cyberpunk, will surprise me.
3D audio is another feature that shines in Returnal. The game prioritizes sounds outside of the field of view, so it is incredibly useful to find the targets which frees the chests locked behind bars : half press L2 and listen : left/up, right/behind, etc. When I received my PS5, I chose the default HRTF profile simply because I could not figure out which one was the best for me and it has given me excellent results so far.
What makes Returnal such a great game is that in each run the player has to make many choices with the resources, the weapons, the "infected" items, the keys, the dead scouts, the exploration. Some choices pay back immensely and sometimes it back fires but it is still not enough to stop a good run.
It was my first Housemarque game : they now have a new fan.