However, the unpredictable nature of each new run and the additional post-game collectibles are giving me plenty of reasons to return. I managed to fight my way through to the game’s final boss within 15 hours, which felt a little on the short side. How long it takes you to reach the ending will be highly dependent on your skill. I always felt apprehensive about what terrifying beast was lurking in the next dark corner. While it never approaches the brutality of a Souls game, Returnal has a pleasant difficulty curve. However, the second half of the game ramps up the challenge significantly.

In fact, my first death didn’t come until the third boss fight. Returnal warns players from the start that it’s designed to be a challenging experience, but it starts off fairly easy. Well-placed checkpoints and shortcuts minimize the need to endlessly repeat previous biomes, but some areas do get repetitive. While you’ll quickly start to recognize individual rooms, enemy placement is usually different. The randomness helps to make every run feel unique. Each feels distinct, save for one in the back half of the game that seems like a palette swap. The game's six unique biomes are procedurally generated as well. Every few minutes, you’ll try to get your head around a new wrinkle or type of upgrade. Returnal's first few hours feel overwhelming. Instead, it throws all of them at you right from the start. Unfortunately Returnal doesn’t do a great job of slowly introducing you to each system. If it all sounds like a lot to take in, that’s because it is. Then there are gameplay systems such as overloading, which is similar to active reloading in Gears of War, and Adrenaline, which rewards you with upgrades for every three enemies you kill without taking damage. You can cleanse these items with your precious stock of Ether. There are also Artifacts and Malignant Chests, either of which can infect you with a negative malfunction. You can remove Parasites only by completing a randomly generated task, such as killing a set number of enemies or picking up large quantities of Oblities. These are little creatures that attach to your body and offer a positive upgrade, as well as a negative effect.

There are also various types of pickups, such as Parasites. There are two currency types: Ether, as described above, and Oblities, which don’t carry over across runs. There are a lot of interlocking systems at play in Returnal. (Image credit: Sony) Returnal review: Upgrades and difficulty There’s also a secret 'true' ending tied to a set of post-game collectibles, which could fill in the few remaining blanks. The story definitely takes a backseat to the gameplay in Returnal, but the narrative does come to a satisfactory, if slightly rushed, conclusion. But they’re a great change of pace and frequently feel unnerving. These segments are pretty bizarre, and even get a little meta. You’ll also get to unravel more story through first-person sections set within a creepy 20th-century house from Selene’s past, which has inexplicably appeared on the alien world’s surface. There are some surreal cutscenes thrown into the mix. However, even with the narrative being doled out in small snippets, the central yarn is surprisingly gripping. These logs are randomly generated, which results in the story feeling a tad fragmented. The story unfolds mostly through audio logs that you pick up from previously fallen versions of Selene herself. She must also discover why she has become trapped in this never-ending cycle. Every time she dies, she returns to the wreckage of her crashed spaceship and must once again venture out from there to unravel the mystery of Atropos.

Returnal story