I don’t have a long track record of playing third person shooters. Something about them never jived with me, and I can’t say first person shooters have held my attention for too long either. Heck, I can’t even explain it, but after The Last of Us, nothing really scratched the itch for me – God of War (2016) felt so sluggish, for instance.

I’d pretty much written off the entire genre of third person shooters, and shooters in general on consoles took a backseat, with the exception of Battlefield 2042 which was fun to play for 100 hours or so, until I stumbled upon Returnal, courtesy of my PS+ subscription.

I can’t get enough of this game and I’m surprised (but also not surprised) that I’ve amassed 24 hours of gameplay inside of week enjoying the hell out of this roguelike.

In short, there are a bunch of biomes (6 to be exact), that you run and gun your way through, collecting new weapons with unlockable abilities, artifacts that enhance your weapon or add bonuses to a variety of stats, avenging previously fallen comrades, so on and so fourth. If you’ve played games along the line of, say, Dead Cells or Hades, you already know the deal here. You start a new run (or a ‘cycle’ to use Returnal’s vernacular), you get as far as you can, you try to unlock some permanent abilities or get past that next boss, then you get killed out of nowhere, and start all over again.

Like with most games categorized as roguelikes, there are plenty of Returnal-specific items that you collect, some carry over across cycles, some don’t, but you figure it out fairly quickly. This is not to say the game makes anything obvious at all – there is an in-game glossary that you fill out simply by playing and exploring, but you’re never really told anything, just given a general direction, some exposition delivered via cutscenes, and the rest you can figure out yourself.

What really shines in Returnal that grabbed my attention right away is threefold: the speed of the game is cranked the f up. You move fast, you zip around and dodge quickly, the whole experience feels great to play, being so dialed in. When you really get going on a monster-murdering spree, the game quickly turns into a three-dimensional bullet hell of epic proportions, and if you can somehow manage to successfully read your enemies and dodge everything the vicious environment has to throw at you, you’re left immensely satisfied. This particular attribute of Returnal is what drew me in to the Ys franchise.

Secondly, there isn’t a lot of talking in this game. Nothing, and I mean nothing puts me off to a game like endless cutscenes and exposition. I’m really not a story guy, particularly as I’ve gotten older, so the “get in and kill stuff” resonates with me and doesn’t ever make me feel like I’m missing out on playing the game and instead watching a movie. The information is absolutely there if you want it, however, so those who enjoy the story will slowly unravel the mystery, and those who like to get in fast will be very satisfied.

Thirdly, the integration with the DualSense controller should be considered the gold standard of what is expected for PS5 games. Sounds echo through your ears and down to your hands, and they didn’t skimp on anything as far as the haptic feedback is concerned – every little thing you do has some sort of vibration pattern that matches the given context. This may seem trivial but it adds tremendously to the experience considering the controller is your only physical to this game, and the 3D sound provided by my Sony INZONE H9 headphones (not sponsored – they are excellent headphones for the PS5 and beat the snot out of the Pulse 3Ds) is beautiful and atmospheric, as one would expect from a game as graphically detailed as Returnal.

There’s also the risk versus reward that is arguably the core focus of the game. Some pickups will be cursed and labeled as “malignant”, giving you a rough estimate (ie. “Moderate”, “High”, or “Very High”) of your chances of suffering a malfunction should you choose to take a gamble and pick up the item. Malfunctions are random (along with most everything else in the game), and can be fairly detrimental (damage drops 50% while mid-air) to being downright enraging (suffer fall damage). But this mechanic of taking small to larges gambles in order to better your situation has to be the most addicting gameplay element I’ve encountered in years.

I’ve had runs that started off excellent; I nabbed some great weapons, some health restore pickups, a few upgrades to my max health (called Integrity in Returnal-lingo), a few artifact pickups that buffed my damage and healing percentages, you name it. I was into a cycle for about an hour and 30 minutes (which absolutely breezed by, like most time spent playing this game), so I would have preferred it not to collapse completely.

However…

I made a series of bad gambling decisions driven by over-confidence, and picked up some brutal malfunctions while trying to open malignant chests. One of these was “Take damage while picking up items”, which is arguably the worst problem to have, as you are constantly picking up items (including health!). The second was “Greatly increased melee and dash cooldowns” which makes dodging around this bullet hell as difficult as one would imagine. Lastly, and my most loathed malfunction ever, was “Enemies drop pools of acid”, so every time I managed to kill anything, enemies left pools of acid all over the floor that I would run into later.

It was a nightmare, and I was dead within minutes.

Returnal is definitely what I would consider a difficult game, but the fact that you do have some control over the difficulty via your risk taking makes it much more manageable than traditionally difficult games like those in the Soulsbourne series.

The good news is that it does have cooperative play, and the playerbase (as they are all on PS5) tends to have their mics turned on, and so it allows for the gameplay loop (not to mention information sharing) to be slightly less insane. Having a buddy to revive you once you die (and there is no limit to how long you stay incapacitated) almost forces you to play more risky, but that’s the fun of Returnal. You can experiment with different weapons and artifacts, and never really commit to anything permanently. If you don’t like your setup, or you get stuck, just restart.

If you’re a PS+ Extra member, do yourself a favor and check out this incredible game. If you’re anything like me, you’ll have a blast, get wrecked a few dozen times, and still keep coming back for more.