Returnal, the PS5 debut from Sony’s much-lauded studio, Housemarque, might be one of the weirdest, most thrilling, and continually engaging examples of the genre yet.
Our protagonist, Selene, crash-lands on a mysterious alien (make that capital A,
Alien) planet. She’s searching for something called the White Shadow, one of many Proper Nouns sprinkled in for some trademarked narrative intrigue. When Selene realizes her ship is damaged beyond repair, she wanders off into the muggy, rain-soaked forest in search of the source of the signal.
Within three, count-em, three seconds of controller-to-character interaction, I exclaimed, “Man! That feels good!” And it does, dear reader, feel good. Something about 60 frames per second combined with Sony’s deliciously integrated DualSense really makes