Swift movement is vital for players that want to succeed at Returnal, as dodging the enemy's attacks is often more important than landing one's own hits. The game gives players a lot of options when it comes to mobility, including jumping, dashing, grappling, and even the ability to traverse different environments as the player gets further in the story, but one of the most useful movement techniques doesn't show up in any tutorial. A DMJ is a maneuver that Selene can use to traverse great distances in a short amount of time, and can be incredibly useful for both speedrunning and maneuvering during normal battles.
The letters DMJ stand for Dash, Melee, Jump, and alongside being the name for this technique, it also acts as a tutorial for doing so. The reason there is no in game explanation on how to do this is because it likely wasn't an intended feature. Regardless, it can really shave off a lot of time on any Returnal run, making it invaluable for speedrunning the game.
In order to perform a DMJ, players need to activate the inputs for Dash, Melee, and Jump in quick succession. In practice, the dash gives players a burst of speed, while pressing the melee button cancels the actual activation of the dash. From here, players can cancel their melee attack with a jump, causing them to jump forward with all the speed and momentum that a dash provides. Under normal circumstances, the player's momentum trails off at the end of their dash, but that doesn't happen here.
Whie it's entirely possible to do this with the standard control setup, pressing circle, square, and then X in quick succession is somewhat challenging. For this reason, it's highly recommended that players rebind their controls to make this easier. Any setup works, but setting dodge to L1, melee to R1, and keeping jump on X tends to feel comfortable for most players. With this setup, performing the maneuver is as simple as pressing L1, R1, and X almost all at the same time.
In order to do this successfully, players need to be fast enough so that none of the cancelled animations show. At the same time, it's important not to press all the buttons simultaneously, as this will cause only one to register. It sounds a lot harder than it is, but players that master this technique will have new levels of mobility they never thought possible. See the video above (credit to Uprisen Gaming) for a visual guide on how to DMJ in Returnal. Players that like this technique should turn off auto updates, as Housemarque may patch it out in a future update.
Returnal is available now on PS5.