One of the many repercussions of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic is that countless video games have suffered delays as developers like Capcom deal with various setbacks. This also affected the launch of Sony and Microsoft's next-generation consoles at the end of 2020, and to this day there are still not a lot of games available to showcase their technical achievements. Housemarque's Returnal is one of the few PS5-exclusive titles to release thus far.
On the whole, many people who played Returnal say they have enjoyed it. The sci-fi roguelike shooter received largely positive reviews from news outlets upon its release this April, citing its atmosphere, clever use of the DualSense controller's adaptive triggers among other PS5 features, and more. However, Returnal was review bombed on aggregate sites like Metacritic shortly thereafter, in-part because of valid criticisms such as its frequent crashes, bugs, and difficulty. While roguelikes are known for being difficult, Returnal received flak for its lack of a robust save feature that forced players to set aside hours for each session. A few months on, saving is still one of Returnal's biggest flaws.
Why Returnal Needs a Better Save Feature
Returnal follows Selene, an astronaut in the distant future who crashes on an alien planet. Hostile creatures roam the land, and Selene finds that she returns to the moment when she first wakes up on the planet each time she dies - a justification for the roguelike mechanics that see players fighting through the same areas with different layouts whenever they attempt to escape.
This format isn't new, and has become a well-worn trend in the modern gaming scene. Many roguelikes are created by indie developers, with popular titles including Supergiant Games' Hades, Edmund McMillen's The Binding of Isaac, and Derek Yu's Spelunky. Returnal is one of the first mainstream AAA releases to take advantage of these genre conventions. In fact, soon after the game released, PlayStation announced it acquired Housemarque to join its lineup of first-party developers.
Where Returnal ran into problems is that there is no option to save one's game in the middle of a run. Each of Returnal's biomes is long, certainly much longer than a game like Hades, because it is also a massive AAA third-person shooter at heart. Although players are likely to die quickly and repeatedly early into their time with Returnal, eventually it becomes a time-consuming challenge to make it through everything on offer without being able to save and quit so they can return later. This was especially problematic early on when the game crashed or the PS5 auto-updated, potentially losing all of a user's progress. Luckily, Housemarque is still releasing Returnal updates that fix issues like trophies not unlocking.
A new save feature has not been added to the game as of this writing, which is a potentially big turn-off for players who can't set aside hours at a time just to attempt one run at the roguelike. That's not for lack of trying, though. Saving has been in the works since May, but Housemarque ran into difficulty implementing a save feature. Nothing has been said of late to indicate it could be coming soon, but it would behoove the developer to add it as quickly as possible.
After all, Returnal is a great game by all accounts, one that has a mysterious story to dissect over untold hours. While other PS5 showcase titles like Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart are contained experiences, one could theoretically keep replaying Returnal forever without seeing every permutation it has to offer. Having a better save feature would make it easier for a larger audience to give the game that time it deserves.
Returnal is available now, exclusively for PlayStation 5.