Fans of recent bullet hell titles will feel right at home navigating through the delicate patterns of incoming gunfire and those dozens of hours I spent playing through NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139… prepared me for the spatial awareness to know when to jump, dash, and slash my way through differing enemy attacks. Billed as a third-person shooter slash roguelike, Selene's journey into the depths of Atropos is marked with curtains of bullet fire to evade through. Returnal wouldn't be as memorable of a roguelike if the action didn't live up to Housemarque's pedigree. When a Critical malfunction occurs, an upgrade is lost including a random artifact and health-boosting resin. Unlike the Parasites that offer positive effects in kind, it's in the player's best interest to purge Selene of malfunctions before she acquires three or more, triggering a Critical malfunction. Many of the negative malfunctions offer misfortunes that give Selene troublesome side effects that range from preventing her from Overloading her weapon to taking damage from falls or using keys. Each negative malfunction comes with specific criteria necessary to purge them from Selene's system. These malfunctions are similar to the side effects of a Parasite, albeit without lasting forever. Picking up a Malignant item has a chance of afflicting Selene with a malfunction. Items marked with a hint of malignancy are hinted with a bright purple hue as if to ward off any curious explorers. Sometimes the life as a time-looping astronaut requires the use of mildly contaminated materials. Not everything that Selene picks up is healthy for consumption. Any time that I came across a Parasite that would offer up a 25% chance not to use up a consumable like a health vial, I would always take it no matter the negative perk. Each parasite confers both a positive and negative effect, with the positive effects usually outweighing enough the negatives. To further augment her abilities, Selene can fuse with up to five Parasites at a time. The Astronaut figurine and Child's Watch each offer the unique ability to resurrect Selene on the spot with full health, a perk you'll certainly need in the second half given how little damage Selene can sustain before dying in many combat encounters. Among some of the best artifacts, Selene can pick up are the artifacts unlocked by each time she ventures into the abandoned house in the first and fourth biomes. The artifacts that Selene picks up can drastically change her playstyle as it offers up a chance to customize her strengths in profound ways. The weapons themselves will still roll with random modifiers but only the skills that you've learned will be available to use the skills yet to be unlocked can be learned simply by killing enough enemies with them. Various unlocks persist between runs but these consist of expanding the loot pool with artifacts and consumables and the skills you've unlocked for each weapon. These two arcs are different from one another (consider the second half to be a higher level variant, as Selene begins each run at level 15 proficiency) but can be explored independently once a key component is restored on her crashed ship.Įach run of Returnal begins from the very beginning with only a pistol, Ether that hasn't been cashed in, and the few permanent traversal upgrades that Selene has earned. Selene's story is told through two distinct arcs, one set of three levels that lead up to her discovering the secret of White Shadow and another three levels afterward that follow a different path. Only by pressing onwards and conquering through three distinctly different levels in each loop can Selene find peace and unravel the mysteries that lay beneath the surface of Atropos. Selene is fully aware, as is the player, of how many loops she's undertaken and how fruitless or rewarding previous loops have been. What Selene soon discovers is that death is merely a minor setback in her adventures in this alien world each death sends her back to the moment of the crash with only her wits and pistol in hand. Shot down just before making contact with the planet, Selene finds herself stranded on this alien world with next to no chance of survival. Returnal centers around Selene Vassos, a space-faring scout sent out from Astra to explore an alien planet called Atropos.
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