The Shining in Space
Many games were shown off at Sony’s PlayStation 5 event on Thursday. However, Returnal was one of the new titles that stood out from the crowd. Not a lot of details are available at this time, but the trailer that was shown off certainly has people talking. At first glance, Returnal appears to be a game that is centered around both horror and action. Similar to games like Dead Space, the protagonist is isolated in a sci-fi hellscape that they must try to escape from, or at the very least survive.
It does not look like that Returnal will be leaning too heavily on cheap tricks like jump scares in order to captivate the player. If there was a genre of “psychological thriller” for video games, then Returnal would undoubtedly fall into that category based on what is shown. Made by the science fiction obsessed developer’s Housemarque, Returnal looks as though it will provide players with a truly one of a kind experience. Combing the best elements of third-person shooters and story-based horror games, the player will take control of an astronaut of sorts and be forced to try and survive on a harsh and unforgiving planet that she has had the misfortune of crashing on.
According to the developers themselves, the combat is very positional based. This will not be a mindless “guns’o blazing’ shoot’em up adventure. As stated earlier, there is still a ton of information that will be arriving later on this year but don’t let Returnal slip under your radar this Fall. We could have a sleeper hit on our hands. PlayStation has had massive success with pumping out high-quality exclusives this generation. If Thursday’s live event was anything to go off of, there should be no reason to expect anything less this time around.
Returnal will be only available on the PS5.