PS5 exclusive Returnal gets launch trailer

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Some games win you over with the trailer, and Returnal knew it. In late April 2021, PlayStation released the launch trailer for Housemarque’s game, called “The Tide”, on the eve of its PlayStation 5 debut, set for Friday, April 30.

Returnal is a third-person shooter with roguelike and bullet hell elements. The player is Selene Vassos, a pilot for the ASTRA corporation, who disobeys orders to land on the forbidden planet Atropos in pursuit of a mysterious signal, the “White Shadow”. The ship crashes, and she discovers she is trapped in a cycle: with each death, time rewinds to the moment of the crash and the planet changes shape. A nice detail: Selene finds the bodies of her own previous cycles along the way, which helps tell the story in a far from linear fashion.

What stands out is how much the game was designed for the PS5. Housemarque, the Finnish studio with more than four years of work on the project, used the DualSense’s haptic feedback, the Tempest Engine’s 3D audio and the console’s SSD to cut loading times. Enemies fire geometric, colorful bullet patterns reminiscent of arcades, and the original soundtrack is by Bobby Krlic.

The game, which was revealed at the PS5 showcase event in June 2020, was scheduled for March 19, 2021 and was delayed by a month.

What came next

Returnal launched on April 30, 2021 and received generally positive reviews for its visuals, combat and sound, although the difficulty and the lack of a mid-run save system divided opinion. In 2022, it won Best Game at the BAFTA Games Awards. In March 2022, the free Ascension update brought online co-op and the endless mode Sisyphean Tower. The PC version, made by Climax Studios, arrived on February 15, 2023.