PS5 owners are now able to get their hands on yet another exclusive for Sony’s latest console. Developed by Housemarque — the talented team behind Resogun, Nex Machina, and Matterfall — Returnal marks a bit of a departure from the familiar twin-stick arcade shooter genre the team has perfected in its previous releases. Returnal is a roguelite, third-person sci-fi shooter, complete with stunning particle effects and a punishing level of difficulty, with ample time clearly spent ensuring it makes noticeable, significant use of the PS5’s features.
In typical Sony fashion, Returnal boasts many of those AAA production qualities we’ve come to expect from titles published by the company. Qualities that just go to enhance Selene’s time traversing Atropos, making it all the more immersive. To get you suitably hyped ahead of getting your hands on the game, we’re going to quickly run you through every way Returnal makes use of the PS5’s features to make your time on Atropos as memorable as possible.
Great Use of Adaptive Triggers
One of the DualSense’s headline features is also one of the most noticeable in Returnal. Rather than the triggers realistically clacking around underneath your fingers with each shot fired, the left trigger uses the adaptive resistance to enable you to Aim Down Sights and switch to your weapon’s alternate firing mode depending on how much pressure you apply.
If you want to aim down your weapon’s sights to unleash a barrage of fire onto an enemy’s weak spot, then you press the left trigger down halfway. At this point, you feel a distinctive bit of resistance. Press the trigger all the way down and you’ll clunk your weapon into its alternate fire mode.
It’s one of the most intuitive uses of the PS5’s adaptive triggers feature so far, and really comes into its own when the action in Returnal gets hectic on-screen. You don’t need to lift your finger off the trigger between peppering an alien in the face with your carbine’s regular shots and unleashing a more powerful blast with the alternate fire mode.
It’s seamless and may sound a little finnicky, but once you’ve got the DualSense in your hands and enemies are coming at you thick and fast, it becomes second nature.
Housemarque have got just the right amount of resistance on the adaptive trigger for this to work as desired, and while you can turn it off if it really doesn’t jive with you, we haven’t found that to be the case.
Haptic Feedback
It should probably come as no surprise that alongside making use of the DualSense’s adaptive triggers, Housemarque also ensured that the haptic motors inside the controller were also put to good use in Returnal, too.
Haptic feedback is essentially a far more accurate and precise-feeling type of vibration over the usual motors you’d find at work in a DualShock 4 or Xbox controller. It’s the same tech that Nintendo uses in its Joy-Con to make it feel like there are multiple, individual balls rattling around inside the controller with distinct strong ‘taps’, or how you felt you were shaking around a bunch of Astro’s robo friends in the PS5 tech demo, Astro’s Playroom.
In Returnal, the PS5’s haptic feedback feature is used in a number of subtle ways. It tinkles with the pattering of rain, and bumps and buzzes with elongated notes as you feel Selene’s ship crash-landing in the opening cinematic. It enhances the immersion of the game without distracting you from what’s going on on-screen.
You’re just feeling what’s happening on-screen, and it really does add to the experience, just as feeling Astro’s pitter pattering footsteps on sand did in Astro’s Playroom. It really has to be experienced to be truly appreciated, but if you were looking for another showcase of the DualSense’s capabilities, Returnal is most certainly it.
4K 60FPS
Let’s get one of the more obvious ones out of the way. Returnal looks great and its performance is near-perfectly locked at 60FPS. It can very occasionally deviate from this when the action on-screen is ratcheted up, but it’s barely noticeable to the point the game still feels incredibly satisfying to play.
But it’s not just the fact that Returnal’s running in a dynamic 4K resolution, it’s the immense particle effects that Housemarque’s well-renowned for that illuminate the screen in spectacular fashion. They make those moments of absolute bullet hell an absolute delight to behold.
It also uses ray-traced lighting effects to make every flash of light from your weapon’s muzzle and explosion illuminate Atropos’ dynamic environment in spectacular fashion. If you’ve got an OLED TV, you’re going to be in for a real treat, let’s just put it that way.
Returnal’s visuals aren’t going to give Demon’s Souls a run for its money, but it certainly looks better than most games you probably played last-gen, and given the PS5’s been out for just over six months at this point, it’s certainly a promising sign of things to come in terms of features. I mean, just look at the incredible level of detail in Selene’s suit in the screenshot above.
3D Spatial Audio
Making Returnal feel all the more cinematic is the use of 3D Spatial Audio effects, as long as you’ve got a PS5 headset compatible with the technology, such as the PlayStation Pulse Headset, or the Turtle Beach Stealth 600 Gen 2.
This isn’t just a fancy way of saying surround sound, it’s an evolution of that technology. 3D Spatial Audio allows you to hear sounds in the way you’d imagine them to sound based on your surroundings.
It takes into account the environment and position of sounds around you to engulf your ears in a cacophony of explosions, whirs, gurgles, and blasts. It takes the immersion to the next level and really makes you feel like you’re exploring and experiencing Atropos with Selene, rather than merely watching her do so through a screen.
Super Fast Load Times
The cherry on top of the generously iced cake that is Returnal is its fantastic use of the PS5’s super-fast SSD and advanced I/O architecture. While load times on both the PS5 and Xbox Series X are significantly shorter than they were on last-gen consoles, they feel near non-existent in Returnal.
What makes it all the more satisfying is that Housemarque’s almost emphasized where load times would typically be if the game was running on a standard hard-drive. Doors leading into another area spin to life and unlock in a rapid, intricate fashion that never gets old to watch, and the seamless nature between cutscenes and gameplay ensures you’re always sat forward ready and waiting to dive back into the action. Warp points zip you from one spot to the other with not even a hiccup of loading in sight, and you’ll navigate between each of Returnal’s biomes with similar smoothness.
You’d think we’d have gotten used to SSD load times by now, but Returnal manages to make them all the more impressive. Returnal is out now on PS5 and can be bought digitally from the PlayStation Store.
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