Returnal
The best thing a roguelike can do is make you feel like a badass. Even when you die—and you will die, no question—Returnal drives home the notion that you could single-handedly take on an armada of malevolent glowing tentacle monsters. You probably just need to be a bit more careful next time. Returnal casts you as a wayward interstellar scout and drops you on a shape-shifting planet. Every time you die, you’re zipped back to the room you start in, all of your gear absent. Then, it’s back to the grind, a mixture of shooting, looting, jumping, dashing, and hook-shotting that feels so good you can’t help but kick off one more run, whether it’s 3:00 p.m. or a.m. And that’s to say nothing of the genuinely brain-tickling things it does with the fancy DualSense controller.
Playable On: PS5
Rough Average Playtime: 28 hours
