#Returnal crashing full#

A simpler example of Returnal’s imbalance is how the game handles keys.Ītropian Keys are scant resources in Returnal you may only find five in an entire run, so it’s incredibly important to use them wisely. Weapons can come down to personal preference, though. Returnal has balance issues at present, with some guns and loadouts performing wildly better than others. Housemarque has said that it is listening to players’ feedback carefully, but a save system is really just the start of expectations for a full-priced roguelike. Players have way more patience with a game that’s openly in the middle of development - less so if they’ve just tossed down $70, only to have their hard work vanish before their eyes. I’m not saying that implementing a save system is easy, but it’s definitely the sort of thing that would have come up very early in the feedback process had Housemarque opted for the early access route with Returnal. Having some sort of backup “shadow” save at the beginning of each area that deletes itself when you’ve reloaded from that point would have provided a nice backstop against possible bugs and crashes. Over the course of 25 hours, that doesn’t seem so bad, but considering Returnal’s punishing difficulty, both of those crashes - which lost me an hour or more of progress - nearly caused me to put the game down and never play it again. Bugs and hard crashes have resulted in runs that are prematurely ruined. But runs in Returnal can take three hours, and like many newly released titles, the game has a penchant to, well, fuck up from time to time. Given that Returnal is a roguelike, no one should be asking for multiple save slots, or the ability to reload from the last checkpoint. The one that’s gotten the most attention is the lack of a midrun saving system. Image: Housemarque/Sony Interactive Entertainment via Polygon While the art design and minute-to-minute action have been praised - no shock, given Housemarque’s pedigree - there are plenty of kinks in Returnal that an early access phase might have knocked out.

#Returnal crashing full#

Returnal developer Housemarque went another way, opting to drop the full game at once, with mixed results. In Hades’ case, those updates allowed a game to grow from an extremely good action roguelike into Polygon’s game of the year in 2020. The makers of games like Nuclear Throne and Hades executed on this strategy, entirely in the public eye, with early access releases followed by countless updates. Once the core gameplay loop is designed, it’s comparatively easy to add new content or tweak variables to improve the experience for players. The reason roguelikes have become so popular with indie developers is that they scale well for smaller teams. But if Returnal hopes to stand the test of time against classics like The Binding of Isaac, Spelunky, and Hades, its obligation to its players has only just begun. Despite the popularity of roguelikes spiking in the last decade, there’s never been a full-priced, big-budget release for the genre until now. Returnal’s arrival on PlayStation 5 last week was a major milestone.