You died. Now get back up and get going. Death is only the beginning…of another run.

Returnal

Maybe I had my fill of Souls-like games in 2021, but Returnal completely passed me by. I was vaguely aware of it from Triple Click, a gaming podcast I listen to, but really only the degree of difficulty involved. I generally don’t go in for horribly difficult games but this time I made an exception.

Returnal follows an astronaut who has crash landed on an unusual planet with less than friendly flora and fauna. Things are not exactly as they seem though, as you stumble across your own corpse almost immediately. Death merely sends you back to your ship to start the expedition over again.

Each area is a “room” and as you proceed through a door the next room appears semi-randomly (as far as I can tell) from a pool of different kinds of rooms. It’s a little Blue Prince-y in that regard, although you don’t have a choice over what kind of room comes next. It might be a corridor/hallway, a shop, your house transported to an alien environment, or an arena with multiple waves of enemies. Learning how best to approach the rooms is crucial to doing well in the game.

As you kill more enemies, your weapon proficiency increases. This in turn allows you to find more and more powerful guns, improving your odds of surviving when you finally take on the boss of the stage/biome. Most of the items you pick up during a run are only there for that run and disappear after you die, but some upgrades are permanent allowing you to improve your character over time. There are some areas you can’t get to until you unlock certain upgrades then die and return to the very beginning.

So don’t fear death in Returnal. It can be frustrating, but it can also lead to a better run with an overall improved outcome. Keep learning. Strategising. Figure out when you should be picking up health, and when you should be leaving it until the end. There’s a lot to it, and although it can be punishing, when you do make progress it is extremely satisfying.

The story is also revealed piecemeal like in Souls games, so who knows what the hell is going on. Aliens. Robots. Doomed sentient life forms. The usual.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

The debut game from Sandfall Interactive, a French developer, is unlike any I have played in recent times. It is a JRPG style adventure game with turn-based party combat and various upgrade systems to get the hang of. Don’t let you put that off if you’re not a Final Fantasy fan, as the fascinating story might be enough to keep you playing.

The story opens to an alternate world where Paris has been devastated by an apocalyptic event, terrorised by a massive figure on the horizon (The Paintress), and left with no choice but to send wave after wave of soldiers (expeditions) to try and stop the chaos. I won’t say much more on the story front because the game does a great job itself, but it is an emotional rollercoaster.

This is a tough game. Thankfully the difficulty can be adjusted at any time, and I bit the bullet and switched to story mode after a few waves of defeat. I was making progress, but it would require near perfection before I could move on to the next hurdle. There’s only so much bludgeonining I can take, so I opted to go down the fun route. That doesn’t mean a complete pass, though. The boss fights are still tough enough, and occasional optional bosses can kill you with a single hit.

The music is singularly beautiful and matches the stunning visuals. The environments in this game are incredible, from luscious meadows to the depths of the sea. The characters are also fascinating and fleshed out. It’s well worth taking the opportunity to talk to them in camp and find out more about their backstories and how they react to the events happening around them.

It’s hard to adequately describe it. This is a game best experienced for yourself. Nothing is quite as it seems as you forge ahead to the Monolith in an attempt to confront the Paintress. Beware the white-haired man…

It Takes Two

This one is a tad easier to describe. It Takes Two follows a family of three in crisis. The parents are in the process of getting a divorce, and their daughter who is not so keen on the idea, buys a book about relationships to try and keep them together. Through some standard magical shenanigans, the parents end up inhabiting dolls their daughter has made (Voodoo-style creations of clay and wood), and have to work together to get back to their human bodies. There is help, of course. The relationship book becomes “Dr Hakim”, the love doctor, and coaches them through the process.

It Takes Two is an aptly named old school split screen platformer built around co-operative puzzles. There is no getting around it, this requires a decent level of teamworking and communication to succeed. Sound easy? There is a degree of challenge in the boss battles which I wasn’t quite expecting, although you only fail if both parties are downed, and there’s an opportunity to resurrect yourself if your partner is still going. This is a game to play with an understanding and patient individual who is reasonably competent (with the occasional controller swapping moments permitted).

It’s a really fun game that channels some of the late 90s/early 2000s platforming fun that hasn’t been the focus of big games in recent years. Definitely worth a look if that sounds like your kind of thing. Hazelight Studios, the developers of It Takes Two, have released a follow up game early last year called Split Fiction. I suspect that will be our next outing after finishing It Takes Two.

Nostalgia

I also stumbled across a little piece of (very local) cinema history. The miniDV tape containing “The Asylum“, the first film I made with Calum for a Northern Ireland Camcorder Club competition back in 2010. Shot in our halls, it was pretty rough and hardly helped by my video camera refusing to transfer HD footage leaving us shooting in standard definition. It was rough, but still one of my favourites to this day. We have learned a lot about film production since 2010. Apparently there’s a thing called a “script” and it is “helpful” if you have one. Who’d’ve thought it?!