Playstation Returnal

[obredaan]

Totally agree. No matter how difficult or challenging you want to make your game, you need to include some kind of save or checkpoint mechanic. At the very least, it's about respecting the player's time.

Right now, for some strange reason, I got sucked back into doing another run through of Demon's Souls Remake. Because of DSR, I am now more open to challenging "death loop" type games like Returnal. HOWEVER, as hard, challenging, and sometimes frustrating Demon's Souls can be, I can only imagine how infuriated I would feel if there were no checkpoint and save mechanics. If, every time I died, I lost not only my soul points (experience and currency) but ALL my weapons, items, etc. AND I hard to start over from the beginning of the world, or even the beginning of the game, each time I died.

If Demon's Souls had been designed like that, I would likely have quit and given up on the game very early on. IMO, that goes beyond challenging and into frustrating territory. So, I'm glad Demon's Souls was difficult and challenging but still had save and checkpoint mechanics built in.

Hearing that Returnal lacks those has turned me off on the game, no matter how interested I was in it. If I really want to subject myself to that kind of torture experience playing a game, I will wait until it goes on sale for a good price like $40. $70 is way too high for that kind of punishing game experience.

My biggest issue with this game is the fact that if the game crashes or you lose electricity while playing, the game punishes you and you lose everything and have to start from the beginning. I lost interest when my game crashed after nearly 4 hours only to see all that time and effort just wiped away for no reason. Its a beautiful looking game and the combat is fantastic but the devs made a game that 90% of gamers will never be able to complete no matter how hard they try to get gud.

I'm sure one of the first mods that will be released for this game on PC is a proper save function.

 

[metaphysician]

Eh, roguelikes are fine, *if* they are designed properly. You lose "everything" in Hades when you die, and its still one of the GOATs. The key problem with Returnal, at least once they actually patched in a proper save-and-restore, is that its really too long for that kind of gameplay loop. Restarting when a full loop takes 20-30 minutes tops, is a different story from restarting when a full loop can take upward of 4 hours.

Basically, Returnal probably needed either a smaller and shorter world; or more metaprogression so that a four hour loop is a "Making a run at the endgame from a fresh save" playtime, with the expectation that a properly "leveled" player can complete the thing much more quickly.

 

[Iceman]

My biggest issue with this game is the fact that if the game crashes or you lose electricity while playing, the game punishes you and you lose everything and have to start from the beginning. I lost interest when my game crashed after nearly 4 hours only to see all that time and effort just wiped away for no reason. Its a beautiful looking game and the combat is fantastic but the devs made a game that 90% of gamers will never be able to complete no matter how hard they try to get gud.

I'm sure one of the first mods that will be released for this game on PC is a proper save function.

I’m not the biggest fan of this type of gameplay. I don’t mind difficult games but those with infrequent checkpoints or save opportunities aren’t really my thing.

 

[theastsunnn]

The hardest game I can remember playing in some time. It’s very fun though. I’ve put in about 8 hours and still can’t beat the first boss. Got to keep grinding