Returnal

Returnal sends pilot Selene to a mysterious planet, Atropos, where after every death she wakes up at the crash site and the world around her reshuffles into a new configuration. The effort to decipher the signal that brought her here turns into a repeated journey through six biomes full of alien architecture, overgrown ruins, and twisted creatures. The story arrives in fragments: through audio logs, through first-person sections inside a house that has no business being on an alien planet, and through the gradual revelation of what Selene is actually running from.

The gameplay combines a roguelite structure with a classic arcade-style third-person shooter. Weapons unlock permanently, but their upgraded traits and parasitic artifacts are rebuilt every run, risking a damaged suit or nasty side effects along the way. Enemies spew dense patterns of glowing projectiles, and the only solution is constant movement, precisely dashing through a barrage, and using the alt-fire mode. Boss fights rank among the toughest on the whole console and demand the same pattern memorization as old arcade games. Each run lasts hours, and losing it hurts, because part of your unlocked progress goes with it; this keeps the tension alive even after dozens of attempts.

Technically it's one of the best showcases for the DualSense controller. Adaptive triggers distinguish standard and alternate fire with a single finger, haptics convey rain hitting the helmet and the echo of explosions, and spatial audio helps reveal enemies off-screen. Visually the game combines sharp neon projectiles with a dark, cosmic-horror setting, while the music works more with dread and tension than melody. Critics praised the boldness of releasing an expensive, difficult, and author-driven game as a major exclusive title; criticism targeted the original lack of mid-run saving, which a later update addressed. Today Returnal remains one of the most distinctive and idiosyncratic games of its generation. Few titles sustain such oppressive dread for so long.