It's about time the PS5 starts hitting with brand new exclusives, and not remakes or upgraded expansions. But does Returnal come in big as a brand new IP to add to Sony's stable?

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I quite liked this review! Very well presented and explained!

Thanks! My hope is my review milkshakes bring the subs to the yard

$70 seems a bit too much for a deluxe indie game. Story and characters are a bit missing in action?

I mean, yes, as mentioned in the review: it's a must-buy, but not at a full fat $70 lol

Also, no: I purposely didn't show the house sequences/cinematics too much because each one is basically a spoiler of some sort that explains what's going on, and you know they've been trying to keep the game a mystery for those that haven't played it hahaha!

So far, i have been enjoying your reviews, especially the Oddworld Soulstorm one. You bring up great points.

Decent review, though I don't like it when reviewers make a comparison and don't substantiate it much. I guess some of what you showed vaguely looked like Metroid, but it honestly felt more on the side of just H.R. Giger imitation, and I don't think it's a particularly unique calling card. I was waiting to see a good argument for the Metroid comparison in gameplay and story, but again all I got was a vague mention of exploration and "being on an alien world", even though those elements look to be taken more from the aforementioned Recore (yea I know that has Prime devs, but it doesn't seem very Metroid at all). 

Just constructive criticism, feel free to ignore it. Still, good review.  

Also one thing I really hate about Sony's $70 price tag for their games is the fact that, it's just going to make the argument for short games being a full priced release even worse. We already have people shitting on shorter titles way too much, despite those games often boasting some of the best gameplay around. But now at $70, it's going to be harder for people to justify picking up stuff like Returnal. The fact that a singleplayer game that is 15 hours for the regular ending and 22 hours for the true ending is considered "too short" is frankly ridiculous and a problem with how we value and monetize games. 

How so. 

A lot of singleplayer games that have more content than that have a ridiculous amount of filler or content which is generally of a lower quality, that probably could have just been cut if game developers weren't worried about making the game overly long to begin with. I really can't think of many games that stretch into the 30+ hour range that are super consistent in quality, there are probably a few (for most people, the old school Final Fantasies come to mind) but not many. A lot of the games that have the best gameplay density, complexity in their ideas, and that are consistently fun are actually shorter because they don't have to stretch those ideas incredibly far. 

What I'm saying is that (and when you cut out that specific snippet, this isn't very evident), I understand why people would be upset at paying $70 for a game that's not going to give them dozens upon dozens of hours of content. But I think the fact that a new $70 price tag will make this type of idea even more prevalent, understandable and respectable is sad. Of course, this narrative existed when all new triple A games were $60, too, so to some extent this will always exist as long as new big release games are price matched to an industry-standard. But again, this talking point will become even more normalized, which I think is just a bit sad and kind of stifles discussion on the quality of the games themselves. 

15 hours of... backtracking through empty landscapes and enemies out of the Unreal Engine catalogue? or 15 hours of dense character, story, variety of items, enemies, landscapes? I don't get a feeling for that game yet.

Op, make those reviews longer and it is okay to talk more about settings, characters and early story without spoiling the whole game. Game mechanics should be explained some more, do we get grappling hooks, double jumps, new weapons like Metroid to reach new areas? Is it just 15 hours of shooting enemies until the end? Are there branching paths / open world design or more of a linear map design.