Returnal
The exchange rate of Dollar to Yen was overwhelming in the favor of any American with dollars this year. So with the looming news that Playstation Plus was going to increase its price, I bought a year of Japanese Playstation Plus Whatever. Immediately after leaving the convenience store, and immediately after redeeming the card on my Playstation 4 ,I asked myself, “What exactly are you doing?”
I didn’t know.
A month later, the exchange rate would still be good. I decided on February 29th 2024 I would be playing Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth anyways. I grabbed my friend Dylan and we went on the train to a distant BookOff. It had the perfect Playstation 5 for me. It was 5000 yen off because it didn’t have a box or a stand. The stand would be 2100 yen at Bic Camera. Without a box I cradled the system against my chest.
The controller would prove to have stick-drift within a week.
Back at my house we proceeded to watch the console update itself while we dreamed of seeing the future of video games that was already three years old. We wouldn’t see the future, but Dylan would get to stage 4 in ESPRaDe on one credit with a controller he had never touched. That still feels like the future.
We also got to see Returnal. A game made by a studio in spite. They claimed no one wanted the real games like they made, so they got Sony to give them enough money to make a big AAA game that plays exactly like their other games.
In Returnal you – much like the police – enter strange rooms and kill every dog you see. Dogs traditionally do not have guns. These dogs do shoot bullets, but your superior homosapien spacesuit allows the bullets to not touch you, while your bullets rip the dogs apart.
A week later, not because the game was any good, but because of the opposite, Returnal was ruining my life. I was playing it for 4 hours straight every night. I kept wondering ” What is the story of this garbage?”
I proved myself better than compulsion and started watching a longplay on Youtube. You can do that with any game now. I started screaming at the plot revelations. I could not believe a game I had already found stupid was stupider than I had believed. I showed it to friends. They also howled.
At one point the game switches to First Person and you enter a house. The house is uncanningly familiar. It is just the house from PT. You can do that in a game. You can just “do a PT.” I also played PT this year and it remains the best reason to own a Playstation 4 (if you can) that isn’t by Fromsoft or Sega. House Marque however just “did a PT” in their game to see if anyone would notice. I certainly did, though I didn’t exactly find it scary or unsettling.
We watched the second half of the game and could believe how they made a second half of the game. The bosses made us sigh and go “that doesn’t look fun.” By the time the real credits rolled we were screaming “that’s it?”
It’s not worth writing out why I hated Returnal. I had been curious about it as The Real PS5 Game. Within 2 minutes of starting it, I knew I had tricked myself. It took me 10 hours to untrick myself. The shining light is I played it because of Playstation Plus. Streaming Buffet Media Services are going to destroy everything we’ve ever loved about Media. In the meantime they do make it an excellent way to experience video games you have only considered.
NEXT: This Dead City Sound
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