Returnal is, by d🧸esign, a brutally difficult game. It warns of this when you first start. A pop-up message during the intro explains it is “intended to be a challenging experience” - possibly one of gaming’s greatest understatements. The PC port, just released on Steam and EGS this week, retains that original warning, but it’s not as true as it once was. Unrestrained by the limitations of the DualSense controller, I’ve managed to make short work of Returnal’s first three zones. Maxed out on adrenaline and impossible to hit, Iไ’ve blazed a bloody trail from one boss to the next in a stunning display that perverts everything Returnal is supposed to be about. This game clearly was not made with mouse and keyboard in mind, and as much fun as I’m having revisiting one of my favorite games, I know this ceaseless forward progress is detrimental to the experience I’m meant to be having.
When I finished my first run through the overgrown ruins and took down Phrike on the first try, I figured it was a fluke. It’s been more than a year since I played Returnal on PS5 and, ꦡlike most people, I struggled the entire way, pushed through the despair, and after dozens, perhaps hundreds of attempts, finally completed it. But my second playthrough on PC is a totally different story. The precision of mouse and keyboard controls transformed Returnal from a desperate fig🦩ht for survival into a high-energy slaughterfest. I cleanly took down Phrike, then cleared Ixiom and Nemesis, all in one go.
After Nemesis, I believed I was unstoppable. The momentum I gained from running three consecutive zones provided me with an absurdly high weapon proficiency and a massive collection of artifacts. I was a powerhouse, and for a fleeting moment I re🧸ally thought I was going to one-shot the entire game. I’m decent at games but I’m not good enough to play competitively - yet herꦡe I was on the cusp of speedrunning a game I’ve only played once more than a year ago. Returnal - Fresh Any% deathless. But my run ended in the echoing ruins thanks to laser beam bullshit. Evidently I’m not The Guy, and I never was. Still, I successfully one-shot half of Returnal completely by accident, and if I can do it, lots of other PC players can too.
I can’t stress enough how much this isn’t how it’s meant to be played. The narrative of Returnal is inextricably linked to the emotional experience that failure creates. Not only do you miss almost all of the story beats and cutscenes if you one-shot the game, but you lose the path🌃os - you lose what makes it so special. You will never ‘get’ Returnal if you don’t experience it yourself, the right way, and blazing through it is unequivocally the wrong way.
On the other hand, there is a part of Returnal you are meant to blaze through, and M+KB is a godsend. The Tower of Sisyphus, Returnal’s roguelike-within-a-roguelike endless horde DLC, is non-stop battle mode where players com💙pete for leaderboard dominance. Its narrative elements are strong, but you’re not playing the game wrong by ascending 100 floors at once - the whole point is to survive as long as you can. I’ve been playing a lot of Tower on PC and I’m having way more fun pushing my high score now that I can use mouse and keyboard.
My experience won’t apply to everyone. I know there🌼 are Call of Duty kids out there that can snipe a grasshopper from a hang glider on a PlayStation controller. Lifelong console players often have a harder time using M+KB than controllers, even for shooters. If Returnal is still hard on PC even on M+KB, don’t feel bad - that’s how it’s supposed to be. On the other hand, if you’re tearing through it and wondering why everyone♔ talked about how hard it was, I urge you to switch to controller. I don’t advocate for making things harder just for the sake of it, but in Returnal’s case, it’s kind of the whole point.