Returnal is one of the best games I’ve played that I didn’t finish. It was amazing to see Housemarque, a studio I had been following since Super Stardust HD, level up from more arcade-style shooters to a big-budget, AAA, third-person shooter. The combination of surreal sci-fi storytelling and exhilarating gunplay resonated with me, but I just found the structure to be far too punishing.
As a roguelike with no substantial metaprogression, it made pushing through each loop extremely challenging, especially when runs could run for several hours. It felt far too time-consuming to push through early biomes to get a shot at a later level, needing to spend over two hours to get another chance to learn a boss’s pattern. The arcade-y shooter gameplay was perfect, but the loop didn’t fully work for me, pushing me away from a game I loved.
Saros, Housemarque’s follow-up to Returnal, bears a lot of resemblance to its predecessor gameplay-wise, but it stands on its own narratively. It also learns a lot of lessons from Returnal, keeping the roguelike structure but making helpful concessions to make it more accessible, without sanding off any of the edges on its tough-as-nails, bullet-hell-like gameplay.
It’s definitely still not a game for everyone; the challenge level is a lot higher than your standard AAA first-party Sony game, but those who are looking for a game to test their shooter mettle will be in for a treat.
The Mystery of Carcosa and the Cosmic King in Yellow Influence
At the beginning of the game, you’re given vague notions of what’s been going on. You play Arjun Devraj, the Enforcer of Echelon IV, a ship sent to the planet of Carcosa by the Soltari corporation to follow up on the three previous colony ships that they have lost contact with. Instead of finding the colonists, they find a shifting world overrun with dangerous creatures.
On top of that, there’s something strange calling to them in the back of their mind. The air of mystery is apparent right from the beginning, with Devraj inexplicably returning from the dead, and the only way to solve it is to venture out into the hostile environment for clues to what happened and what is happening.
While Returnal, which had only one character, was a very isolating game, Saros has a whole cast that you chat with in your base. They all have different roles in the Soltari mission, a mission that’s meant to help the corporation extract a valuable energy resource called Lucenite from Carcosa. The nuanced performances from each of the voice actors help bring these characters to life as their sanity slowly unravels bit by bit. Rahul Kohli, of “Midnight Mass” and other Mike Flanagan works, is the standout as Arjun, creating a complex character with hidden motivations that are slowly revealed.
You may recognize the name Carcosa, which is associated with the Robert W. Chambers’ book of short stories titled The King in Yellow. He originally borrowed the name from an Ambrose Bierce short story called An Inhabitant of Carcosa, but the name and the titular King in Yellow went on to be referenced by H.P. Lovecraft and incorporated into the larger Cthulhu Mythos that many authors have added to since. Allusions to the King in Yellow and Carcosa have popped up in TV shows like “True Detective” season 1 and video games like Signalis.
Cthulhu has definitely hit a cultural saturation point in the past several years, so I’m glad to see something fresh have a chance to shine, even if it’s fairly functionally similar. The importance of the color yellow gives Saros an interesting visual motif to set itself apart, so the Carcosa name is definitely more than just an Easter Egg-style allusion to the work.
As I mentioned before, there’s a roguelike core to the structure of Saros, but it’s more flexible with that definition than its predecessor. There are several interlinked biomes that you’ll explore, but instead of having to start over at square one each time you die, you can pick which of the discovered areas you’d like to start in. It immediately makes the game feel more accessible, keeping your run time for a single section down to about thirty minutes, a reasonable length compared to the multiple hours you need to play continuously in Returnal.
Saros’ Roguelike Progression Feels More Rewarding
During each of your runs, you’ll start out at a base level and acquire various power-ups as you progress. Oftentimes, you’ll be given options of which to choose, allowing you to build a playstyle in your run that is catered to your needs. As you progress further in the game, the options expand, particularly for your weapons, to ensure that the game doesn’t feel stale as you run through it over and over again. I did find that later weapons were a bit more complicated in ways that I didn’t find interesting, which led to me falling back on the weapons I’d been using since the beginning rather than taking the time to learn something new, but I appreciated that fresh options were being presented.
Even though they provide you with a nice power curve throughout, the power-ups themselves aren’t always the most interesting. If there wasn’t a choice, I was often picking them up without reading them, since I likely wouldn’t be changing my tactics all that much in play. The most substantial choice you make is when presented with a new weapon. In addition to your weapon type, which ranges from pistols to rifles to crossbows, they also have a power level, so choosing between a gun you’re familiar with and a gun with a higher level is going to come up a lot.
I was a huge fan of the Horde Shotgun, and it seemed like when I had one, I would rarely run across a stronger one, meaning I either had to stick with a numerically weaker weapon or switch to one I didn’t care for as much. While I understand this is meant to be a meaningful choice, I wish they had found different ways to allow you to upgrade your weapon instead of just swapping it out. For me, the weapon felt like something I would like to pick at the start of the run, like in Hades, then upgrade with different modifiers as I go, rather than constantly changing to new weapons as they are presented to me. I can’t tell if this is a problem with the game or a problem with how I played it, but it’s something I think Housemarque could rethink in future titles.
In addition to your advancement during a run, you can now upgrade yourself at your home base after you die. Using Lucenite collected from defeated enemies, you’ll enhance three core stats, as well as purchase various modifiers that will make you more capable over time. While many debate whether this should be allowed in a roguelike, I think it’s a welcome addition that gives you a meaningful power curve that isn’t as dependent on what randomly shows up for you mid-run. Not only does it give you more agency for your improvements, but it also gives you a satisfying feeling as you get better in both stats and skills.
Saros Features Some of the Best Shooter Combat on PS5
None of this would mean anything if the combat wasn’t up to snuff, but I’m happy to report that Saros has a game feel unmatched by other shooters. You feel like a nimble dealer of death, fighting overwhelming odds with a combination of quick, precise movement and rock solid shooting mechanics. Each of the weapons has an alternate fire, which can be activated by pressing the left trigger down halfway.
It can take a bit to get used to, but since this is a PlayStation 5 exclusive, it takes full advantage of the adaptive resistance to let you know where that alt-fire point is. Saros also perfectly uses the haptics of the Dualsense to emphasize every shotgun blast and explosion to make you feel the chaos that you’re embroiled in.
Aside from just feeling great, there are some nuances to action that elevate it above your standard shooter fare. As enemies bear down on you, the screen will fill up with their multicolored projectiles, and those colors aren’t just for visual spectacle. Devraj has access to a shield that can be brought up for a limited time, and that shield can be used to absorb blue projectiles, which charges your power meter that can be used by a special weapon that’s activated by fully pulling the left trigger. The extremely responsive dodge already gives you tools to deal with the bullet hell patterns created by your opponents, but having to make the split-second decision of “dodge or shield” makes for compelling moment-to-moment gameplay.
Other projectiles will be yellow, which will give you corruption, even if you block them with your shield. This lowers your maximum health, but it can be cleared when you use your power weapon. Now you have a rhythm of “get corruption, absorb blue projectiles, clear corruption,” on top of the already challenging task of just surviving. In addition, there are red projectiles, which cannot be dodged or shielded. You will eventually be given the ability to parry them back at enemies, but Saros wisely waits to introduce that mechanic and others until later in the game, so as not to overwhelm you.
With the amount of visual information on screen and the speed at which you react to it, it seems like it should be impossible to play, but Saros is the ultimate flowstate game, allowing you to truly be in the zone when you finally find your rhythm. At times it felt like I was completely in sync with the game, reacting to things without having to think about it. Much like Cypher talking about how he sees the Matrix, I don’t see blue, yellow, or red projectiles; I just see block, dodge, and parry. It all felt like natural reflexes by the end, allowing me to get fully lost in the gorgeous spectacle of visual effects that flooded the screen without stumbling over the gameplay.
The enemies behind these projectile patterns are also a feast for the eyes, each with their own distinct look to set them apart. With the speed of the game, you need to be able to scan the arena quickly to prioritize targets, and strong visual design allows you to do that with ease. There are some issues with them standing out from the environment on occasion, but several UI elements keep them from getting lost. You can really see the cosmic horror influence in their aesthetic, combining weird tentacle monsters with strange Geiger-esque machinery, making for some nightmarish creatures for you to blast your way through.
Exploration, Platforming, and Risk-Reward Choices
Biomes are randomized, mixing combat arenas and platforming challenges that will test your reflexes. For being procedurally generated, I was always astonished by how these levels felt so perfectly paced, knowing exactly when to give you high-intensity encounters and when to give your trigger finger a bit of a break with exploration that requires you to navigate between patterns of beams and orbs while making precise jumps to proceed. By doing a quick scan of the environment, your path forward is clearly labelled, as are any side paths for you to explore, preventing you from ever losing forward momentum on your run.
There’s definitely a risk-reward calculus you need to do when considering these side paths, as the amount of health you could lose might not be worth what you find, and this choice always felt meaningful to make.
One thing I love about the spaces you explore is the sense of visual wonder. Not only are they beautifully rendered combinations of natural, architectural, and mechanical settings, but the sense of scale in them is awe-inspiring. On top of that, there are tons of visual effects that add to the splendor, with ashes floating through the air and tentacles reaching out from the walls. This makes so much of the traversal feel truly exciting, as you scale colossal structures with daring leaps. Eventually, you get a grappling hook that allows you to travel even faster, zipping across these massive arenas quicker than ever before.
The visual motif of the eclipse is one that’s important to the overall narrative of Saros, but there’s also a mechanical level to it. There will be specific altars that you come across that will allow you to activate an eclipse, which changes the world before you in meaningful ways. Not only are the visuals warped to be darker and more twisted, but the enemies become harder, more frequently using the corrupting yellow projectiles to up the challenge. This won’t always be required, though oftentimes there will be a gate that won’t open unless it’s activated, so to reward you for bringing the eclipse, you’ll be given more Lucenite. It’s yet another way to push your luck that is just as likely to end up hurting or harming you.
Even with the change in structure from Returnal, Saros definitely still challenges with its relentless bullet hell gameplay. In order to help mitigate this, you eventually unlock Carcosan Modifiers, options that allow you to very specifically adjust the difficulty of the game. Rather than have just Easy-Medium-Hard, you can go in and tweak specific things like damage received or damage dealt, among many other things. You can also tweak things in the opposite direction if you’d like to push yourself for a more difficult time.
Each of these adjustments has a positive or negative value, and you need to keep within a certain range to be able to lock in the changes, preventing you from completely nerfing the game. I played around with this in the later areas when things got really tough, and even with adjustments, I don’t feel like I ever got to the point where the challenge level was completely trivialized. To me, this is the best type of difficulty system, allowing you to change things that specifically trip you up or to challenge yourself in ways you think you can deal with.
A Brutal but Rewarding Cosmic Horror Shooter
From what I remember, there were reports shortly after the release of Returnal that showed only 21% of people had completed the final boss, which is a fairly low number for a game of its size. I’m very happy these difficulty options were added to Saros, as the narrative is worth digging into. In addition to text and audio logs you find while exploring, there are some really clever dreamlike flashback sequences later in the game that help fill in the backstory, adding interesting twists to the surface narrative that recontextualize earlier ideas.
The more I learned about what happened to Echelon I-III and Devraj himself, the more drive I had to push forward and see it through to the end. There’s even a neat series of little quests after the final boss that allow you to see the true ending of the game, bringing it to a satisfying narrative and emotional conclusion. With their background in arcade-like shooters like Resogun, I’m massively impressed with the storytelling skill on display here from Housemarque, both from a writing and presentation standpoint.
With so many AAA games trying to make themselves appeal to the widest possible audience by smoothing out the rough edges, I’m glad to see Sony allow Housemarque to make a game that challenges players in ways we rarely see in games of this scale. Saros is a brutal world that doesn’t hold your hand, forcing you to die over and over as you hone your reflexes.
Blazing through beautiful landscapes under fire from a staggering amount of projectiles makes for one of the most thrilling and satisfying gameplay experiences I’ve had in a long time, and the surreal cosmic horror story of greed and corruption is icing on the cake. Saros is the total package, combining gorgeous visuals, perfectly tuned combat, and compelling narrative into one of the best games of the year.
Saros is now available on the PlayStation 5.
