My one gripe with Returnal and all other roguelikes: the obsession over perfect runs

I’ve written a tweet about this topic once, and maybe an editorial about it years ago, I can’t remember it’s past midnight, and I’m not going to look it up now, I have a tangent to go on before I fall asleep. All I know is that I’ve had the same repeated thought, about the same repeated feeling, after playing yet another (good) roguelike that I’m enjoying that has the same repeated problem, in my eyes. I keep continuing to notice it because, for me, it’s a glaringly weird issue, a sticking point the genre has kept up without really questioning if it should exist in these games or not.

Too many good roguelikes require the player to not ever get hit and lock too many power-ups, items, and extras behind perfection. In already difficult games (that are often bullet hell shooters to boot) this seems harsh, and they do their god damn best to make you take at least one hit while dangling this quite often crucial component behind a skill wall. And I think that’s fucked up!

In Returnal, your adrenaline meter is tied to being hitless. Your health pickups could be health-ups, but if you’re one pixel short of a full bar, you cant upgrade your health. In Enter the Gungeon, you get more treasures and guns for going untouched in boss battles. In The Binding of Isaac, my favorite roguelike, your devil and angel rooms are tied to not taking red heart damage during the boss fight. In Dead Cells, a run has to be a continued streak of 30 or 60 kills without taking damage, or else you don’t get the extra door. Even the fucking Legend of Zelda games have the master sword get worse if you don’t have full health. Not even dark souls gatekeeps players like that, and that’s saying something! You can beat Dark Souls on a sliver of health, and in fact, speedrunners do so with one of those tearstone rings, I can’t remember if it’s red or blue, again it’s late at night as I go through this rant.

Hell, even Exit the Gungeon has a giant counter in the top right for how many enemies you’ve killed without losing any armor or health. That’s nerve-wracking! I’m not that good, just let me play the game at my own pace/skill level without chastising or mocking me about how good I am, it’s preposterous.

Hades does it in a way that I appreciate because the hitless challenge is just that, a challenge and not a requirement for competent gameplay. It’s an optional room, with a good but not ESSENTIAL reward, and you don’t feel like shit for screwing it up. The higher the heat, the more of them you can try, but there isn’t any obligation. I would argue in order to truly master BOI or Returnal, or even play them competently and be good at them, the standard is set high to regularly progress through them too often and too early. You really have to get good at these hard-as-nails games for boss items and a better active reload, and it’s a real bummer for me.

Now in fairness to BOI, my favorite roguelike ever, the game has soul hearts to protect your red hearts so you aren’t so likely to lose out on the devil and angel room chances. But when you miss out, it sucks and feels bad. And in Dead Cells, there is another door for speedrunning that I often go into, so I can get the same rewards without having to kill 60 dudes in a row without being touched. Returnal doesn’t have any of the same alternates as these other games, and I think that’s super dumb!

This video below does a much better of going over things, so I’m going to make you watch it because I’m lazy. Or don’t watch it, I can’t make you do anything, this is an article not the police.

There are a lot of other roguelikes I like playing that don’t have this ridiculous requirement: Into the Breach, Spelunky, Curse of the Dead Gods, Rad, Rogue Legacy, Risk of Rain 1 and 2, and Slay the Spire. None of them would be improved by having untouchable moments. I think the Returnal skill requirement is the perfect example of a negative feedback loop, which punishes bad players and only rewards good players. Is the game doing enough to teach us how to be better to avoid being hit? Does the game just expect us to get better at it? And will I link to another Game Maker’s Toolkit video about the subject? Yes, yes I will. The guy is the best in the industry at video essays, he’s fucking incredible.

I’d like to end this article by also saying that Returnal deleted my save progress, and I was just on the fifth Biome. Fuck you Housemarque, add better checkpoints in your game and don’t fuck up patches! Morons, what a waste of $70, I was really enjoying that game until you forced me to stop playing it. Couldn’t even get a refund! Assholes at Sony.