There was a moment there where I thought that my issues with the big AAA-blockbuster space were with me. That I’d become jaded from having played far too many games, and seeing how the sausage gets made first-hand, and therefore I had lost perspective. Yet Pragmata then came and demonstrated to me that, no, I still have the capacity to enjoy those bigger experiences. But only when there is some kind of creative energy that goes into them. Which brings me to Saros. Sigh.
Saros is Returnal. Returnal is a game that was released five years ago, and while I have to give developer Housemarque credit for a development cycle that, on paper at least, suggests that it isn’t working its people to death to keep the cash flow coming, Saros itself feels like an entirely cynical project. By that I mean, it’s very easy to imagine the Corporate Liaison To Developers suit guy from Sony in America getting his marching orders from the CEO of Sony, getting on a plane, flying to Finland, sitting down with the CEO of Housemarque in a very nice board room with polished wooden table (door locked when not in use lest one of the unwashed coders try and have a nap in there) and saying “the consumers bought Returnal in adequate numbers, so your next game will be more of that.”
“Yes, sir,” the CEO guy, eying off a nice annual bonus, said in response, and promptly marched off to share the good news with the team (then monitoring the company Slack to ensure that the team is adequately pleased that Sony has allowed them to make more content).
Returnal was a sci-fi bullet hell roguelike shooter with a solid dash of horror in its aesthetic and themes. Saros is… a sci-fi bullet hell roguelike shooter with a solid dash of horror in its aesthetic and themes. I don’t mind developers having their areas of specialisation. I play Koei Tecmo games. I would be a hypocrite to suggest that staying in a lane that was working was a bad thing. But there’s a fine line between doing that because it works well for the kinds of games they’re making, and doing it because you’re being cynical about it. Everything about Saros feels like Returnal, but with less creative energy. A paint-by-numbers Returnal, because the developers were either too frightened to do something a corner of Twitter might not like, or too cocky in the strength of the formula to think people might appreciate new ideas.
Now, with all of that being said, Saros does play bloody well. Housemarque is right to be confident that, as far as the team’s ability to create fast-paced, slick, big energy firefights is concerned, they’re almost unparalleled. As a bullet hell, enemies rain orbs of doom from every corner of the screen, yet because your hero is so nimble and spry, the bullet ballet never feels unfair or even excessive. There are patterns to learn, skills to learn and twitch reflexes to drum into shape, but Saros is ultimately a skill-based shooter, and as brutally challenging as it can be, it never forgets that the best games keep the agency behind success and failure with the player.
The combat systems are really nicely implemented too, with plenty of weapons to play with and the usual roguelike power-up systems joined by some clever uses of the PlayStation 5 controller’s haptics in the shoulder buttons and an intuitive way that the melee attack and shield functions are mapped to the same button. You’ll quickly realise that this is a feature that you’re going to need to take full advantage of.
There is a degree of grind involved, and there’s no way to sugarcoat that. Saros is one of those roguelikes where, every time your character “dies”, they’re respawned at the start with some permanent progression that slowly makes each subsequent run easier. The persistent will eventually succeed, while the skilful will succeed faster, but either way, there will be a point about midway through where the experience does drag a little for most players, though Saros does come through with some nice fireworks towards the end of the game to make the grind feel worthwhile.
What I can’t forgive is the narrative. It’s easy to say “the narrative isn’t important for a roguelike shooter, just shut up and start another run,” but Housemarque goes to some effort to build a cosmic horror world that is, at least, intriguing, and then fail to do anything about it. Saros is blatantly inspired by, and references The King In Yellow (though not an overt adaptation of it), and that’s certainly good source material. Housemarque is also now firmly a Sony studio, so the game has all the formula checklist points that Sony has clearly enforced on its studios to ensure that the gamers are wowed by the “depth” of the story.
Of course, it’s not really deep, intelligent, or insightful at all. It’s didactic in what passes for its “themes,” and it’s told in a laboured way that relies on people screaming at one another about “spoilers” to ensure that it’s “intriguing.” If I told you what the ending and key revelations were here (I don’t think this is a spoiler, but whatever: You’re not a knight in shining armour!), you’d lose any incentive to actually see them in the game because they’re just that shallow and basic. And common. So, so common. Someone should teach the Sony suits that “pastiche” and “kitsch” are pejorative words because then they might instruct their studio CEOs to watch out for them (then again, people would need to stop buying kitsch nonsense for the execs to care).
Furthermore, most of the main story beats are shared via copious notes that you’ll pick up, too, because during gameplay runs, if there was too much time spent in exposition, the pacing of the game would go out the window. So, yes, notes. But at least the characters are performed by talent that really commits to the role, so it comes across with blockbuster bombast.
Saros is a good game, and I need to be clear about that. The sheer speed and kinetic energy of the combat, the visual design, and the moreish nature of the roguelike loop come together to make something that is, by any objective measure, well-made and something that consumers clearly like to play. But on the other side of the coin, I really can’t stand Saros because I look at it and all I see is the cynical Sony studio formula slapped over the top of what was, a half-decade ago, a pretty fine game. In fact, I think I’ll dust Returnal off for a replay.
