I think if Saros delivers, Housemarque will find themselves as the only player in a brand new genre of games, similar to what FromSoft established with the Souls games and the resulting Soulslike genre.
Prepare for the Returnal-likes.
I think if Saros delivers, Housemarque will find themselves as the only player in a brand new genre of games, similar to what FromSoft established with the Souls games and the resulting Soulslike genre.
Prepare for the Returnal-likes.
I have never seen anything like the parasites, malignancy, and many other “devil’s bargains” the game forces you to take, managing advantages against handicaps while you play. Maybe that’s a roguelike feature but it’s new in AAA 3D shooters. The procedural generation of environments too is new and could be pushed further in Saros. Most of all it’s just a very well made game, tightly tuned to deliver exciting gameplay that feels challenging the whole time, even on repeated plays.
If you are familiar with Hades’ “God mode” option, or just their persistent level up currency between runs, I think this is the approach they are taking with Saros. They want Returnal and any potential direct Returnal sequels to maintain their difficulty and challenge, but they mentioned in their briefing they you get more and more powerful each run in Saros. They must have internal metrics on this and they have to know that many people have never finished the game. Hell, I didn’t for a long time and recently got up to just before beating Biome 6 myself (still trying to make the final push). I expect Saros to be difficult but also give players progression to ultimately finished the game compared to Returnal.