I will start off by saying that this review is not aimed at reviewing the gameplay or story of Returnal. I am supposed to be reviewing the graphical aspects of the game to partner along with Brandon’s live accessibility review which can be found here. That said, I will say a few words on it. Returnal is one of those type of games that is not linear. You get pieces of the story and you have to put them together yourself. Personally, I like those kinds of games and from what I have seen streamed on Twitch by my friends while avoiding spoilers, Returnal seems like the type of game I will love.
Now onto the graphics. I was unable to play Returnal at maximum graphics settings. My recommended setting was medium and that used 100 percent of my laptops RTX 2080 max Q. My laptop could have handled higher settings if I had a better graphics card. The game at medium ran well as long as I had nothing else running that required my graphics. The Twitch stream I had running on my other screen was at a standstill visually while the audio was still going. For me that was okay because I wasn’t paying attention to the video anyway.
On my laptop, the game looked comparable to the PS5 version, which is stunning in it’s own right. I only got 30 FPS but it was a steady 30 FPS and I couldn’t actually tell because it was so smooth. Returnal is a beautiful game that is challenging mentally, but if your PC specs aren’t up to par even in one area, you can’t push the benchmark. So I would suggest getting it for PS5 if you have one if your graphics card is less than what’s recommended for the level of graphics you want to play at.
A copy of Returnal was provided by Playstation for this review.
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