10 Times Video Games Didn't Care What You Think

5. Returnal Intentionally Didn't Let You Save

Ah, the eternal argument of games respecting your time or whether you should just git gud. Personally, I like a game that encourages both so that probably explains why I didn’t get to the end of Returnal.

To be fair, the 2021 shooter is a roguelike which is designed to be played in multiple runs. To be mildly less fair, the game is designed in such a way that you had to finish your whole run, which in Returnal is a not insignificant time sink. We’re talking over an hour in some cases. So you better hope that phone doesn’t ring or your family doesn’t need to pull you away from the screen otherwise your only choice was to put the PS5 in standby mode until you could return.

You have to be very careful not to turn it off though, as you will lose that progress. Yes, I do know this from experience, and no, it was not a good day for me.

As of November Returnal has finally added a method that allows players to suspend the game and safely turn off or unplug their PS5s in the middle of a run without ruining their evening. For the 7 months prior to that, though, it did feel very much like Housemarque was telling us, “Too bad, better luck next time” without much consideration into what players thought about it.