by Anthony O'Connor
Worth: $17.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Rahul Kohli
Intro:
… the experience of actually playing Saros is almost always utterly compelling.
There’s an old cliche, frequently misattributed to Albert Einstein (and possibly originating from author Rita Mae Brown) that goes: “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.” That quote pretty much describes the experience of playing Saros, the brand new beautiful but punishing roguelite from Returnal developers Housemarque.
For those uninitiated to the genre, roguelites tend to follow a looping formula, where you enter a level, upgrade your gear and weapons, face off against a boss and, at some point, inevitably die. Once you’ve carked it, you’ll have to start the whole process again, although usually with some form of permanent upgrades intact.
In Saros, the notion is that you “come back stronger”, which will either thrill you or give you the roaring shits, depending on your patience and tolerance for repetition. The thing you should know about Saros, however, is that if you can handle the gruelling lows, the highs are very, very high.
Saros is the story of Arjun Devraj (Rahul Kohli), an Enforcer sent by the Soltari corporation to investigate the planet of Carcosa where three previous missions’ worth of colonists have gone missing. One of those colonists was Arjun’s wife, Nitya. What Arjun finds on Carcosa is a living nightmare of surreal visions, hideous creatures and a bizarre time anomaly that mixes up past, present and future and is driving everyone insane, including himself. Arjiun also has the inexplicable ability to return from the dead, gaining strength and knowledge with each resurrection and pushing himself to unravel a mystery that is both planet-wide and personal.
At its core, Saros is a cosmic horror roguelite with slick, precise controls, gorgeous presentation and addictive albeit unforgiving gameplay. It owes a great deal to The King in Yellow by Robert W Chambers, and HP Lovecraft’s cosmic horror yarns, but brings enough fresh wrinkles to the formula to not feel like an artless retread of well-worn tropes. With each new run, the levels change, in ways both subtle and dramatic, and the fast-paced shooting and numerous lethal enemies will keep players tense and on their toes for the duration. As you progress, you’ll unlock upgrades and stat boosts so that sections that once caused you grief will become considerably less painful, although rarely easy. Unlike Returnal, once you unlock a new Biome, you’ll be able to teleport there directly on the next run and while this feature is welcome, it does expose a flaw in the design of the game. See, if you choose to zap straight to the newly unlocked area, you’ll often be underpowered when you reach the enormous, multi-phase boss for that area. And if you decide to play the game from the start all over again, going through every previous biome … Well, there’s a good chance you’ll be dramatically overpowered and the whole thing will be a doddle.
This is a fundamentally weird choice and makes one wonder if Housemarque would have been better off just letting players continue at their current level if they die during a boss encounter. Like, seriously, would the game be any worse? The bosses are nasty buggers with numerous mechanics and movesets that need to be learned, and having to play through at least 20 minutes of an already explored biome just to get your ballbag punched in is… not fun. At all! Conversely, Returnal purists don’t like the fact that level skipping even exists, claiming that it ruins the whole purpose of roguelites and makes Saros neither fish nor fowl. The game does feature Carcosan Modifiers that can be used after the second boss, to make certain elements of the game easier or, for masochists, more difficult. But again, if you’re going to go that far, surely a continue button isn’t a stretch?
Still and all, the experience of actually playing Saros is almost always utterly compelling. The tight controls, gorgeous graphics and animation, the superb audio and general vibe of surreal, celestial terror all combine for an immersive, unmissable experience that, when it stops putting roadblocks in front of your enjoyment, can become something compulsive and sublime.
The definition of insanity may indeed be doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. However, when it looks this good and plays this well, perhaps insanity isn’t such a terrible option.
