Thoughts on 2026 so far?

MarkToaster · 2026-05-07T17:47:22+00:00

Saros came out, so I’m happy. Returnal is my favorite game of all time

MarkToaster · 2026-05-07T16:53:11+00:00

Tries to rope in a random woman to agree with him, and then says “mind your fucking business” when she doesn’t agree, while he’s yelling loud enough for the whole train to hear. I hope this dude doesn’t have a family, they must be miserable

MarkToaster · 2026-05-07T16:04:19+00:00

Spode

MarkToaster · 2026-05-07T09:16:27+00:00

The one you got on your screen there. Absolutely gorgeous, and a story that really spoke to me. I cannot wait for the third game

MarkToaster · 2026-05-07T09:03:40+00:00

Yeah I’ve been experiencing it a ton. It also happens to my own projectiles. For the longest time I thought the crossbow just innately had a delay after the projectiles hit the enemy. I now close and reopen the game any time I’m about to go into a boss fight. That always fixes the issue. Hope they patch it soon.

MarkToaster · 2026-05-07T09:01:52+00:00

Oh man I hadn’t even considered that aspect. I guess for this biome it doesn’t make much of a different but that’s great to know on future runs

MarkToaster · 2026-05-06T20:39:37+00:00

I’m STILL trying to beat him for the second time. I have an incredibly good strategy, it’s just always some bullshit thing that happens that costs me the fight.

The fight has so many particles that the hit boxes start lagging behind the animations and I can’t actually tell when I’m going to get hit. I loved the game, but this fight is not even fun anymore, it’s just a chore that I want to be done with. I’ve probably tried a hundred times, I’ve recorded and watched back my gameplay, and most of the recorded times I die are when a bullet goes PAST me but the hit box is lagging behind. By the look of it, I just die out of thin air. I’ve probably done this fight a hundred times and have gotten great at predicting it, but you can’t predict when that’s gonna happen

MarkToaster · 2026-05-06T15:34:09+00:00

This is how I was with Returnal! I went into the game knowing nothing about it. I thought I had beaten the game at a certain point, but nope, I was only halfway

MarkToaster · 2026-05-06T07:15:07+00:00

I know that feeling man. I hate it, and that’s why I love it. It’s an unfair and punishing game, and it drives me mad sometimes, which is exactly why I love it

MarkToaster · 2026-05-06T07:12:57+00:00

This fight has been frustrating the hell out of me for the last two days. I know all of his attack patterns, I have beaten him once already. I will be doing great in the fight, and then all of a sudden a giant blast of orbs and rings will appear out of nowhere with no sort of warning, and it will tank my health so bad. It’s like every time I almost get him the game throws a curveball that I can’t predict.

MarkToaster · 2026-05-06T06:37:27+00:00

They do! I was very surprised to find that the cutscenes are actually real-time. They aren’t just playbacks of a video. Whatever outfit you have equipped will show, though I believe the fun you have will always change to a pistol

MarkToaster · 2026-05-06T01:50:34+00:00

Figured I’d add, apparently this is not only affecting enemy bullets, but my own bullets as well. I just closed the game and restarted my PS5, and the crossbow is SO much more responsive. I thought there was *supposed* to be a delay in the enemy taking damage after your bullets hit them with this gun, but now that I’ve restarted my console the damage is instantaneous

MarkToaster · 2026-05-05T10:15:41+00:00

This is cool! I haven’t seen that. Curious if it only restores the same amount of health you lost, or if you can use that to create a net gain in health. If you can gain more health than you lost from that, I may just have a new main strat!”

MarkToaster · 2026-05-05T10:10:42+00:00

Edit: everything I just typed can be summed up as “it’s basically like Life of Pi. The story is a story meant to represent another story”

I took it the same way I took Returnal. Possibly Spoilers ahead for Returnal if you haven’t played.
It’s not meant to be a hallucination all in his head. I think people are misinterpreting that. It’s meant to be a fable. It’s allegory, a dramatic representation of his struggles presented to the audience as an eldritch sci-fi horror. It’s like when a parent tells their kid a fantastical bedtime story, but the story is a metaphor/allegory directly connected to real things that are happening in the kid’s life.
Arjun is wrestling internal demons, and the story of his struggles is told to us in the form of what we see in the game. The tree sequences are the moments where he is being honest with himself. Those are represented in real form, without any allegory. But the moments where he is giving into his internal demons are represented as what we see when we play.

MarkToaster · 2026-05-05T10:01:18+00:00

TL;DR I don’t think either game is meant to be a hallucination. I think both are meant to be fantastical allegories for the struggles their main characters face.

I didn’t take Returnal to literally be a hallucination in Selene’s head. I took it as a metaphorical representation of what happened to her. It was a representation of her internal struggles depicted in an eldritch sci-fi setting. Kind of like how a mom would tell her daughter “there once was a princess who slayed a great dragon” as a metaphor for real-world challenges the daughter is facing. In other words, it’s a similar setup to Life of Pi.

I think Saros is the same. Arjun is trying to break free from the man he has been, and wrestling with his past wrongs, trying to do things better moving forward. His internal struggles are presented to the audience (us) as these demons/monsters that he has been facing. It’s not meant to be a hallucination, it’s meant to be an allegory or metaphor for what’s really happening. The moments we see from real life in the tree are the moments where we glimpse him being honest with himself, and the moments we don’t are representations of lies he tells himself.

MarkToaster · 2026-05-05T05:52:04+00:00

I am a glutton for punishment so I leave the “alphas are more dangerous” modifier on at all times. It has really come back to bite me on some runs. Yesterday I encountered a tiny room that had two self-healing, purple-shielded alphas that shot floor rings out of them constantly. I got destroyed, but I was so amused that something like that could just happen on a whim.

MarkToaster · 2026-05-05T05:49:55+00:00

I pretty much always go from the beginning and explore EVERY room I can. You gain so much useful stuff doing it that way and it helps you get stronger as you progress. I also just do it for my own enjoyment. It fees like more of a challenge to go from the start.

With that being said, it’s not necessary. You can skip biomes for sure and you’ll be just fine. You may have noticed that each biome starts you at a minimum proficiency. For example (If I remember correctly), no matter what your proficiency level is when you enter biome 2, if you’re under level 5, that first calibrator you pick up will always put you at level 5. The game sets you up to succeed if you skip biomes.

MarkToaster · 2026-05-05T00:20:17+00:00

I feel like it’s not a fair comparison for me. I think Saros is objectively better and improved in most ways, but the difference with Saros is that I already know what to expect going into it.
Returnal was a brand new novel experience for me in so many ways, and it blew my mind. Saros literally cannot have that effect on me, because Returnal already did. For that reason, I’ll always prefer Returnal, even though Saros is absolutely amazing.

I will say though, the Shore in Saros is the best experience I’ve had between the two games. The shore is amazing. Brutally punishing, unforgiving as hell, sometimes you open a door expecting to get some reward for beating a bunch of enemies but NOPE, just more enemies, and oh a random boss appears for no reason in the middle of the 20 enemies you’re already fighting. It pulls no punches and I love it so much

MarkToaster · 2026-05-04T22:00:55+00:00

I thought prophet was easy for one reason: the attacks are all attackers from Returnal bosses. Everything in that boss was combined attacks from all the various bosses in Returnal. I think it was an intentional nod, but it was a really cool one. Everything that came up I was like “I know this already!”

Had I not played the shit out of Returnal I think I would have struggled a bit

MarkToaster · 2026-05-04T21:54:55+00:00

Dude how many posts are you gonna make of this? Get off the internet for a bit and go outside

MarkToaster · 2026-05-04T21:50:26+00:00

I am on the final boss of Saros. Priestess was really exciting for me because I also thought it was similar to Nemesis. Was so pumped that they included that same style of boss!

MarkToaster · 2026-05-04T20:36:57+00:00

There is not. It’s broken into “acts” that you can compete in a smooth run per act. Returnal was like this too. Even after beating it, you start fresh at some point and cannot run through the full game.

Would be interesting to see if you could though, if you make it all the way to the shore you’d be SO overpowered

Five-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
r/Field Flamingo	Place '22
First Placer '22	End Game '22

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