Best Atmosphere – Returnal

Austin: Returnal was the first PS5 game to be released that had me excited for the new console. Retro-future space style of the weapons and costumes seem shamelessly inspired by Alien and Prometheus and I love it. Returnal also pulled me further into it’s world with the use of the Dual Sense haptics. When the room/biome you were wandering around in had rain, the vibrations on the controller felt like it was being dripped on. I found myself loading into a game and shouting for anyone else around me to come hold this controller and walk around and ‘feel the rain.’ The worlds and how they transitioned, combined well with the storytelling. Seeing a massive house dropped in the middle of the lush, and then getting to enter that house transforms the action into suspense and then just keeps going back into action after a massive set piece that feels perfectly at home in the world.