Six years later, the PS5 is still light on exclusives — but this space-age shooter is an absolute must-play
A TechRadar article highlights Returnal as a standout PS5 exclusive that effectively integrates the roguelike genre with a deep narrative. The game follows astronaut Selene Vassos, who crash-lands on the hostile planet Atropos and must repeatedly attempt to escape after dying. The author argues that making death a central plot device allows for a compelling story within the cyclical gameplay loop.
- ▪Returnal is a 2021 roguelike third-person shooter developed by Housemarque that launched as a PS5 exclusive before arriving on Windows.
- ▪The protagonist, Selene Vassos, crash-lands on the uncharted world of Atropos and attempts to track a distress beacon to escape.
- ▪The game's core mechanic involves Selene dying and reawakening at the crash site, with this cycle of death serving as the central theme of the narrative.
- ▪The article notes that the PS5 has been criticized for having few exclusives, but positions Returnal as a must-play title in this space.
- ▪Returnal was featured in TechRadar's 'From the Backlog' series, which focuses on revisiting and appreciating established gaming favorites.
TechRadar publishes from United Kingdom and files mainly under tech. We currently carry 2,076 of its stories.
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Story provenance
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Record
| Original publisher | TechRadar |
| Canonical URL | https://www.techradar.com/gaming/six-years-later-the-ps5-is-still-light-on-exclusives-but-this-space-age-shooter-is-an-absolute-must-play |
| Publication time | Sat, 12 Sep 2026 19:00:00 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-12T19:05:01.105Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-12T19:05:01.105Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | nRjPEbHxZw16 · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Gaming Consoles & PC Playstation Six years later, the PS5 is still light on exclusives — but this space-age shooter is an absolute must-play Features By Jamie Richards Published 12 September 2026 6 min read A Sisyphean space odyssey When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Sony / Future) Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Disclaimer The article contains spoilers for Returnal. I’ve always been a fan of roguelike games.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at TechRadar.
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