Sony has announced that Housemarque’s Returnal will be launching for PC on 15th February 2023, bringing the arcade shooter roguelike to a whole new audience a couple years after its original PS5 release.
Returnal tells the story of astronaut Selene who crash lands on an alien planet. However, the mystery quickly deepens as she discovers that she is stuck in a loop, resetting each time she dies in this roguelike arcade 3D shooter. Since launch, Housemarque has been able to enhance and expand the game, adding a free Tower of Sisyphus game mode and online co-op last March.
Housemarque’s original work shone on PS5, but for the Returnal PC port, developer Climax Studios have been able to push the graphics further thanks to the latest generation of high-end GPUs. Returnal featured ray-traced shadows on PS5, but for PC there’s now RT reflections as well. There’s also support for ultrawide 21:9 screens and super ultrawide 32:9 screens. There’s support for both Nvidia DLSS and AMD FSR upscaling to improve performance.
Without the PS5’s Tempest 3D AudioTech, Returnal on PC supports Dolby Atmos, two custom 3D audio solutions, as well as regular 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound.
And you still can get that PS5 vibe even on PC by plugging in a DualSense controller, with full support for haptic feedback and adaptive triggers. This is surely a sign of things to come from Sony’s PC ports, as more PS5 games start to trickle across.
Sony has confirmed the PC requirements for the game, showing that the game actually scales fairly well on PC. 16GB of RAM is the minimum requirement, matching the amount of memory found inside a PS5, but the lowest graphics settings should run on a PC with an older 4-core CPU, and targets the still popular Geforce GTX 1060 and Radeon RX 580 GPUs – specs not all that far away from the PS4 Pro, truth be told. You can also get away with running the game from a conventional HDD, though an SSD (any SSD) is recommended.
| MINIMUM | MEDIUM | RECOMMENDED | EPIC | RAY TRACING | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AVG Performance | 720P @ 60FPS | 1080P @ 60FPS | 1080P @ 60FPS | 4K @ 60FPS | 4K @ 60FPS* |
| Graphics Settings | Low | Medium | High | Epic | Epic |
| GPU | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (6 GB) AMD Radeon RX 580 (8 GB) |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 (8 GB) AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT (6 GB) |
NVIDIA RTX 2070 Super (8 GB) AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT (12 GB) |
NVIDIA RTX 3080 (10 GB) AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT (16 GB) |
NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti (12 GB) AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT (16 GB) |
| CPU | Intel Core i5-6400 (4 core 2.7GHz) AMD Ryzen 5 1500X (4 core 3.5GHz) |
Intel Core i5-8400 (6 core 2.8GHz) AMD Ryzen 5 2600 (6 core 3.4GHZ) |
Intel i7-8700 (6 core 3.7 GHz) AMD Ryzen 7 2700X (8 core 3.7 GHz) |
Intel i7-9700K (8 core 3.7 GHz) AMD Ryzen 7 3700X (8 core 3.6 GHz) |
Intel i9-11900K (8 core 3.5 GHz) AMD Ryzen 9 5900X (12 core 3.7 GHz) |
| RAM | 16 GB DDR4 | 16 GB DDR4 | 16 GB DDR4 | 32 GB DDR4 | 32 GB DDR4 |
| OS | Windows 10 64-bit (version 1903) | Windows 10 64-bit (version 1903) | Windows 10 64-bit (version 1903) | Windows 10 64-bit (version 1903) | Windows 10 64-bit (version 1903) |
| STORAGE | 60 GB HDD (SSD Recommended) |
60 GB SSD | 60 GB SSD | 60 GB SSD | 60 GB SSD |
Looking back on our Returnal review on PS5, we scored the game a masterful 9/10:
“It feels immensely satisfying to be sat here in 2021, eons after playing Super Stardust HD on PS3, and see just how far Housemarque has come. Offering a visual bullet hell spectacle, a showcase for the DualSense controller and a rewarding sci-fi narrative woven around the roguelike loop, we can say with unflinching confidence that Returnal is the PS5’s best game to date.”
Source: PS Blog
