Like all multi-billion dollar industries, the video game industry is driven by trends. We’ve seen the balloon burst on many a craze: first-person shooters mimicking Call of Duty’s progression system, open-world games akin to Far Cry 3, “choices matter” games, loot boxes, season passes, cosmetic bundles, etc. More recently, the unpredictable success of Fortnite Battle Royale resulted in numerous studios releasing their own take on a battle royale mode as soon as possible; everyone wanted a piece of the pie! A few years later, though, the craze has calmed down drastically. Few have succeeded; many have fallen. Apex Legends and Call of Duty: Warzone stand tall alongside Fortnite in front of all the piled-up corpses of BR failures.
Battle Royale mania leads us to the newest flavour of the month. I don’t care to be distracted by the semantics of rogue-like / rogue-lite, so I’ll stick with rogue-like while acknowledging various caveats. Spawned from the eponymous game of the 1980s, Rogue, rogue-likes typically task players with surviving a procedurally generated dungeon with the consequences of death looming large. Dying is inevitable in these games, and player progress resets each time you perish. The genre has enjoyed a natural renaissance recently, with games from indie studios such as Hades, Dead Cells and Cult of the Lamb all receiving wide praise and introducing the genre to a new generation of players. However, there’s a danger that a trend is brewing to the detriment of the games above and the genre as a whole.
The PlayStation has been built up over the last ten or so years to be the platform that concentrates on premium single-player experiences—the best in the business! However, rumblings of a change in direction towards live service multiplayer games (as well as a potential U-turn following the exposure of the fragility of live service games) have left Playstation’s upcoming slate looking barren. The head-scratching The Last of Us Part II Remastered has been marketed as a massive release when it’s hard not to see it as a way to sell the 2020 game to unsuspecting casual players at full price. The £10 upgrade is a nice bonus for fans of the series and a lesson learned from the outrage behind The Last of Us Part I Remastered, but a couple of added bells and whistles don’t quite justify the price for a new player. The most significant new feature is the No Return mode, which is… you guessed it—a rogue-like.
No Return – and the ability to import a PS4 save file – means players can enjoy the best-in-class gunplay of The Last of Us II without suffering through the miserable campaign again. I appreciate what Naughty Dog was going for, and while there are some great moments, it was a slog I have no intention of entirely revisiting. This release was the perfect chance to address some of the story’s pacing and structural issues, but unfortunately, it’s business as usual. Thankfully, The Last of Us Part II’s chapter and encounter system gives players the ability to hone in on the parts of the game worth replaying – like the excellent Seattle Day 1 exploration section.
No Return is a fun enough romp. The character selection is more extensive than expected, and I’ve enjoyed unlocking extras through the challenge system, but once the challenges dry up, there’s not too much to do. If this was the kind of progression that the now-axed The Last of Us Online aimed for, it may have been the right call to cancel development. I don’t need every game to be 100 hours worth of content, but there’s an expectation of near-endless gameplay possibilities when a title is branded as live service.
The biggest problem with No Return is that a superior PlayStation rogue-like was released only one month ago: God of War Ragnarok: Valhalla. This DLC– a free update– feels like it does more with the genre, and the combat of God of War suits it more than the limited weaponry of The Last of Us Part II. The story content was a beautiful supplement to Kratos’ journey in the modern God of War series, whereas No Return has no story content. It’s an arcade game mode, which is surprising given The Last of Us’ emphasis on storytelling. A rogue-like would’ve been the perfect genre to continue exploring the cyclical nature of violence and revenge that The Last of Us Part II focussed on.
My main concern is that two of PlayStation’s biggest franchises have released rogue-like modes back-to-back. The last thing the genre needs is oversaturation. It may seem like an easy way to add additional value to a single-player package, but it deserves more respect than that. While both No Return and Valhalla are enjoyable additions, neither holds a candle to Returnal, one of the best games on the PS5 and one where its rogue-like mechanics are part of the core game design rather than just an afterthought.
It isn’t just PlayStation, though. More and more studios are taking notice of the popularity of the rogue-like genre. Hitman: World of Assassination’s Freelancer mode is a great way to remix the locations and targets of the series to ensure that even the most dedicated players will have something to do after completing all mastery levels. There are
Call of Duty Zombies experimented with rogue-like elements in Call of Duty Vanguard, to mixed results. The likely intention was to increase the replay value of the mode through randomly generated buffs that players could obtain, but the reception was lukewarm, with many players feeling more traditional Zombies mechanics would have been a better fit for the mode.
Even Nintendo is experimenting with the genre. The final DLC for Splatoon 3, Side Order, is a rogue-like mode. Splatoon is a multiplayer-focused game, so in this case, an additional single-player mode with high replay value is exciting. Not to mention that Nintendo isn’t a company that usually settles for the status quo.
Time will tell whether this is the next trend studios start chasing, but I’m undoubtedly cautious, given the increase in the past few years. I’m always open to trying new modes, especially when it’s an update to a game I already own, but I’d rather play one Returnal than three or four modes like No Return. Most of the time, I’m a quantity-over-quality kind of guy. That’s just me, though, and the bottom line is the mode’s popularity is swelling because people love rogue-likes! I pray the genre doesn’t become the next trend to chase, where publishers mandate developers to release half-baked modes to “cash in” on the fanfare. Death is inevitable; rogue-likes shouldn’t be.