22 uneven hours with Saros

A review of the PS5's latest exclusive from bullet hell specialists Housemarque. PLUS: A new twist in the Subnautica 2 legal saga, this time about the release date.

Saros promotional art. Image: Sony Interactive Entertainment

The hero of Saros, the new game from Finnish studio Housemarque, is living in a loop. He wakes up in a base on the planet of Carcosa, a bit confused, a bit unsure of what is going on. He is driven to go into the wilderness to shoot strange foes and dodge their incredibly abundant bullets (or sometimes use a shield to absorb them). Most of the time, he dies, revives back in the base, and does it again.

The hero of 2021’s Returnal, Housemarque’s prior game, also lived in a loop. She would wake up in a crashed spaceship on the planet of Atropos, a bit confused, a bit unsure of what was going on. She was driven to go into the wilderness to shoot strange foes and dodge their incredibly abundant bullets. Most of the time, she’d die, often revive back at the crash site, and do it again.

Housemarque, a studio behind many dazzling shoot-em-up games over the last 30 years, appears to be in a loop of its own with a new game that is distractingly and at times disappointingly similar to its last one, even if it is ultimately a blast to play.

I had to venture through many loops of Saros to come to grips with that. The new PS5 exclusive is the first Housemarque game in a long time that I had trouble getting into.

One thing that helped were the bullets. The mesmerizing, enemy bullets.

Look at this…

And this…