I Have Too Much To Say About Saros

I’m not sure why, but every once in a while I have a video I want to make that takes significantly longer than I think it will. I played and finished Saros —Housemarque’s newest AAA bullet-hell roguelike — over the course of around a week, and after taking a ton of notes ended up feeling pretty confident I’d have a video out quickly. But every time I sat down to talk about the game, I ended up having significantly more to say than I thought. A video essay didn’t encapsulate it all, a standard review didn’t encapsulate it all, so here’s my third attempt at a Saros video. It’s a game I went from deeply conflicted on to being a pretty big fan of. Despite its rock-solid game feel and gorgeous world design, Saros felt like a bit of a narrative step down from Housemarque’s previous work with Returnal throughout the experience. But by the time the credits rolled, the whole thing clicked together and — intentionally or not — positioned itself as a psuedo-sequel or mirror image of Returnal.…