'SAROS' Review: Run. Gun. Die. Repeat.

Developer Housemarque first endeared itself to me with its prowess with twin-stick shooters, notably Alienation and the criminally overlooked Nex Machina, before moving into the realm of true AAA development with 2021's Returnal. It's taken five years, but Housemarque has finally released a follow-up with SAROS, a spiritual successor that continues the developer's tradition of making tough games with tight gameplay (and colorful orbs).

In SAROS, you play as Arjun Devraj, who has been sent to the mysterious planet of Carcosa on behalf of the Soltari Corporation as part of Echelon IV, an expedition team dispatched after the company lost contact with the colony. Devraj is an Enforcer, helping with security and tasked with exploring the world in search of the missing colonists. It doesn't take long to figure out that something is very wrong here.

During the game's opening moments, Devraj runs into some of the planet's monstrous inhabitants. They end up killing him, but Devraj somehow awakens from that fate back at the Soltari outpost where the other members of Echelon IV are shocked to see him after he disappeared days earlier. That sets the tone for the game's roguelike loop as Devraj heads out, fights, dies, and is reborn to do it all again.

While each trip to a specific area will contain similar elements, there's some randomization in terms of layout, enemies, and items. As you progress, the map will show the direction to advance as well as frequent opportunities to look for weapons and upgrades. Those upgrades are tied to Devraj's core stats in three areas: resilience (shield/health), command (power), and drive (item collection). You begin your run with baseline numbers and then collect items as you go to grow stronger and better prepared to face your enemies.

You'll also load in with a single weapon. As with your stats, the type and power at the start is fixed, meaning you'll need to find better ones as your run continues. At the beginning, you have a pistol before quickly finding an assault rifle. Additional weapon types (shotguns, crossbows, and a chakram weapon that shoots saw blades) unlock as you reach new areas.

Within that, guns have different variations and properties. Perhaps the biggest is auto-aim, which allows you to focus on dealing with incoming fire without the need for precise aiming-unsurprisingly, playing with and without auto-aim makes for a different experience. You'll also have a separate power weapon that runs off charged energy that serves as your most potent damage dealer.

Each weapon class also has its own pros and cons, and you're likely to find ones that you prefer, which can set up interesting choices on each trip to Carcosa. For example, you might open one of the game's "loot boxes" and find a gun that's more powerful than the one you have but not your preferred type. Do you stick with a weaker weapon, knowing it means tougher fights, or adjust your style to deal more damage?

Even picking up stat upgrades isn't straightforward as you have limited slots to equip artifacts, so you'll want to make sure you're only grabbing ones that provide the boosts you value. There are also "corrupted" artifacts that can grant more powerful boosts but always at the expense of something else, such as taking fall damage or losing lucenite, the game's currency, when hit.

Once you topple an area's overlord, future runs come with a built-in risk-reward system as you can elect to make a quicker trip by teleporting past that region, but in doing so you're losing out on the ability to collect more power-ups and thus enter the next boss fight less powerful (but also perhaps healthier).

Win or lose, you'll head back to the Soltari camp where you can trade in your collected lucenite for permanent upgrades to various stats as well as unlock new abilities using the much rarer halcyon, such as being revived the first time your health reaches zero, effectively granting a second life. It's a good system that allows you to feel like you're making progress even when you die. The game locks progression at certain points behind a node that only opens when you defeat an area's boss, so you can't endlessly buff your stats.

Another way SAROS offers aid is through a modifier system that can be adjusted at the camp. It's split into protections and trials, each of which carries a number. Protections help players by doing things like making you deal more damage or shed corruption more easily, while trials make things more difficult by eliminating your in-run resurrection or increasing the amount of lucenite you lose upon death. There's a scale, so you can't go too far with protections, but it's still a nice option in case you get stuck or want a stiffer challenge.

Challenge is the name of the game in SAROS, which delights in filling the screen with colorful orbs that you have to dash through, leap over, absorb, or parry, all while trying to keep an eye on your enemies and deal damage of your own. The game even uses a Gears of War-style active reload system to give you one more thing to monitor if you want to fire more quickly and deal a little extra damage.

To its immense credit, Housemarque provides the tools to succeed thanks to precise movement and shooting mechanics. It also takes advantage of the DualSense's adaptive triggers arguably better than anything I've played. Each gun has a secondary fire option that's used by holding down the left trigger halfway. Fully depressing the left trigger cues up your power weapon. It feels really satisfying in action.

In terms of presentation, SAROS looks and sounds great. The planet of Carcosa isn't the most vibrant or varied with its biomes, but it does a nice job of creating a world that feels distinctly alien and makes you curious to uncover what befell its previous inhabitants. Music and voice acting are good as well, led by Rahul Kohli's strong work as Devraj.

SAROS shines the brightest (literally and figuratively) in motion, though, when the screen begins to fill with enemies and their multicolored projectiles. While it's something Housemarque has implemented in its titles over multiple console generations, it's never looked better, and the amount of particle effects can provide a borderline dopamine hit.

For as good as the action is, however, the game isn't without its drawbacks. While there was a clear effort to present a more involved storyline than in Returnal, I would describe the game's overall narrative as broadly fine, though it never really landed for me with some of the more interesting bits left to the data and voice logs you find on the surface of Carcosa. It's OK as dark sci-fi, but I wouldn't characterize it as a strength.

Plus, as with any roguelike, there's the potential for fatigue. Having just sunk dozens of hours into reviewing Marathon, where runs feel unique from one to the next, logging 20-plus minutes to reach a boss only to fail and have to repeat the process with relatively few differences, had me bouncing back and forth between SAROS and other titles just to give myself a bit of a reset. The RNG element associated with finding items on runs can also serve to frustrate.

Final Score (8.5/10)

It's been an incredibly strong last six months for shooters, and SAROS deserves a spot near the top of the list. Housemarque's latest effort demands a lot of players, but it never feels unfair or insurmountable-and when you get in that groove of dodging, dashing, parrying, and shooting enemies through a cascade of colorful projectiles, the feeling is worth whatever trials you endured to get there.

Related: 'PRAGMATA' Review: More Human Than Human

This story was originally published by Men's Journal on Apr 30, 2026, where it first appeared in the Entertainment section. Add Men's Journal as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

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This story was originally published April 29, 2026 at 9:03 PM.