There are good career decisions and bad ones, but it’s safe to say that any job requiring company solvency a century after it starts can best be described as “terrrible” and only goes downhill from there. Still, it’s too late now for a lone settler dispatched to a remote solar system to oversee the creation of a homestead for colonists who will never arrive, so the only options are to either accept living out the rest of their days alone or figure out a way back to civilization. With an upbeat floating robo-drone by their side and a pile of equipment that was cheaper for Alta Interglobal (motto- Fueled by families) to write off than recall, the settler starts exploring to try and make the best of their new home.
Negative- Downsized. Positive- Keeping A Whole Solar System
As it turns out, it’s a nice planet despite the main settlement being in a swamp. Landing on the beach, the settler starts off with a little bit more than nothing but quickly finds a booster to enable the double-jump, a weak pistol to fend off the more hostile creatures roaming about and a goo-gun that initially only shoots water but eventually becomes the most versatile tool in the game. It’s a good start, butRevenge of the Savage Planetslowly builds up the tools you’ll need to explore its open-world levels at a steady enough pace that it’s easy to forget just how powerless the settler was on arrival.
Review: Journey to the Savage Planet
Journey to the Savage Planet is an attractive title based on the sci-fi and exploration elements, but it’s the humor and puzzle solving that pulls you in.
Revenge of the Savage Planetis best thought of as a fully 3D open-world Metroidvania, where each new tool and upgrade opens up new paths to useful resources in the earlier areas. Each of the four major areas (plus bonus fifth one for the overachievers) is a section of planet, ranging from the greenery of Stellaris Prime to the frozen volcanic mountain and cave system of Zenithian Rift, divided into various zones that all manage to feel distinct from each other. It’s not a true open world in that each area has several paths that lead to different sections, but the paths are usually wide with enough branches that it feels like a world of options, even when grappling and platforming to the top of an incredibly tall cave. Even the most linear sections have enough bits off to the side that it’s worth exploring to see what turns up.
It’s going to take a while to have enough tools to feel confident to explore almost everywhere, though. The initial slap/kick melee attack is quickly supplemented by a whip, which eventually becomes a grapple as well. While the pistol does get powerful enough to be the main weapon of choice, the whip is used to capture creatures and send them back to a comfy habitat at home base, but the bigger ones need to be stunned first. Most of the larger animals have a tiny weak spot that, when hit a couple of times, stuns the creature and leaves it open to being lassoed and hauled in. Once close enough to the settler it’s teleported back to base, but that only works if none of its friends lands an attack during the process. Each of the four planets has its own building to store your collection in, and the game tracks a number of stats and collectibles on the way to earning 100%.
The planets' maps are divided into zones and each zone keeps a tally of objectives reached, most of which are optional. If you don’t want to capture one of every creature then that may mean the bonus planet doesn’t open up, but not collecting all the chests means you may not be able to purchase all the upgrades. Other objectives, like scanning all the flora, fauna and bits of tech open up special rewards in the tech tree if you’re thorough, and the large orange goo-fruits contribute towards upgrading health and stamina. The systems all tie together, like the way completing (non-lethal!) research on the captured animals can turn up vital upgrades from the major ones or new color schemes for the many outfits you can find from the smaller ones, and the maps are more than fun enough to explore that it’s always worth going back to clean up what you’ve missed.
Have Goo, Will Travel
The resources are everywhere in the environment, frequently out in plain sight like most of the ores and not too hard to find when hidden thanks to being briefly highlighted with a pulse from the scanner, but often tucked away behind challenges or puzzles. Some of the best ones require learning the ins and outs of the goo gun, which has four different types of liquids it can fire. Water is great against slimes and plants, filling them up until they burst, but also washes away patches of slippery green slime or burning hot lava-like goop. The purple goo is not only highly conductive, but also slows down anything that gets stuck in it, while the red lava does major damage to anything walking across it plus burns away spider webs. Various plants have exploding or acid fruit, both of which clear away specific obstacles if you don’t use them all as handy weapons, and eventually these can be stored for later use instead of primed to go off a few seconds after being picked. A chest may be entangled in three plants that each require a shot of electricity to let go, requiring spraying a path from electro-mushroom the receiver at the plant’s end, while other challenges require following glowing wires to what are frequently cleverly-hidden switches.
Revenge of the Savage Planet’s systems all tie together, like the way completing (non-lethal!) research on the captured animals can turn up vital upgrades
Between rounds of tearing across the planets, home base has its own activities as well. WhileRevenge of the Savage Planetisn’t a base-builder it does have a big empty house for you to decorate, and a good selection of the furniture can be interacted with as well. Granted, just as a canned animation, which is disappointing when it comes to the pinball table, but it still gives the base a bit of life. The main room also has a giant-screen TV that’s constantly running the weirdest ads imaginable, and like the cutscenes, these are all live-action video. The entire vibe of the ads and other scenes is straight from late-night Cartoon Network Adult Swim, a little cheesy and a lot weird, but also tends towards the gross in a way that can be offputting. Thankfully the TV has an off button if the tone isn’t for you, because the rest of the game is a huge amount of fun.
It’s also currently worth noting the game is buggy and will hopefully be fixed over time. A couple of chests where the area’s enemies need to be cleared away before they unlock require a few tries to open, for example, and the parry move that sends bullets back where they came from sometimes forgets how to aim itself, or on rare occasions, just leaves them stopped at the point of deflection. What’s usually one of the game’s strengths sometimes comes back to bite it, in that there are no restrictions on the platforming so you can get a toe-hold on small chunks of terrain to get to areas you technically shouldn’t be, but if you fall off into a thin crevice the settler may bounce back and forth between the two sloped walls and only be saved by quitting to menu and reloading. Thankfully the game saves frequently so I never once lost any progress when this happened and I only needed to platform back to the area to continue onwards.
Closing Comments:
Revenge of the Savage Planetis a fantastic metroidvania platforming adventure, vibrant and funny and bursting with life. The settler is wonderfully animated in a cartoon way, making every action entertaining to watch. The environments are all varied with each major planetary biome having plenty of sub-biomes, like the sandy desert giving way to rocky areas, a small mountain with caverns, various types of oasis and even tar pits. Level design is equally inspired, with each level’s areas connecting in frequently unexpected ways and the challenges constantly switching up from one moment to the next. The enemies all take different strategies, and while just shooting them is an option, there are frequently better ways to handle them like stun-and-capture, laying down some lava-goo, or if you’re just passing through, ignoring the aggro entirely. It also doesn’t hurt that the game looks fantastic, lovely and detailed enough that it’s nice to calm down for a minute after platforming up to a high area and just take in the view. It’s not great being fired and abandoned in the far reaches of the galaxy, but aside from ravenous wildlife, corporate malfeasance, toxic haze and burning lava, and all the other missing comforts of home,Revenge of the Savage Planet makes it seem like not such a bad outcome after all.
Revenge of the Savage Planet
After getting fired during cryosleep on the way to a new planet, the only thing to do is attempt to figure out how to get home. Explore every nook and cranny by platforming to new upgrades and tech-toys while exploring a solar system’s worth of adventure in Revenge of the Savage Planet.
