Welcome to the great outdoors.
Journey to the Savage Planet was a game I purchased from word of mouth and from seeing a bit of it streamed on Twitch. Its colorful creatures, often humorous dialogue and brief moments of action accompanied me along the adventure of exploring this strange alien world. In many ways, this feels like the game I wanted from No Man’s Sky, but sadly, much of what Journey to the Savage Planet offers isn’t as well-executed as its premise and while it makes for an alright adventure, it’s not that particularly thrilling.
From the moment you select your explorer from a series of random people or a space-faring pooch, you’ll awake on a colorful planet, one code-named AR-Y 26 and told to explore its strange and wondrous topside. You eventually find that you are not the first visitor to this planet, something that was not revealed in the original scans. Your mission is then changed, to that of discovering who and what left a series of strange structures on this world, a task given to you by the fourth-best interstellar space exploration company on earth, ran by what seems is a total idiot. You’re given a talkative AI, one that continues to explain your situation to you as well as joke and comment about how your death is meaningless due to the fact she can just simply clone you over and over again until the end of time. That said, a lot of the humor in this game is pretty good, but it does eventually get to the point of running some of its jokes into the ground over and over again.
Apart from its narrative, there is a gameplay loop that is pretty enjoyable here; explore, scan, shoot, and explore some more. As you traverse the wide open world presented to you, you’ll use a scanner, acting in the way we expect from a vision-mode that I consistently refer to as Batman’s detective vision from the series of Arkham Games. The only problem I have with vision modes like this is that you tend to live in them far too often and the appeal of having gorgeous environments around you is sidelined as you’re constantly looking around and exploring while in this mode, hoping you track down what you’re looking for only to spring it back up as you are then tasked with finding something else. Also, despite the mode having a zoom function, the distance you can actually scan items from can feel somewhat limiting.
As you explore, you’ll scan creatures, structures, and the vegetation around you to unlock a bit of the lore built for the game, and there is certainly a lot to take in here. Scanning is fairly enjoyable, cataloging the various critters and plants around you, but after a while into the game, it does lose a bit of its appeal and to be honest, you may end up forgetting to do so from time to time. The planet you’re exploring is progressed through in ways reminiscent of something like Metroid Prime, where you’ll eventually gain access to abilities and tools that grant you entry to new areas or through previously locked sections of earlier locations. Thankfully, there is a very adept fast travel system that prevents a great deal of backtracking. To aid in your exploring, you’ll have access to a grappling hook, a rocket jump, and a few other items that help you blow apart cracks in the wall or through electrical doors that shut when you get too close. Unlike No Man’s Sky, Journey to the Savage Planet has only one singular planet, rife with secrets and pathways that will take a while to full uncover as you use a series of fun zip-lines and grapple points that has you swinging from one floating island to the next.
Most of your items can be upgraded to explore further, jump higher, or hold more items that you’ll need to collect to progress ahead. Using these tools can often be enjoyable but are rarely free-form in their design, except for one that borders the line between exploring on your own terms and that of the game’s somewhat linear level design. There is an item called the Grapple Seed and they are used by targeting unique parts on the sides of cliffs. Now, these areas are distinctly marked with what looks like blue cheerio’s, so there is no just chucking them up there willy-nilly, but you are free to use whichever of them you want, climbing the wall how you see fit, but within the confines of how that section is staged. Had these items been more customizable in their purpose, then it could have really opened the game up to full exploration, but that type of design may have been far too complicated for the team to pursue or prevent the game’s progression from being broken.
The available items and tools you have are split into a variety of categories; Weapons, Items, Gear, Backpack, and Visor, Which as I’ve mentioned, can all be upgraded to make exploring that little bit easier. You’ll also find an orange jelly that you’ll stuff into your face to level up, giving you more health and stamina as you track them all down. The weapons tab contains upgrades for your gun, a sole pistol that can have its damage or ammo increased, or have its bullets ricochet off walls. Items are based on the pick-ups you’ll find as you encounter new plants that offer up various seeds that can be used to blow stuff up, shock enemies or doors, or throwing poisonous gas bombs at nearby creatures. You can also throw out bait to have nearby critters take notice, and you can even have them eat each other should you aim it just right. Other items include a bouncing pile of slime, bile that sticks enemies in place, or a live sampler used to collect a creature’s DNA. The last few tabs consist of your gear, which is largely your grappling hook, your backpack which allows you to rocket jump, stomp down on breakable floors, and lastly your visor which contains more efficient ways to use your scanning tools and your compass.
Upgrading each of these items is through resource collecting as you’ll harvest Aluminum, Carbon, Silicon, and an Alien Alloy that you’ll sometimes need to solve puzzles to acquire or via some light combat with nearby threats. You can kill the variety of creatures around you for many of these resources, or through crystallized deposits that are almost everywhere. You can also feed bait to many critters and see them fart out some as well, complete with all the sounds and gusto you expect from a silly game loaded with all types of humor. Upgrading these items takes place in the Javelin, your living quarters away from the dangerous threats that lurk outside. It’s also here where you will also read emails, watch somewhat laughable adverts, or receive messages from your live-action-acted boss, who confides into you to keep your discoveries on the down-low and only report to him as if you really have a choice.
While exploring can be enjoyable with a vast array of items and tools, combat is where Journey to the Savage Planet stumbles. Though items can be used to assist in combat by blowing up an enemy or using bile to lock them in place, shooting with your pistol is rarely satisfying and while I’m not sure if it was just me, I had a glitch where if I fired my gun during a reload, it would reload the gun for a second time immediately after, which is frustrating through many of the boss encounters, especially the last one. While there is an auto-aim assist, I never found it useful and you’ll often miss at even the most close-range creatures because the gun just doesn’t feel equipped enough to fire precisely.
While combat is not a heavy focus in this title, there is certainly a fair bit of it, and while the boss encounters are super enjoyable, they can often highlight many of the game’s flaws such as how jumping and sprinting isn’t always a reliable tactic. As your explorer, you can walk, sprint, jump, double jump, triple jump, power jump, and dash. Dashing allows to you move out of the way, but only on the ground, meaning you can’t dash in the air, which is a rather strange omittance when the gameplay feels really suited for it. Double jumping and triple jumping are fine and allow you to move freely around while doing so, but the power jump, which is when you hold down both X+A, only allows you to move slowly forward after a jump and it can feel rather odd to not have more freedom on where you land with it. Also, while you can mantle up when you barely make a jump, I’ve had several instances where my character will ignore the ability to mantle and fall to their doom despite clearly making the jump. While the movement systems are not totally bad, they don’t feel as polished as they could be and certainly made some moments of the game far harder or frustrating than they needed to be.
As is the case with most titles, co-op can usually rectify certain issues with games, and while the addition of 2-player online co-op doesn’t fully wipe away the larger issues I have with the game, it certainly makes several of them far more tolerable. Journey to the Savage Planet allows two players to push through the adventure together, but sadly progress and collected materials do not save for the joining player, which is really unfortunate. Now, for those who plan on playing the game entirely in co-op, you probably won’t mind since you’ll always be together, but it’s still an odd choice I see in a few co-op games here and there. In co-op, should your friend go down, you’ll have a few seconds to race over to them and revive them with a quick button press instead of holding down the button for a set period of time, which is pretty great to see and makes the whole ordeal a very quick one. Also, as several enemies require you to trap them or get around them for a few shots to their weak points, co-op makes a lot of these encounters somewhat trivial, even that of several boss fights as well.
With the title sprawling a pretty big open world across a single planet, I was still surprised at the variety that is present here. Sure, there are a few areas that tend to resemble themselves a bit too much, but there are countless others that are simply gorgeous to traverse. There are a few invisible walls that do creep up should you get a bit too adventurous, but these restrictions rarely ever got in the way of the fun. Each location is packed full of numerous alien life and vegetation, bursting with color and style. There is even a photo mode that has an illustration filter that would have made for a sublime experience had that filter been fully playable in the game. The creatures themselves are rather impressive with variations on a few key species that increase in difficulty as the game advances. The game overall has a solid presentation to it with quick and clear menu’s and very little to clutter up the screen as you’re playing. Again, I’m not too crazy about the scanner vision mode and feel they could have been more creative with it, but honestly, from a visual standpoint, this title is rather impressive for something that wasn’t originally on my radar.
Journey to the Savage Planet is a title I really wanted to love more. Now, don’t get me wrong, I think the title is a lot of fun, but with a premise as solid as it has, I wanted more from it. The story failed to capitalize on what it could have been, and the combat feels like something that was added in late in development. Exploring and finding all the secrets each location has to offer is impressively fun, almost addictive, and the usefulness of the gadgets and tools really allow for that to happen in interesting ways. While playing through the game solo is still an enjoyable time, the game really shines in co-op and makes for a far better experience when you have another friend alongside you, even if their progress is tied directly to yours. If you were less than impressed with No Man’s Sky, or want something a bit more action-packed than a title like Astroneer, while still retaining that fun co-op gameplay, then you might actually get what you want during your trip to this colorful and interesting Savage Planet.
Journey to the Savage Planet was purchased by the reviewer and played on an Xbox One X/S
All screenshots were taken on an Xbox One X/S