Revenge of the Savage Planet Review

 Revenge of the Savage Planet is a third-person adventure full of dangers on alien planets, goop, and late-late-late-late-late stage capitalism developed by Raccoon Logic Studios. Now, I’ve seen some things about its prior entry, Journey to the Savage Planet, with some trailers before its release and seen it on sale in a few storefronts, but I never checked it out before. It just seemed like another one of those first-person survival crafting games, except with a funny tone. But, since the name stuck with me, I decided to check out its sequel when it came up. So, will the planets align to create a great game or will my admittedly shallow assumptions be proven correct?

Fueled by families.

The story’s set-up isn’t special, but it does handle it quite well. You are under the employ of Alta Global, which bought out Kindred Aerospace so they can colonise the stars. They're marginally better than Kindred, and now you've been cryogenically frozen for 100 years and sent on a safe trip to a nice, uninhabited planet to turn into humanity's next home. Once you wake up, it'll be time to explore the new star system, discover new lifeforms, and become a legend!

At least, that's what they say in the pamphlet. The reality is... a little different: by "marginally better", I mean "somehow worse"; by "safe trip", I mean "crash landed"; and by "uninhabited", I mean "totally inhabited and hostile"... and also you’re fired. I guess it's time to ditch this rock and find a way back to Earth, huh? It won't be an easy journey but hey, you have nothing better to do. You're not exactly alone, either, with a drone companion to guide you every step of the way (though you can turn off their voice), potentially another unemployed person (read: another player) to help you out, and there are a few parties who are interested in keeping you alive. Maybe surviving these savage planets might not be so bad… plus, a little revenge on Alta might be sweet too.

Wish I was somewhere else.

I actually quite liked the writing. Though it won’t wow you with the most interesting twists and turns, it’s serviceable for a game like this, and it got me to at least chortle a few times. It’s full of slapstick and satire that will leave you hollering, especially when you kick your co-op buddy off a cliff into tar. The acting here is pretty good, too. I liked my drone, which didn’t annoy me even when I had it on the “Lots” voice setting, and there are a bunch of live-action FMVs, ranging from plot important to nonsense commercials, that are all pretty fun to watch. It’s nice to relax between outings into the wilds to check out what’s being advertised, like a giant mansion on monster truck wheels.

But I think there should be a special mention to the animations: they're cartoony, full of life, and oddly jovial despite the fact that you've been left for dead. Even the fall damage animations can be really fun to see, as painful as they look. It all ties together with the looks of the game, where it’s often bright and colourful with cute designs for the deadly creatures you’ll encounter. Really glad it's in third-person instead of first-person, as you get to appreciate these planets a lot more.

Just another death course.

Anyways, enough about that, how about the gameplay? Well, throughout your unemployment, you’ll be shooting, platforming, and crafting your way through the main campaign, exploring more than four planets filled with different dangers, and slowly but surely figuring out how to get back home in one piece. You can make your stay a little more tolerable by spending Alta coupons to customise your habitat in Nuflorida… like it isn’t already hell there in real life anyways.

Wow, so cheap!

You should have a variety of tools at your disposal to help deal with these hostile worlds, such as a gun with charge shots and bouncing bullets, an electric whip/lasso to capture creatures as well as grind plasma rails, a jump pack to reach greater heights and dodge by dabbing (that is so outdated), parry projectiles, and so much more. Unfortunately, all that equipment is scattered throughout the star system, so you'll either have to find it or replace it. As you do, you go from a clueless idiot with enough copium to not hole up in your space trailer for the rest of your (likely very short) life to a genuine space hero with a jaunty walking animation. The progression to that point feels great, from crafting your own gear, finding orange goo to increase your health and stamina, to going through the many, many quests that will reward you with stylish cosmetic items or more upgrades.

Seriously, what does these things have against me!?

It’s sort of like a metroidvania, doing an initial run of an area to grab a key item, then going back to planets you’ve completed to pick up all the orange goo and supplies you had to leave behind. I liked that the game is kind enough to tell you what’s impossible to get unless you have the right upgrade… at least, they expect you to think you can’t. There is surprisingly a lot you can do with just a double jump, and your drone will actually act surprised that you managed to pull it off and congratulate you. That’s actually pretty cool, while also hyping me up for the new abilities I’ll get.

 Now, I did mention crafting, but it’s mostly unobtrusive here: you’ll only need to worry about four types of resources, three of which you’ll obtain naturally in large quantities, and you’ll probably have everything you need when you do need to craft something. It’s not something you can ignore, but I actually had fun going out of my way to smash rocks.

...God this is so cursed.

As mentioned before, you can play the game with a friend, either in split screen or online with crossplay, with the caveat that you must have an Epic Games account to do so. That might be a dealbreaker for some if they want to play with friends across systems, but it’s a necessary evil. While I personally didn’t test it out (due to a lack of people available to play with me), I do appreciate that it’s there, especially splitscreen. It’s totally playable solo, but playing with a friend always makes it better. The game isn’t that long either, with only about 20 hours needed to see everything.

It's a miracle that I have working oxygen...

Now, I didn’t run into many issues while playing Revenge of the Savage Planet. Even on High settings, I was running the game consistently at 60 FPS with rarely any frame drops and no glitches to ruin my fun. Maybe a few jarring animations and quick flashes of seeing my character not teleported, but that’s the worst I’ve experienced. If I had to nitpick, I wish the upgrades were explained a little clearer with the option to check out previous tutorials, customising your habitat is a little restrictive, combat isn’t too complex unless you’re going for challenges, and sometimes I wished for a faster method of travel, but that’s it. Although, I do have one warning: when customising your character after the tutorial section, the profile picture you choose will be your voice. While you can change it at any time, I highly recommend NOT using the anime girl when playing with family, because it makes you… moan. A lot. More than all the other voices. You can also be a raccoon if you like.

Revenge of the Savage Planet is really good, and I think I should go back and play Journey to the Savage Planet. It’s a fun adventure with tons to do, exciting sights to see, and some third thing I can’t think of right now. It is totally worth being unemployed.

Not so bad after all.

Revenge of the Savage Planet is coming out on the 9th of May on PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store.