There’s nothing wrong about wearing your influences on your sleeves. Goes to show you have a lot of respect for the past and want to recapture what people love about the classics. You put tons of time into developing what is basically a spiritual successor and sometimes you end succeeding what you too influence from. Managing to avoid problems that have aged poorly with time, or somehow reinventing the formula and pushing genres to new heights. That’s not always the case though, and a majority of the time these inspired titles either fail to form their own personality or just end up being forgotten. Which is a shame, because developing games is hard especially with how costly resources have gotten recently. I find this especially true with indie games, because a lot of people shrug off great titles that fail to impress them. Usually because these people set high standards for the game despite it being a small project backed by very little funding. It’s how you get journalists at IGN giving fantastic indies like Blasphemous or Hyper Light Drifter a 7/10, because they weren’t like The Legend of Zelda or Castlevania which have had tons of entries and years to build up popularity. That’s why you see me cover so many indies on this site, but let’s not waste any more time and hop into another underrated gem. Journey To The Savage Planet, a first person metroidvania developed by Typhoon Studios and published by 505 Games. Same company that also helped with the publishing of Control and Terraria, so expect quite a bit of funding for this one as this is probably one of the more expensive indies.
Journey To The Savage Planet was directed by Alex Hutchinson, who previously served as the director for Assassin’s Creed 3 and Far Cry 4. Two big open world sandbox games published by Ubisfot, and served as follow-ups to two very successful open world titles but didn’t quite fully surpass them. Hitchison eventually left Ubisoft and alongside a small team consisting of around twenty to thirty people they formed their own independent studio called Typhoon Studio. They weren’t planning on making cheap titles, but mid-budget projects. Good examples of these sorts of games would include Firewatch, Divinity: Original Sin 2, and Solar Ash. Games not backed by big budgets, but contain a ton of quality and polish that could rival Triple A behemoths. So unlike previous projects he directed, Hutchison wanted the team’s new game to be a small and well focused experience. A game that would trim down the fat a lot of Triple A games had and would instead offer as much quality content as possible with each step. Every objective would feel like a goal worth obtaining rather than checking boxes off a list, and the world is compact rather than big and far stretched. The main three influences would be the interconnected level design and exploration of Metroid Prime, the collecting and surviving in harsh environments of Subnautica, and the cathartic gunplay of the Far Cry series. Those would be the core foundations of Journey To The Savage Planet, and it really goes to show because I can easily see them within the final product. Like there were times I sat there and was like, “Yeah, this somewhat reminds me of Subnautica.” It also gave me vibes of The Outer Worlds for the senseless humor, and in a few cases Outer Wilds weirdly enough. Is the game good? Yeah, it's good.
For a while I kept switching back and forth between whether I wanted to play this game or not. On one hand it has a lot of things I like in games. Interconnected level design, upgrades that not only serve as keys forward but also improvements to your character, unique biomes you have to learn to survive in, and a stupid yet funny story the writers are aware is pretty bad. It has quite a lot of things I like on the surface, but on the other hand there were the complaints from critics. How the game was really short considering it’s selling price, and how it was too influenced. It’s a game that goes by in a breeze and then you quickly dash off to play something better. I can see why so many people brushed this game off, but I don’t think it’s terrible. In fact, it’s quite good and despite not doing everything excellently it does everything well enough to make it a really well designed game. One that doesn’t overstay its welcome and leaves a positive impression by the end of it. So today we’re gonna talk about why I quite like Journey To The Savage Planet and why it may possibly deserve your attention. So let’s blast off once again dear adventurer to an exotic world full of foreign dangers.
Story
Mankind has figured how to effectively travel across the sta- you know what, f*ck it. I’m tired of literally repeating the same line over and over again whenever I cover a game that takes place out in outer space. The last game we reviewed, Dead Space, opened up with its story paragraph with this exact statement, so we’re just gonna skip ahead to the good part. You’ve been sleeping for awhile but wake up to find yourself on the surface of a mysterious planet. ARY-26, a colorful planet containing floating islands and a variety of wildlife roaming about. From scrawny little spherical birds, flying jellyfish, living meat grinders, and much more. Our explorer was hired by the fourth best space company on earth to find planets humans can live on, and luckily you just found one. Congratulations, but you don’t get to go home just yet. The manager of the company wants you to find the Planet Seed, which is responsible for controlling all life on the planet. Bring it back to your ship and you will be rewarded handsomely. Humanity gets a new planet to live on and you get a butt load of money to do whatever you want. Come back empty handed and you’ll probably be fired and scolded for the rest of your life. Your ship is out of fuel anyways, so you have to go search for more if you want to return back to earth. During your explorations you discover a huge spire lying in the middle of the world. It goes pretty deep and pretty high, and your systems detect an artifact lying within it. Luckily your AI companion is here to help during your travels. She’ll help you locate the resources and upgrades you need to access more of the world, and ascend to the top of the spire where the controls to open up the innards can be found. Good luck spacer. You are gonna need it as you battle your way across a savage planet. Get it? By savage I mean dangerous, not as in cool.
Gameplay
Out of all the games Journey To The Savage Planet takes influence from I would say it is closest to Metroid Prime. A few months ago I played Metroid Prime for the first time and I would say it was pretty good. For the most part it’s well designed and has a good atmosphere, but there are some elements I don’t think aged well or don’t live up to the mass amounts of hype people give it. I won’t say Journey To The Savage Planet is a better experience, but it’s a game I think I had a lot more fun with. You explore each area picking up items, fighting creatures, uncovering secrets, and obtaining upgrades that will improve your character. The Subnautica influence is that there are four resources to collect throughout the game and they all can be used to craft upgrades for your character. Those include new abilities you unlock the blueprints for, and improvements such as dealing more damage or faster reload time. You have an energy pistol to defend yourself and thankfully you don’t need to collect ammo as energy never runs low. You just blast away at foes and hope it works, but sometimes you have to do a little bit more. Some enemies have specific weak spots you have to hit, and other times they’ll be wearing protective skinning that you’ll have to break away to deal actual damage. You can dodge their attack side to side, or run away at the cost of using stamina. You will get hit though and the only way to refill health is absorbing health seeds hanging from trees. Die again and you respawn back at your ship. You drop all of the crafting materials you were carrying and can get them back by going to where you died last. Similar to corpse running in Dark Souls, but I noticed you can’t fully lose stuff. There’s no sense of urgency, but yet again it’s hard to remember the level design.
Explore, fight, collect resources, and upgrade. Your three major tools of traversal are going to be a double jump, a booster pack to launch yourself in the air, and a grappling beam to swing along or towards grapple points. You also eventually get an upgrade that allows you to basically grind along rails. Your four main resources are Silicon, Aluminum, Zinc, and Alien Alloys. The first three are easy to find as they are dropped from defeated foes and ore deposits, but the last one is quite tricky as they are found in specific pods throughout the world. A lot of these you will need to craft special upgrades, so look around carefully. You’ll also unlock different seeds to use, and the way seeds work is that you throw one and they do something. Grapple Seeds to create a point for which you can grapple towards. There’s a seed to create bounce pads to jump on, which is good for reaching high areas. A seed to electrify things, burn away amber, and blow up tough as rock surfaces. You can only carry so many seeds at once, and once you run out you have to find more. They aren’t that hard to find as item deposits often glow and they give you a ton to work with. At the end of each area there is a boss and they will test your skills and usage of all the powers you have obtained up to that point. The game is rather simple and while there are side quests it’s easy to figure out where to go next. Hopefully you can collect enough fuel, bring back the planet seed, and be acclaimed a hero across the entire galaxy. All or nothing spacer.
Thoughts
This review is gonna end up being a lot shorter than I wanted. I mean this is afterall a really short experience, so what was I expecting? Journey To The Savage Planet doesn’t do a whole lot of things extraordinarily, but it does do a lot of things well enough. Some people aren’t going to like how every area is a series of floating islands. It feels disjointed rather than having a naturally set out world with unique structures and layouts, but Journey To The Savage Planet manages to do it pretty well. You ascend higher into the world and as you go the spire keeps getting taller. Making you wonder when you finally reach the top and when you do it feels tremendous. Like that long journey was worth it and you get to descend back down so you enter said spire and travel to the bottom of the world. The level design is pretty good with pathways looping back to areas you just trekked through and new power ups opening new fun exciting ways to traverse the world. I especially love the grappling hook, as any game with a grappling hook is made infinitely better. Combat is simplistic and the game finds fun ways to make you utilize different tools. You have enemies with amber covering their heads or hard rock shells. So you have to blow them up or melt it away, because if not you can’t deal damage. You have these lion-like creatures that run around and spin dash into you, and you have to find the right time to dodge and strike. Bosses are really fun and while there’s only three of them they are true highlights for the combat. That isn’t to say the combat is tremendous. I do think the game could have used different gun types or even firing modes, because using just the pistol for the entire game gets really repetitive. I wish they did something like Control where it’s the same gun, but you can change it on the fly to a shotgun or SMG. Would have added a bit more creativity.
Obtaining new upgrades felt rewarding and some of which are really well hidden. Oftentimes they have you check every surface or take leaps of faith to reach areas you normally thought you couldn’t. I like that little animation that plays whenever you find a health upgrade. You find these bulbs of nectar and stuff you face full of it. Unaware of what side effects you may get, only then to be told that it may have the chance to give you space cancer. Speaking of the game’s humor, I actually quite liked it. Will admit it is not going to be for everyone. The game plays on the idea that it is a sci-fi adventure and uses it to create wacky concepts. Whenever you fast travel back to your ship you get advertisements for these absurd products, and the commercials are really funny to watch. You may get advertised food paste and one of them is flavored cucumber sh*twater. There’s a minimall you can inhabit with human sea monkeys and when you initiate Black Friday mode they reenact that one Black Friday special from South Park. The animators even use cheap CGI models to mimic the feel these types of commercials have, and it’s great. The sarcasm and jokes of your AI companions get a bit annoying at times, but I still thought it was funny. Again, this is not for everyone as some jokes have no lead up to them or punch. I liked it though, and it helped substitute for what was a nonexistent story. There is no story to this game whatsoever, and not a lick of lore in sight. It’s not like Subnautica where you uncover the ancient past of a once thriving civilization which cherished life. Well you do uncover something , but it’s really shallow. It’s a bit disappointing especially since Outer Wilds came out one year prior and delivered some of the best sci-fi lore & world building in a space game.
The game looks really good and part of the reason why is because of its art direction. The design of the creatures, plantlife, and the amount of colors. Just running up to a goofy looking bird with big eyes, slapping it into the air, and getting minced up by a living meat grinder. Despite what I said in the intro I think Journey To The Savage Planet has a unique personality that helped carry me through till the end. I beat it within the last three days and it took me roughly around 6 hours. That might be both a pro and con, because six hours is a good runtime for a game such as this. Yet some people might feel cheated due to how the game is sold for thirty dollars and there’s not a whole lot of reasons to go back once you roll credits. You can find the upgrades you missed, but with only minor enemies remaining throughout the world and health deposits being at every corner it feels pointless. The game is flawed, but I do strongly recommend it. I had a fun time, will look back on it positively, and see it as a nice break in between the big releases I’ve tasked myself with covering. In the end I am gonna have to give Journey To The Savage Planet an 8.5/10 for being pretty good.
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