Fans of science fiction and space exploration games got quite a few treats last year. Whether that came in the form of The Outer Worlds’ skewering of capitalism, The Outer Wilds universe puzzle box approach, or any of the No Man’s Sky updates, there was something out there for every fan to enjoy. Announced at the Game Awards in 2018, Journey to the Savage Planet looks to continue that trend, and it does a fine job doing so.
Journey to the Savage Planet drops players into the shoes of a space-explorer for Kindred Aerospace, Earth’s fourth-best space exploration company. Along with an AI companion and a blaster pistol, players set out to find a new home for humanity amongst the stars. Regular updates from Martin Tweed, CEO of Kindred Aerospace, let players know how their discoveries are shaking things up back home as they try to uncover the secrets of a lost alien race that once called the planet home.
With a variety of tools to help back the player up and popping environments to gaze at, exploring the planet is an absolute joy. At its core, Journey to the Savage Planet feels like a playground. There are things to bounce on, walls to climb up, grapples to swing around with, and tons of obstacles to navigate. The game is at its best when it puts all these elements together, letting players maneuver around the planet in a variety of ways with the hope of a reward just around the corner. It’s a love letter to some of the best movement mechanics of the generation, and the game blends them incredibly well, easily contending with some of the best level design of last year.
While they don’t have a ton of variety, there are plenty of rewards for players to discover scattered around the world, too. Orange Goo, a gross looking blob, will upgrade the player’s health and stamina. Those blobs are stuffed in every nook and cranny, with some being far more difficult to collect than others. There are also Alien Alloys, a key ingredient in upgrading the player’s toolset. Alien alloys are harder to come by, and usually require a combat or environment challenge to complete. Alien Tablets and Explorer’s Logs will help unravel more of the game’s narrative, which is pretty secondary to the exploration. It isn’t one of the best stories out there, though there is a prudent message in the end.
Finding these upgrades is the greatest joy of Journey to the Savage Planet. Progression happens quickly, with upgrades becoming readily available as players gather resources throughout their journey. The only roadblock for that progression is the player’s Explorer Rank, which can be upgraded through challenges. Challenges are actually pretty fun to pull off, though they can take some trial and error. It’s a nice distraction from constantly running between the planet’s three main zones, adding some nice variety to the adventure.
Journey to the Savage Planet is a game for explorers. Those that want to blaze through it won’t have any trouble doing so, as the main story portion of the game doesn’t take long to finish once players have all the necessary upgrades. But Journey to the Savage Planet is a game worth taking the time to explore. Doubling back to find things previously unattainable usually reveals several more equally interesting things to discover, each of which tied back into upgrading the player.
These upgrades, which range anywhere from extra jumps in the air to weapon damage, are key to the game. They allow players to explore previously inaccessible areas, almost like a Metroidvania, and offer even better movement throughout the game’s various platforming challenges.That platforming isn’t always perfect, grabbing ledges doesn’t always work well and mid-air movement can be a pain to nail down at times, but it isn’t enough to ruin the experience.
With mixed success, Journey to the Savage Planet is almost constantly delivering jokes. Not all of them land - in fact, some are pretty terrible - but there are few that actually manage to prompt a fair bit of laughter. It’s in the same vein as what Borderlands 3 humor tries to accomplish, though a little bit more PG in a lot of instances. Creature descriptions and world events tend to have better delivery, while auto-playing videos in the player’s ship, the Javelin, are typically just obnoxious, save a few.
Combat, by far, is Journey to the Savage Planet’s weakest aspect. Many of the game’s enemies need a certain level of precision to defeat - precision that the blaster simply isn’t great at. Projectiles are relatively slow against fast creatures. Targets are typically small and difficult to hit, but the aim-down-sight doesn’t help precision all that much. Using some of the planet’s grenade-style resources can help stun enemies or lock them into place, but even that can be difficult to accomplish at times. The blaster can be upgraded to deal more damage, hold more bullets, and reload faster, which does help immensely, but it still isn’t ideal, leading to an overall lackluster combat system.
That being said, Journey to the Savage Planet has some surprisingly fun boss fights, shooting aside. The big baddies at the end of each zone are surprisingly well-designed, with a blend of platforming, shooting, and resource management happening all at once during face-offs. The only exception here is the final boss, which emphasizes the game’s worst elements - precision shooting and confined spaces. Dodging and dashing make the combat feel fast, but the final boss periodically restricts players to three small platforms in its third phase, which makes the player extremely easy to hit and kill.
Luckily, not everything on the planet wants to kill the player. Many look like they could be added to the Pokedex with very few changes. Finding new creatures, or variations of those creatures, is one of Journey to the Savage Planet’s better aspects. Of course, science experiments and a constant need for resources will result in the player slapping, blasting, and otherwise torturing some of the friendly inhabitants of the planet, so it’s best not to get too attached to the little critters.
As a sort of side goal, players are tasked with scanning and documenting these creatures, similar to what one would find in a game like No Man’s Sky. Each one is memorable in its own way, often bringing along their very own quirks and oddities. Puffbirds, cute round creatures, have a variation that basically turns them into a mindless zombie. Some minor boss enemies will have versions with outer layers of rock or amber that need to be blown up or melted away before they can be damaged. They aren’t major differences, but it’s enough of a change to keep things interesting from encounter to encounter.
There’s a profound sense of exploration and discovery in Journey to the Savage Planet. It’s constantly motivating the player to double back and take another look at an area without ever explicitly telling them to. It’s like being let into an amusement park with no lines and no rules, giving players the freedom to make their own fun whenever they need a break from an incredibly vertical, and hardly ever uninteresting, scavenger hunt for new resources and upgrades. It may not be an entire planet to explore, but it could easily fill one up.
Journey to the Savage Planet releases January 28th, 2020, for PC, PS4, and Xbox One. Game Rant was provided a PS4 code for the purposes of this review.
