Journey to the Savage Planet

There’s so much Savage Planet gets right: it’s slick, gorgeous, and dense with things to do. However, for all the exploration, much of the action feels quite samey. [Issue#172, p.89]

Journey to the Savage Planet takes around 10 to 12 hours to complete, and you'll come across some neat gameplay ideas along the way, although nothing is that special.

Journey to the Savage Planet borrows plenty of familiar elements from other games, yet it does so in a carefree way that sets it apart from other sci-fi exploration games, settling on a relaxing playstyle that's informed by its single, vivid planet and tightly focused design. It only takes a couple of hours to reveal its humdrum combat, but this is the only significant damper on what is an entertaining slice of lighthearted planetary exploration.

Even when the visuals remind us of so many other games, Journey To The Savage Planet has very unique ideas and its exploration mechanics are particularly remarkable. The experience is short-lived, with some major bugs, but still good, especially if you play it in co-op.

Journey to the Savage Planet is a game about exploration and looking for a change of pace in progression. It’s rewarding to those who take things slower or have a knack for adventure. It’s definitely on the easier side but has a gameplay loop that offers a bit of everything with sharp responsiveness. The parts that Journey to the Savage Planet really excel in don’t last for too long.

Journey to the Savage Planet is absolutely dripping with charm and personality, but the repetitive nature of the exploration and the stiff combat hold it back from being truly great.

Journey to the Savage Planet is well worth checking out if you’re looking for something to fill the void of time you’ve got during this fairly quiet start to 2020. The sense of exploration drives you forward, the satirical comedy lands every time, and the presentation on the whole just adds to the magical sense of exploring and mapping an uncharted planet.

Journey to the Savage Planet is the definition of a mixed bag. The goofy live-action bits, cute creatures and overall aesthetic have a ton of charm, but the satire feels oafishly delivered and underdone. The first-person platforming is a cut above, but the combat is tedious and unpleasant, and the exploration is hamstrung by an unwieldy teleporter system and the absurd absence of a map. There’s a lot to like about Savage Planet, but I was also more than ready to be done with it long before it asked me to shoot dozens of GWPs on its engagingly ugly final boss.

The game doesn’t outstay its welcome over its 12ish hours, which is, truthfully, something of a blessing.

Strangely, for all the noise Savage Planet makes, its strongest moments are its quietest. There’s an element of silent theatre to the way your character communicates his goofy personality through his hands, while the world design is spotted with pleasing flourishes, such as trees bearing foliage that transforms into butterflies. In the end, it’s little touches like this, rather than the more in-your-face moments, that lend Savage Planet the dash of flavour it spends so much energy searching for.

I wanted to love Journey to the Savage Planet, but ultimately it falls short. While the world and its inhabitants are well-designed, the lack of any real payoff in both story and gameplay leads to an altogether forgettable journey. While some of the game's jokes hit the mark, there's just not that many reasons to grab your spacesuit and gun for this adventure.

Journey to the Savage Planet is a game with a lot of nice ideas – trying to single-handedly twist a well-worn genre into new and exciting shapes – but ultimately doesn’t quite have the courage to commit to them. There’s a lot to enjoy, particularly in its opening hours, but for all its grand ambitions, Savage Planet ultimately falls back on tired ideas to see it through to an underwhelming end. Like the ship you’re trying to repair throughout, it’s an admirable thing, but it can’t quite nail the landing.

It might lack some polish, but Journey to the Savage Planet is an enjoyable jaunt across a strange, open-ended landscape. This is a game you play in order to explore its intriguing environment and interact with the wildlife -- combat is fairly dull, attempts at humour rarely land, and the story almost feels like an afterthought at times. If you're looking for an easy-going sci-fi action game, this just about does enough to satisfy.

Journey to the Savage Planet is a frustrating game. Not because it’s that hard (it’s not, at least not intentionally), and not because it’s broken (at least not too much). No, it’s frustrating because it’s so close to being a good game, and you can see the tweaks that would have made it a good game…but absent those tweaks, it all just feels like a giant missed opportunity.

Ultimately, Journey to the Savage Planet is a little less savage and a little more tame. What it does, it does quite well; it's just a shame it doesn't do very much. A decent title for those that get excited at the thought of exploration, but an otherwise unremarkable experience.

Journey to the Savage Planet offers an atypical open-world feedback loop with some small bits of clever detail but there’s not much else going for it. The writing is tired while the combat is uninspired, with pea shooter guns and a variety of frustrating enemies. Despite this, there’s still no sense of difficulty or tantalising mystery to distance it from its peers or keep you exploring beyond the short narrative – and the addition of co-op feels pointless.