Journey to the Savage Planet

 PlayStation 4
User Score
7.0

Mixed or average reviews- based on 88 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 50 out of 88
  2. Mixed: 24 out of 88
  3. Negative: 14 out of 88
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  1. AsaZimbabwe
    Mar 30, 2020
    5
    it's kinda charming, cute colorful visuals, pop sci-fi aesthetic, few moments of pretty clever writing, and a few great background videos... but after running through the world for several hours I just had no desire to go any further. finally turned it back on again for the first time in a month tonight and really tried to get back into it, mostly in an attempt to justify my thirtyit's kinda charming, cute colorful visuals, pop sci-fi aesthetic, few moments of pretty clever writing, and a few great background videos... but after running through the world for several hours I just had no desire to go any further. finally turned it back on again for the first time in a month tonight and really tried to get back into it, mostly in an attempt to justify my thirty dollars... but gave up after an hour. so/so platforming, so/so shooting mechanics, more frustrating than fun. doubt i will ever turn this back on again. it's just 'meh'. if you're on the fence about buying this game, remember: theres no going back on digital purchases :/… Expand
  2. raptus21
    Feb 12, 2020
    7
    At the beginning the game looks very promising. It is colorful, story presents itself interesting, computer is quite witty and talkative. But after 2 h I got tired of hitting the wall all the time. Everywhere where I went I lacked equipment. So I know that I need to go back there again and again. Graphic style becomes too overwhelming and it is not visible which parts of environment areAt the beginning the game looks very promising. It is colorful, story presents itself interesting, computer is quite witty and talkative. But after 2 h I got tired of hitting the wall all the time. Everywhere where I went I lacked equipment. So I know that I need to go back there again and again. Graphic style becomes too overwhelming and it is not visible which parts of environment are for exploration and which are just "nice-looking". So few times I have ended outside of the map. And here we come to the worst part of that game. There is NO map. You never know where you were, where you need to come back to collect something, where you should go next. When you die, you resurrect at your ship and loose all resources (waiting to be picked up where you died). It is annoying and not welcomed. Game concept wears off quite fast. You may enjoy it longer if you like lots of platform elements and farming resources. Fight is poor, you can only shoot from pistol and sometimes hit enemy with your bare hand. Getting better equipment requires do-not-know-what plus doing idiotic stuff like killing five enemies after kicking them into air. I was very positive towards the game, but after playing for few hours and getting to half of it (more or less) I do not find it entertaining anymore.… Expand
  3. SplitMind
    Feb 5, 2020
    5
    At first this game oozes charm, charisma and personality. The graphics are refreshingly colourful after I played Nioh, one of the many games in my backlog. The humour is very witty and crude, and the exploration and gameplay can be fun.

    However then it takes a darker twist, and not in a good way. Old familiar tropes surface their tired faces. You have to come back to areas you've    At first this game oozes charm, charisma and personality. The graphics are refreshingly colourful after I played Nioh, one of the many games in my backlog. The humour is very witty and crude, and the exploration and gameplay can be fun.

    However then it takes a darker twist, and not in a good way. Old familiar tropes surface their tired faces. You have to come back to areas you've previously visited once you've unlocked the relevant tool, by which time I'd forgotten where that area was and why I wanted to go there. The enemies become colour palette swapped sprites rather than original designs. Each time you enter a new area, you rinse and repeat the same formula; scan enemies, collect resources and build the new tool needed to progress. By the time I got past the first boss I had already become very weary of this.

    Furthermore, despite the game emphasising exploration, I found it rather frustrating because I kept hitting dead ends or attempted to explore an area that was just decorative and not traversable, however I could not tell the difference because of the graphics and design. Also because of the design, it became hard for me to know where to go several times. Mission pointers are not always clear.

    All in all, it's more of a nice idea of a game than it is in execution. It aims for Ratchet and Clank meets The Outer Worlds but ends up more like Fallout 76 meets No Man's Sky only with less bugs. The game grew tedious for me very quickly and the charm quickly became grating. Even casual gamers will probably be deterred from this due to the repetitive nature of it. Wait for a sale or go for something else.    … Expand
  4. MetaRogue
    Jun 29, 2021
    6
    At the very start, Journey to the Savage Planet hints at an adventure that will feel consistently fresh and exciting with a new premise that glistens with potential. In reality, that excitement wears off roughly 1 to 2 hours into the game and the other 6 hours you spend with JTTSP feels somewhere between an exercise in futility and a gruelling test of your patience.

    JTTSP is slim in    At the very start, Journey to the Savage Planet hints at an adventure that will feel consistently fresh and exciting with a new premise that glistens with potential. In reality, that excitement wears off roughly 1 to 2 hours into the game and the other 6 hours you spend with JTTSP feels somewhere between an exercise in futility and a gruelling test of your patience.

    JTTSP is slim in terms of narrative - you play as a faceless, space-suited protagonist whose job is to survey a new planet, catalogue the local wildlife, and make sure the place is suitable for human habitation. Things don't go as intended with the discovery of ancient alien ruins that hint at a pre-existing society and you get tasked personally by the company's CEO to uncover the truth.

    I'm not going to lie - JTTSP's story is absolutely barebones (with no meat). You simply follow the quest marker, hope that you have the right equipment to reach where you need to go, do a thing, then go to where the next quest marker is while listening to the AI spout occasionally humorous lines of dialogue. Occasionally the game will gate your progress with a boss fight that you'll need to beat to unlock a new Metroidvania-esque item that will allow you to access new areas. And it's at this point that I need to talk about combat.

    Combat in JTTSP is a mediocre exercise of frustration and patience. At the very start you will only have access to a basic melee slap (that is humorously, a backslap). Shortly afterwards, you get access to your first (and only) weapon: A laser gun. Using this thing is hilariously underwhelming because of how awkward it feels to aim, how long it takes to recharge and how weak and ineffective it is to use.

    Combat is by far JTTSP's weakest leg to stand on - and it leans on it far too heavily and far too often. At certain points within the game, you will need to complete mini-boss encounters and major boss encounters. JTTSP tries to implement challenge into these encounters by including the outdated 'hit-the-glowing-parts-to-defeat' mechanic. This turns combat into a frustrating dance of positioning yourself correctly and shooting the tiny glowing bits . What compounds this is how awkward it feels to aim your gun, but also the fact that you need to hit the glowing bit at exactly the right angle otherwise the damage dealt by your gun will be registered as negligible. On top of this, some enemies can do AOE attacks that are difficult to gauge in terms of location because of the limited first-person perspective.

    As an explorer, you can scan new wildlife and flora, but even this mechanic gets old quickly because of the fact that you'll different variants of previously discovered animals. Plus scanning new things doesn't reward you with resources or XP, but instead is simply just a checklist to complete.

    JTTSP also features puzzles, but these are of varying quality and after an hour or two you'll become very familiar with them. There's also some platforming in the game, but it's hindered by how demanding it can be at times alongside the restrictive first-person perspective.

    The available upgrades are another lacklustre feature of JTTSP, not just by what they provide, but by how they're gated. To upgrade any equipment, you simply need resources (Carbon, Aluminum etc.) which can be easily obtained, but to unlock new upgrades for purchase you need to level up your Explorer Rank. What's confusing about this aspect of the game, is that you need to complete various challenges that range from obtuse to ridiculous - like blowing up a certain number of creatures using a certain tool or technique. This is something that I find not just questionable, but simply stupid because it would make more sense that scanning new things would level up your Explorer Rank instead of doing nonsensical challenges that have absolutely nothing to do with exploration or discovery.

    Another core feature of JTTSP's appeal is it's approach to humour - from a marketing perspective that is. For me, I found JTTSP's humorous tone to be occasionally funny, but for the most part I found it to be either cringe inducing or just straight up sarcastic, sociopathic and mean. To me, the game's tone felt like a combination of The Outer Worlds and the movie, Evolution - a combination that in retrospect just simply doesn't work.

    I spent a total of just over 8 hours with JTTSP at roughly 60% completion, but by that point I had reached my limit. In reflection, I honestly felt like I had wasted my time playing the game and couldn't be bothered collecting 'all the things'. If there's one redeeming factor to JTTSP it's the soundtrack which is brilliantly composed and understated.

    JTTSP is a game that, just like magnesium, burns very bright very quickly, but then fades just as fast, leaving not even a glow once it's out. It has praise worthy ideas that are completely overshadowed by mediocre gameplay mechanics and an almost non-existent story.    … Expand
  5. KayVen17
    Dec 21, 2020
    7
    Das Spiel hat mir richtig Spaß gemacht. Trotzdem hat mich das Metroidvania-Prinzip (was ich eigentlich mag) hier gar nicht abgeholt. Den Charme mochte ich. Den Coop auch, aber zum einmal durchspielen reicht das Spiel. Alle Sachen zu sammeln hat mich persönlich nicht gereizt.

    Trotzdem kann ich das Spiel im Coop wärmstens empfehlen. Für Solo-Spieler würde ich es mir überlegen.
  6. viroodiem
    Oct 21, 2020
    7
    A well made offering, albeit hinged on multiplayer interaction. If it were based on just that it would merit a 7 however with the studio not releasing a physical copy in the US or UK for English speakers (though obviously because Germans are more conscientious gamers and make corporations behave, German physical copies exist) then that guts the score. When ever a release in a physicalA well made offering, albeit hinged on multiplayer interaction. If it were based on just that it would merit a 7 however with the studio not releasing a physical copy in the US or UK for English speakers (though obviously because Germans are more conscientious gamers and make corporations behave, German physical copies exist) then that guts the score. When ever a release in a physical format happens this score will be brought back up to its rightful 7… Expand
  7. lqstuart
    Aug 15, 2021
    6
    Fun little game. Not much to it, it's like 1/4th of a game, but I really connected with it and had some fun. Had to dock it points because there's no working pause feature, wtf.
  8. GabFire
    Aug 9, 2020
    7
    Me decepcionei com esse jogo, esperava mais antes do lançamento, acabei que nem curti direito.
  9. GrumpyParrot
    Jul 27, 2022
    5
    The game looks and sounds funny, with all the vibrant colors and some cute animals, but the back tracking, mediocre platforming and wall gating (because of equipment lacking) make this more of a chore. When you die, you don't respawn near the location you died in, but are "regenerated" at your space ship. So basically you need to back track even more, even though you can go to theThe game looks and sounds funny, with all the vibrant colors and some cute animals, but the back tracking, mediocre platforming and wall gating (because of equipment lacking) make this more of a chore. When you die, you don't respawn near the location you died in, but are "regenerated" at your space ship. So basically you need to back track even more, even though you can go to the "nearest" checkpoint (only 7 in the game). After 3 hours in I gave up. I didn't even scan animals anymore, mainly because a lot of the animals you need to scan attack you: a flying squid, a shooting turtle shell, a laser targeting cyclops, boomerang bats, a rolling armadillo. Especially the armadillo was a pain, because you need to shoot the 3 glowing bits on its tail and they are only exposed after you succesfully dodged its attack. The platforming was mostly double jumping or using a rope dart to pull you up ledges. The rope dart felt okay, because the pulling was automatic, but later you had to throw seeds to walls to create rope darting spots. This felt complicated, because it was. Basically you rope dart to the wall, do a double jump away and try to rope dart up again. Needless to say this leads to a lot of frustration when it fails and this mechanic should have been replaced with rope climbing or something. All in all, a needlessly frustrating experience and eventhough i only paid $12 for this, i still feel i paid too much.… Expand

Awards & Rankings

89
#89 Most Discussed PS4 Game of 2020

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
74

Mixed or average reviews - based on 57 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 38 out of 57
  2. Mixed: 18 out of 57
  3. Negative: 1 out of 57
  1. Gaming Age
    Apr 16, 2020
    58
    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.
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  2. CD-Action
    Mar 17, 2020
    75
    While it starts exceptionally strong, towards the end the game gets boring and the finale seems as creative as something I myself could have written in ten minutes. [04/2020, p.52]
  3. PLAY! Zine
    Mar 16, 2020
    80
    Its a wild, crazy, weird world out there. And you and a fellow victi…friend will be able to explore it. If you have been looking for an actually fun and enjoyable survivor exploration game then look no further. Even with a few hiccups, it can still be a nice adventure.
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