Revenge of the Savage Planet units out to do plenty of issues, and it succeeds at almost all of them. It’s a metroidvania, however there are survival parts, and a doubtlessly fairly elaborate fight system based mostly on its variously-powered goo, which can also be used for puzzle-solving.
There’s a creature-capturing mechanic, and a resource-harvesting system, plenty of truly fairly good third-person platforming and a base-building system. All of it’s rewarding to play and superbly animated and sometimes fairly wittily introduced – however Revenge of the Savage Planet additionally desires to be capital-F Humorous, and that’s by far its most carrying characteristic. The enjoyment of exploration is ready towards the feeling of being trapped within the entrance row of a relentlessly C-tier standup routine.
The foundational gag is that you simply’re a worker-drone colonist who’s been frozen and flung into area, solely to crash-land and uncover that your saccharine firm onboarding video is adopted by one other equally insincere one saying your termination. You’ve then acquired to reap your gear from the encompassing planets, tame the atmosphere, construct a base, and cobble collectively a ship that’ll take you house, to a backdrop of heavy-handed gags about company course of.
The meat of that is exploration within the conventional metroidvania type, as you sally forth into what turns into a collection of various planets, every with totally different brightly-coloured biomes. Your underpowered laser pop-gun compels you to rapidly be taught and exploit environmental harm and creature assault patterns, and also you graduate to an vitality whip plus goo-based assaults that add lava, slime, or glue. The latter is electrically conductive, which suggests it may be used to unravel puzzles involving inexplicably electrified mushrooms, in addition to zap extra annoying enemies.
Revenge of the Savage Planet being a metroidvania, the early levels are marked by repeated deaths as you’re employed out what’s survivable and what would require you to return with a greater weapon and an unlocked sprint potential, nevertheless it’s doable to run away from most misjudgements and the sport is notably dedicated to making sure you see as a lot of it as doable, to the purpose of literal (neon) signposting for a number of the myriad aspect missions.
The uncommon boss battles are simple affairs that may be understood and defeated rapidly, reasonably than by relentless grinding. You may unlock zipline-style shortcuts to and from essentially the most distant climbs, and any notably arduous platforming problem will spare you the worst of the enemy respawns till you attain the aim. The fight is beneficiant by default, too, with default lock-on, easily-read enemy assault patterns, and your scan device highlighting weak spots.
Fight just isn’t notably clever, however the totally different results of your assortment of gooey grenades does combine issues up a bit, as does yeeting explosive critters into bigger ones. Abusing the lock-on to chain the cowbell clangs you get from hitting a weak spot is affordable however rewarding, and unlocking skills to bat again incoming projectiles (with a sassy wrist-flap) or ship armour-shredding floor kilos makes taking over a couple of bigger enemies fairly satisfying.
Sadly, it’s extra widespread to be swarmed, even exterior of the wave-attack challenges required to entry sure mission targets. Whereas it’s notionally doable to play the methods off towards one another, in observe, you simply find yourself wildly circle-strafing making an attempt to set off an environmental hazard in a approach that’ll skinny the herd. It’s not senseless, nevertheless it’s extra flail than finesse and consequently, not notably pleasing until you will have the comedy bonus of a co-op accomplice.
“The enjoyment of exploration is ready towards the feeling of being trapped within the entrance row of a relentlessly C-tier standup routine.”
It’s, nevertheless, simple to beat and transfer on to the following factor, and Revenge of the Savage Planet all the time has the following factor available. You’re rewarded with upgrades for scanning issues, and assets for killing issues, and lassoing creatures grants each analysis advantages and a model of them in your more and more intensive petting zoo again within the base. Money drops discovered on crash websites will be spent on a startlingly complete set of beauty upgrades to your dwelling quarters, enabling you to craft the kitchen design that Starfleet was too cowardly to deploy.
The regular circulate of upgrades granted by the twelve or so hours of most important narrative, paired with an countless provide of faintly satisfying busywork, implies that it’s very simple to spend time mopping up totally different challenges and returning to zones along with your newest unlock to see what’s accessible this time.
Revenge of the Savage Planet can also be humorous, to some extent, cramming gags of various high quality into each little bit of interface textual content and utilizing the change to third-person perspective (from the unique recreation’s first-person) to play up bodily comedy too. Your character’s goofy default strut, distressing fall-damage restoration, and assortment of natty unlockable outfits all increase a smile because of top-notch character animation.
The issue is that it’s backed by thuddingly overblown company satire that makes Dilbert appear like Dickens. The story is usually expressed by a collection of over-saturated live-action video skits that appear like LazyTown meets Enterprise Research, interspersed with dystopian product advertisements and supported by numerous e mail messages in a tone of cheerily sociopathic business-speak. This isn’t a troublesome goal for comedy, and a number of the relentless gags do increase fun, however the hit charge is low, and finally even skipping by it turns into a chore.
This determined mugging stands in distinction to the sport’s different options, that are delivered with so mild a contact as to look easy. The worlds are brightly colored and punctiliously detailed, and largely a delight to be in.
The city of nu-Florida you steadily assemble (Inhabitants: 1) has a lovely intergalactic-trailer-park vibe. The animals are simply the fitting mix of Pixar and Play-Doh to be memorable but in addition murderable with out troubling your conscience. And the horizons lengthen at simply the fitting charge, so it nearly all the time feels such as you’re exploring and discovering on the way in which to the following mission marker, reasonably than grinding away to unlock one thing.
The sledgehammer satire is the sport’s solely true bum notice, in each sense of the time period. It additionally makes it a bit much less doubtless you’ll use the in any other case extremely accessible co-op play with the youngest children, until you wish to be explaining the birds and bees due to the TV spot for invertebrate prostitutes, and it appears unlikely the gags about compliance coaching will land for the under-25s both.
Taking part in co-op is probably one of the simplest ways to expertise Revenge of the Savage Planet, ideally with somebody sufficiently old to have skilled their first pathologically insincere restructuring announcement, nevertheless it’s nonetheless a strong journey stuffed with exploration and leisure for a solo participant.
