In 2020, Journey to the Savage Planet offered enticing exploration and inventive combat as you scoured an unaccommodating alien planet for resources and catalogued its inhabitants. Five years later, Revenge of the Savage Planet delivers the same basic concept, but thanks to a new third-person perspective, multiple planets, and a more thoughtful world design, it offers players a more consistent and enjoyable experience.
Stepping into the spacesuit of a hapless corporate employee tasked with exploring planets in remote corners of the galaxy, you immediately get to work scanning every object, creature, and plant. I loved activating my visor and seeing a ton of previously unscanned items around me. As you explore, you encounter several different beasts, ranging from cute ball-like raccoons to flaming birds that will not hesitate to spew lava at you.
Armed with an upgradeable pistol, I always felt well-equipped to handle the encounters I was thrust into. Add various peripheral weapons like bait that distracts enemies or causes them to attack each other, a hose that can spray everything from lava to conductive goo, and a magnetic fork that lets you turn metal objects into projectiles, and Revenge of the Savage Planet offers engaging combat encounters throughout.
You’ll need all these weapons at your disposal for the times when you stumble upon nests or find yourself the subject of an ambush. On multiple occasions, I struggled to keep up with the chaos onscreen, as wasps fired projectiles, exploding monsters sprinted towards me, and tongue-lashing beasts tried to rope me in for dinner. In those instances, I relied heavily not only on those secondary weapons, but on my character’s mobility, which is also upgradeable. However, some enemy types, like small bees that teleport around and poke at you from multiple directions, were more annoying than challenging.
Upgrades are well-paced as you explore and gather resources, find blueprints, and complete quests to unlock new upgrade branches. While defeated creatures drop resources, few feelings surpassed the joy of watching a resource cache you found pop like a piñata. Those resources are essential for upgrading every part of your weapon and suit. Early on, I loved adding more oomph to my pistol, gaining a double-jump, or removing fall damage, while later upgrades fundamentally changed exploration through abilities like attaching a grapple beam anywhere, including mid-air.
Though I loved adding that grappling ability to my arsenal late in the game, I was glad it came later, as it flips my favorite part of the game, exploration, on its head. Revenge of the Savage Planet gives you multiple planets, each with distinct biomes and myriad secrets to uncover, either alone or with a friend, throughout its 12-plus hour campaign. Thanks to this entry’s shift from the first-person gameplay of its predecessor to third-person gameplay, jumping from cliffside to floating platform is much more intuitive and reliable. From the lush rainforest environment of the starter planet to the icy peaks, sandy dunes, and volcanic craters of subsequent worlds, I relished finding every secret I could and scanning every creature to add them to my catalog.
Revenge of the Savage Planet succeeds where many exploration-based open-world games fall short: It offers compelling discoveries nearly everywhere you go. Because of this, I often veered off the golden path to see what was nestled on the cliffside above my objective. Its Metroid-like world design dangles enticing secrets over your head, only to make you realize you don’t have the appropriate gear to reach it. I lost count of the number of times I excitedly returned to a previous planet with my new upgrade to finally access an area I learned about hours prior.
Though it falls more into the background than the gameplay elements, Revenge of the Savage Planet offers mostly enjoyable satire of corporations and the act of working for one, including a customizable habitat that you can use proprietary corporate currency to decorate. Though I was always more compelled by the checklist nature of my quest log than I was by the narrative’s core mystery, I was glad to see the story through. Developer Raccoon Logic lays the humor on thick, particularly in the habitat, where you can watch satirical commercials. The jokes didn’t always land for me, but a few elicited more than a chuckle.
Revenge of the Savage Planet is an upgrade over its predecessor in nearly every way. Consistently rewarding exploration pushed me to poke around every corner of the worlds I visited, and often-fun combat encounters kept the experience fresh and engaging. The first game was a fun one-off experience, but its sequel is a far more complete and rewarding package that left me hungry for more savage planets to explore.
