Humor against corporations. Revenge of the Savage Planet game review

Revenge of the Savage Planet is a direct sequel to the rather successful fantasy-satirical action/adventure Journey to the Savage Planet (2020), but from a different developer and publisher. As it turns out, not everything is so simple in the history of this game's emergence.

The developers of Revenge of the Savage Planet, Raccoon Logic, previously worked at another company, Typhoon Studios. The latter was acquired by Google as part of an attempt to popularize its own cloud gaming project, Google Stadia. However, Stadia turned out to be useless for the mass player, so Typhoon Studios managed to release only one game, Journey to the Savage Planet, before Google shut it down.

A fairly typical situation for the gaming industry in recent years, but the story did not end there. Key employees of Typhoon Studios founded the studio Raccoon Logic and even managed to negotiate with Google to obtain all the rights to the intellectual property of Journey to the Savage Planet, dreaming of building their own franchise. The transformation and investment was helped by the Chinese giant Tencent, which continues to actively spread its influence over Western studios.

What is important is that due to such contexts, Revenge of the Savage Planet became a personal game for the developers. Therefore, they did not hold back from speaking out about various manifestations of capitalism and the excessive power of corporations with the help of satire and a little bit of silly humor (a similar anti-corporate satire was also in the first part of the game, back when Google was still in power – ed.). And Revenge of the Savage Planet is a really good adventure that does not burden the brain and skills of the players at all, but on the contrary – does almost everything for their convenience and kindly encourages them to explore new worlds.

The plot of Revenge of the Savage Planet begins with the main character becoming a participant in a special space research program from the megacorporation Alta, which embodies all the stereotypes of science fiction about large companies. This program is prestigious and important, but by the time the protagonist reaches the planet Stellaris Prime, Alta has decided to cancel everything and release everyone. The only hope for the abandoned hero is a reliable bot-assistant, which can lead to the equipment located on the current planet and not only. And the main motivation becomes as simple as possible: it's time to take revenge on Alta and tell everyone about her dirty deeds.

The plot in Revenge of the Savage Planet turned out to be quite conventional, and the plot itself in the game seems to be non-existent. The various tasks that will be added to the journal are created mainly to drive the hero around locations and involve him in various game situations. However, one should not assume that there is nothing in Revenge of the Savage Planet besides the gameplay. The developers were inspired by their own experience and situations with colleagues during large-scale layoffs in the gaming industry to create a game that is both funny and truthful. And in the Raccoon Logic studio, everything turned out 120%.

Sometimes you even wonder how the developers managed to come to an agreement with Google, because Revenge of the Savage Planet quite harshly mocks this particular technological giant. Substitute Google instead of Alta in all phrases - and everything will become obvious. However, even without direct mention, the developers still joke about the former management, for example, with the phrase about "profits from the search engine", which overlaps all others.

The authors of Revenge of the Savage Planet joke about Google, Tesla and other large corporations, about questionable working conditions, lack of bonuses and severance pay, about strange standards within the gaming industry, about funny and not so funny memes of the Begone Thot level. The game is filled to the brim with jokes, and the robot assistant never tires of commenting on absolutely everything around. Perhaps he even tries too hard with the comments, but the developers have foreseen everything here too, so if you wish, the number of accompanying phrases can be reduced or even reduced to zero. There is even a place for self-irony moments, breaking the fourth wall and jokes about unsuccessful game design decisions.

And the game constantly throws up absurd videos with real actors, which are better to watch once, because everything in them is extremely eloquent.

So make no mistake, Revenge of the Savage Planet is one of the funniest games in recent years, if not one of the funniest games of all time. However, jokes alone won't get you far, which is something that the developers of many games with an emphasis on humor forget. However, in Revenge of the Savage Planet, this is fine, but some roughness is already starting to appear in the gameplay.

At first, it may seem that Revenge of the Savage Planet works on the foundation of survival games, that is, the key activity will be the collection of resources. And although you still have to collect resources, this process does not turn into a tedious routine at all. After all, Revenge of the Savage Planet is primarily a metroidvania, reminiscent of the game cycles of Metroid Prime and Control. But unlike these games, exploring the world in the Raccoon Logic project feels easy and unobtrusive. And there are two reasons for this.

First, the developers encourage the player to explore the world in whatever way they want, and mostly don't tie locations to the use of specific tools or character skills, which is what almost all famous metroidvanias are built on. If desired, some places can be reached solely through regular jumping or creative use of the environment. The bot will also comment on something, meaning the developers thought from the very beginning that players would not be rigidly tied to the plot progression and would look for their own solutions.

Second, and more important, Revenge of the Savage Planet does everything to make exploring the world comfortable and almost never forces the player to worry about finding the necessary items and locations. The marker will always indicate a convenient path to the goal or the necessary area, there is a teleport near each key area, even the level design unobtrusively pushes in the right direction or to some useful item.

Forgot something? No problem, you can always scan the area to see a description of enemies and items. The same locator will help you see where the nearest resources are. Frankly, sometimes the game seems too simple and does not provide any worthy challenges. Even the division of the game world into separate planets is designed so that players have separate, fairly simple locations, rather than a large, confusing world. Don't expect any difficulties. The exception is the bosses. They are well made, but there are not enough of them.

By the way, the scanner clearly demonstrates the love with which the developers approached the creation of Revenge of the Savage Planet. Each object in the game, be it a small bush or a fish in a pond, has a humorous description. Of course, the game pushes you to scan absolutely all objects and fill out the codex 100%. And again, this can be done without much effort.

Exploring the world, searching for resources and items, and going through peculiar acrobatic tests in Revenge of the Savage Planet will not bore you until the very end. Fortunately, the game itself can be completed in 8-10 hours, and that's after collecting the vast majority of secrets. But there is one important element in it that gets boring in the first hour, but the developers still force you to interact with it constantly. And this is the combat system.

Shooting in Revenge of the Savage Planet is not at all interesting, engaging in close combat is even more boring. At the same time, battles are built on finding enemy vulnerabilities and actively using the environment, because various flowers and fruits that are full of planets in the game explode and have unique effects. However, battles still boil down to routine shooting of enemies.

The authors tried to experiment a little with the types of weapons, probably inspired by the latest parts of Ratchet & Clank. However, Revenge of the Savage Planet does not give even a tenth of the pleasure that the creation of Insomniac Games is capable of. But it is good that 85% of the game can be passed without battles, and interactions with enemies will occur only when they are caught at your own base. There you can conduct research to get a useful upgrade for equipment.

Upgrades in Revenge of the Savage Planet are not standard for modern games "+10% protection against fire attacks when the character has less than 30% health", but really useful things. For example, a charged shot or the ability to cling to an energy lasso absolutely anywhere, and not just to specific points. However, each exploration takes several minutes of real time, during which you have to collect resources or complete various tests, because the progression of the story is often blocked by the lack of another upgrade.

Such situations are annoying and ruin the overall high pace of the game, especially in contrast to the almost complete freedom to explore the worlds most of the time. In addition, improvements can only be crafted on your own base, so you will return to the starting planet again and again. It is clear that in this way the developers wanted to push players to find secrets and try new tools, but not everyone will like it.

However, Revenge of the Savage Planet never goes beyond mild irritation. It is impossible to get angry at such a bright, tactilely pleasant and funny game. In co-op, it will give even more pleasant impressions, especially when playing together on one screen, and there is such a thing here. However, even in solo, the game is still well-made. And this is definitely a good sign, because many games with a cooperative mode are covered up precisely by the possibility of playing with friends, and the experience of playing them independently does not give positive emotions.

Yes, Revenge of the Savage Planet is definitely not a masterpiece, but the main elements work well, or at least don't cause any noticeable dissatisfaction. It will put a smile on your face more than once, and right now, that's exactly what you need.

Plus, the game has been available for free on Game Pass since release, so there's no reason not to give it a try.