"Journey to the Savage Planet" Review - Metroidzon Prime

Available for: Xbox One, Playstation 4, Microsoft Windows

Reviewed for: Playstation 4

Well folks, 2020 is shaping up to be a fantastic year for gaming! We have such landmark titles as Doom Eternal coming out in a hot minute, as well as The Last of Us: Part 2 and the long-awaited Cyberpunk 2077 later on! But I say that 2020 is already looking great because the first semi-major release of the year, Journey to the Savage Planet is actually really good! Like most other people, I saw the world premiere trailer for this game at last year's Game Awards, and I responded with a resounding "meh." Another quirky-looking, garishly-colored game about space capitalism, that's all it looked like to me, and after The Outer Worlds (a much more highly-anticipated quirky-looking, garishly-colored game about space capitalism) famously earned itself the title of Worst Game of 2019 from yours truly, I didn't have much interest in Journey to the Savage Planet (hereafter referred to as JSP). However, February came around and I found that I didn't have anything else that I wanted to play. I noticed that the price tag for JSP was half that of a regular game, so I figured, why not? And let me tell you this, dear reader: For what it is, it's fantastic. It isn't the most deep, innovative experience, and in some ways the fact that this is developer Typhoon Studios' first project after splitting from Ubisoft shows. But as I said, for what it is, it's fantastic. So finish your plate of Grob, say goodbye to your Meat Buddy, and let me tell you why you ought to support space capitalism by buying JSP.

In JSP, you play as a space explorer in the employ of Kindred Aerospace, a company that proudly boasts its status as the "4th Best Aerospace Corporation." Kindred is looking into other planets that may be habitable for humans, and at the start of the game, you've just arrived on one of the candidate planets. Your job is to scan and survey all flora and fauna on this planet, find a source of fuel that will allow you to go back home, and then return to Earth with your findings...that is, until you exit a cave and find a gigantic alien tower in the center of the planet. From there, you and your sassy AI companion, Eko, venture forth into the wilds of AR-Y 26 to uncover what this tower is and who might have built it...or you just find the fuel you need to go home and give the whole planet the middle finger as the Kindred CEO screams at you through the television in your spaceship. That's part of what makes JSP so great: As the title suggests, this game is 100% about the journey, and the destination is less than irrelevant. Realistically speaking, assuming you know where fuel is, you can end the game as quickly or as slowly as you want, and you'll likely get to experience what you want to experience no matter what you choose. If you enjoy the game, you can enjoy it for basically however long you wish to! To give an example, I played through JSP twice. The first time, I did everything I possibly could, effectively 100%-ing the game. The second time around, I was aiming for the last remaining single-player-attainable trophies: one awarded for finishing the game without completing your mission, and one awarded for finishing the game in under 4 hours. However, I lost sight of those trophy goals quickly, and I was just having a blast playing through the game again. Then, I suddenly remembered why I was doing this second playthrough, and I thought, "ok, time to wrap it up." I found the last bit of fuel that I needed and pressed the button to head home, and to my surprise, I'd actually earned both of the aforementioned trophies. See, in spite of the fact that, once I remembered my purpose, I immediately went to the end, I was satisfied with what I'd played. There are those who might view that as a negative, but in my mind, a game that will satisfy you for however long you play it is a triumph!

But for all of that talk about JSP's satisfying nature, I haven't yet mentioned any specifics about how it plays. Let's change that. As I mentioned, you play as an explorer, not a space marine or soldier, so the bulk of the gameplay is centered around simple environmental puzzles and finding new things to scan. None of that is particularly difficult. After you've scanned an obstacle once you'll know how to take care of it every time from there on out, and the solution almost always relies on using one of the many items you end up taking into your inventory. Comparisons to the excellent Metroid Prime have been aplenty in criticism of JSP, and I'll say that in the bulk of the gameplay the comparison is warranted so long as, in terms of environmental puzzles, you only count the various door types in the former title. Much like in Metroid Prime, a lot of your missions involve getting upgrades that allow you to pass by these obstacles, but unlike that game, there isn't much in the way of variety in use cases for these upgrades. Hell, in terms of passing obstacles and solving puzzles, there's basically no variety. You'll know if that works for you or not, but I'll say that it's inoffensive at worst. Critical thinking does sometimes play into getting rewards. For instance, there was a blob of orange goo (the collectible that ups your health and stamina) on top of a spire of ice in an early area, and I wanted it. However, in spite of having fully upgraded thrusters that gave me the ability to jump four times and a rocket pack that gave me the ability to launch myself up to four vertical jumps worth of height, I couldn't reach the top through either tactic. Then, I had a thought: what if I used this green blob in my inventory? I threw it on the ground and found that it created, to oversimplify, a natural green trampoline. So, I readied my rocket pack, walked onto my newly-created trampoline, and set off the rocketing at the height of the resulting bounce, which landed me where I needed to be! Ambiguous situations like this do exist when it comes to reaching collectibles, but they're the exception rather than the rule. But as simple as the environmental puzzles are, the combat is even simpler. You only have one weapon: a pistol, and the way to make combat more manageable is to craft upgrades to its reload time, damage, etc. Furthermore, most of the creatures in the game are pacifistic, so the only time you'll really need your pistol is when you encounter one of the few dangerous creatures. Most enemy creatures go down in a couple of direct shots, and the few more difficult enemies are only more difficult in that they go down in a couple of shots to specific glowing weak points. Again, as in the puzzles there are tools at your disposal that you can use to spice things up, but they aren't necessary and there isn't any real reward for experimenting. For instance, referring back to that green blob I used in exploration, I realized that I might be able to use it to overcome an enemy whose weak point became exposed if they missed a rolling attack aimed at me. My thought was that, by throwing down a green trampoline in front of me at the last minute, the creature would be launched in the air and it would miss me as a result. I never quite got the timing down for that, but it's a testament to what you can come up with if you put your mind to it. Again, there's no reward for it other than indulging your own curiosity, but that's the kind of thing that does appeal to me. In the introduction, I mentioned that JSP isn't the deepest gameplay experience, and I hope I've gotten that point across in this paragraph. A pretentious little termite like me normally wouldn't give a game like this a second glance, but as it stands, if you can be entertained by a simple-yet-satisfying gameplay loop, I believe you'll find the experience enjoyable, if not therapeutic.

As I begin this next segment about the game's technical quality, I find myself in an odd situation. See, in the ways in which games tend to be technically flawed the most, JSP doesn't falter. There was a bit of time between when I last played it and when I started writing this review, but I don't recall any texture pop-in, animation glitches, audio glitches, crashes, etc. However, what does stand out are technical issues in regards to design. Perhaps the most glaring issue is the learning curve for combat. Given my comments on combat in the previous section, chances are good that you're now scratching your head and wondering how there can be a learning curve. The reason is this: the aiming in this game is wonky AF, and it's difficult to nail down exactly why. In the first hour or so of the game, you'll find yourself having a great deal of difficulty making the aiming reticle point exactly where you want it to (on the PS4, anyway), or you'll think you have the aiming reticle at the right place but your shots won't connect. I died in the very first combat encounter because of this. However, as time passes, if you're anything like me, you'll inexplicably have learned how to manage. By the mid-point of my first playthrough I could hold my own in any combat scenario, and in my second playthrough I could take out enemies while jumping across the map...and I have no clue why. It's possible that the aiming system was designed in such a way specifically because of the combat's simplicity, and the developers thought that some kind of difficulty curve starting from the beginning was necessary...but that seems improbable. Whatever way you slice it, aiming in this game just doesn't work the way it needs to at first, and though you'll likely get used to it before too long, it's bizarre that one would need to "get used to" aiming in such a simple gameplay loop. On that note, another odd design choice to bring up is the choice to suddenly make combat the main focus of the game in its last 10-20 minutes. For most of the game, combat is pretty scarce, but in these last couple minutes you're suddenly faced with a series of miniboss gauntlets that feel shoehorned in, and if you're like me, you'll just end up running past the enemies at that point. It feels rushed and speaks to a lack of vision for how the game was going to end. The other technical design oddity that requires touching upon is a bit more on the subjective side, but it was a constant bother throughout my playtime: the fact that everything except scannable items goes dark when you enter scanning mode. For instance, you might be in a well-lit area and want to zoom in on something on the horizon, but upon entering scanning mode you'll basically see nothing except things you can scan and things you've already scanned. Though you'll be able to zoom in as you wished, you won't actually be able to discern what is on the horizon unless it's scannable. So if, for example, you wanted to have a look at a distant floating rock to determine if it might have an opening in it that resources could be hidden behind, you won't have any luck. Other than these issues, the game is quite good from a technical standpoint, and it certainly gives most modern AAA releases a run for their money.

Journey to the Savage Planet is a game for particular types of people: people who can enjoy inarguably casual gaming experiences, but for whom titles such as Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley are a bit too casual. It's a game that can be as big or as small a deal as you want it to be, but at its biggest it's still pretty simple. It's a half-price game packed to the absolute brim with content both preprogrammed and user-definable, and given its technical fidelity, that makes it the embodiment of "bang for your buck." There are some design decisions that are questionable, but for my money, Journey to the Savage Planet is a hell of a way to kick of 2020!
Now, before I get to the scoring part, let me specify that I'm going to implement the idea of "scaling" the I introduced in my Best of 2019 list. This is a half-priced game with about half the runtime and complexity of your average AAA release, so I'm scaling my usual scoring system up so that a maximum of 2 points (instead of the usual single point) can be taken off for any negative, with a full 2 points meaning that it really, really took away from my experience and with a 1 meaning that it was a constant bother but it didn't really impact that much in the long run. As the year runs on, I won't be going into this much detail about my scaling choices for a particular game, but I'm hoping that it'll become evident the more I write.

Let us review:
Truly bizarre design decisions - 1.8

The final score for Journey to the Savage Planet is...




8.2/10 - Great
Great work, Typhoon Studio, great work!