Yesterday, I spent 12 hours taking the plunge into Revenge of the Savage Planet, the sequel to my favorite modern game, Journey to the Savage Planet, for my 5-year streamiversary. When I read the announcement that Raccoon Logic was making this game, I was stoked! After playing it, I’m a bit disappointed. There is a lot I don’t like about this game, so let’s get that out of the way first.

The Bad

What Happened to the Music?

The music in this game is genuinely terrible. It’s boring and sterile. It’s not something I would ever put on repeat on a playlist like I could the original OST. It has none of that “space hillbilly” charm of its predecessor.

To make matters worse, every time I get in a battle with the planet wildlife, I have to listen to the same tune. The first game’s approach of playing a more upbeat but stage appropriate track only for boss fights worked much better.

You Took Away My Perspective

If Journey to the Savage Planet had been a third-person only game, I wouldn’t have bought it. The removal of the first-person option has me almost regretting buying this one. If you remove a core component of a game that much of the player base used, what you replace it with needs to be just as good or better. I’ve read that the reason third-person only was chosen was to show off the character animations and interactions with the environment.

Those animations are not good.

They’re funny for five seconds, then I tune them out. And the ledge grab feature they added looks like they forgot to include the animation at all. It makes the game look unpolished. The game doesn’t deliver in an area it needed to be stunning.

Identity Crisis

What kind of game is this? I feel like I don’t know anymore, and I feel like the developers didn’t know either. Are we crafting buildings and scanning the planet (No Man’s Sky)? Are we decorating our character and our quarters (The Sims)? Are we capturing and researching the planet’s species (ARK)? Are we cleaning the goo off the javelin (Powerwash Simulator)? Are we swinging from the branches with our proton tether (A Story About My Uncle)? Are we deflecting projectiles back at enemies (Doom: The Dark Ages)?

Seriously, what is this game trying to be? I kept losing track of the plot (and my time) because I was playing Do Stuff: The Game.

Any Many More…

If I haven’t been back to the habitat in a bit and lose to a boss, I’m forced to watch a video before I can take another crack at the boss, completely taking me out of my zone.

Collecting cash around the planet to buy character customizations gives the game a cheap mobile feel.

The Good

That all makes the game sound like it’s a bad game. It’s not. I had fun playing it.

The Old Humor Is Still There

Not only is the old over-the-top, absurd humor still there, if you know the story behind the original studio, Typhoon Studios, there’s an additional layer to the humor that is aggressive and so relatable that it almost doesn’t feel like hyperbole. Having worked in an adjacent field, I deeply appreciated this.

Fantastic Level Design

Every area of Journey to the Savage Planet was an adventure all its own and Revenge of the Savage Planet delivers the same immersive, challenging but satisfying level design. This time, the worlds are packed with even more ways to interact with your environment, more nooks and crannies, and bigger, more detailed landscapes. I never once got bored or frustrated with any of the planets.

Art Style

Visually, this is unmistakably a Savage Planet game. That characteristic art style full of bulbous shapes and saturated colors, a planet dipped in melted crayons, is still there. It’s a wholesome style that will bring joy to any innocent heart.

The End

Maybe I’m just showing my age, but this game doesn’t feel like a game that was made for me. It was supposed to be a game adjusted to appeal to a broader audience than Journey to the Savage Planet, but instead it feels like a game targeted specifically at Gen Z. Maybe it always was and I just never noticed.

Is Revenge of the Savage Planet a satisfying follow-up to Journey to the Savage Planet? No. But that’s not to say it isn’t fun to play. If you’ve never played a Savage Planet game, this one would be a fine introduction.