“Revenge of the Savage Planet Review” – Fool (D) Time

As for the sequel with the word “revenge” in the title, “Revenge of the Savage Planet” is far from naming the well-known Dark Act 2. This follow-up to the 2020 Savage Planet’s Journey expands its predecessor, Zaniness and Scale, and explores four lush alien planets as you sort every plant and creature to reveal many of the secrets of the game. It's also an impressive genre hybrid. While primarily a rotten sci-fi action adventure with Metroid-style, the Revenge of the Barbarian Planet also combines elements of puzzle solving, survival capture, capture creatures, and even animal cross-decoration. Like the first game, the battle is still a clear weakness, but this is a sequel to the original standard that almost every other metric improves on the original standards.

If the situation is less common, it would be a twist of humor, and the revenge of the savage planetary narrative is clearly affected by the situation that leads to the creation of the game. Typhoon Studios is the developer behind the journey to the Savage Planet, acquired by Google in 2019, a few months before the game was released. The Canadian Studio was purchased to create a game for Google's cloud-based platform Stadia, but it closed unceremoniously when the platform failed briefly. The majority of the team formed a new studio called Raccoon Logic and managed to secure the Savage Planet IP, leading to the revenge of Savage Planet and its familiar story of corporate incompetence.

You play an unnamed wedding colonist who has emerged from 100 years of frozen legs and found out that they are now a member of Alta Interglobal, a holding company that acquired your former employer, Kindred Aerospace, while you sleep. Oh, you were also laid off because Alta gave up all former Kindred employees immediately after the acquisition. Does it sound familiar? Now, your ultimate goal is to get stuck in a strange galaxy, to revenge your former employer and return home as much as possible.

Knowing the backstory of raccoon logic increases anger at the company's greed, mismanagement and stupid sarcasm. It's not as harsh as you would expect, though, and Revenge of the Savage Planet is a joyful and optimistic game that refuses to take it too seriously. Whether it's joking with countless ungodly FMVs on CEOs or sending you to another vibrant planet, it doesn't matter if it's full of strange alien life. This story is not particularly deep, but it is still at its best when working hard. As it deviates from the final action on this road, a standalone meta-language on the game design – the story is overwhelmed.

Still, it was a late setback and did not make the ridiculously rude to date promote the game. From songs about peeing on a dime at the company to a commercial ad for a crypto-nosed miner where mint shoes exist, cast footwear on Boogerchain, the revenge of Tim & Eric-style Humor of the Savage Planet took a hit or missed hit, but I never found Misses Misses Grain. The transition from a first-person perspective to a third-person also contributes to the game's comedy tone. Whether you're walking, sprinting, wading in deep water on your knees, or kicking a furry creature to the back, the player character moves in a whimsical, harsh way similar to the Looney Tunes Tunes cartoon. You will slide through the green slimy gooey and then burst out from the entire creature that devours you, adding an element of farce to your exploration of these alien worlds.

The perspective shift does lose some of the connective tissue that associates the original game with Metroid, but I think it's a positive change – even if the results are slightly even. You can still scan every planet’s flora and fauna ecosystems – discoverable tidbits will make your face smile or deepen your understanding of the game world, while progress is determined by a lockdown system that requires you to gradually launch upgrades to upgrade to access previously incredible areas. However, as a third-person game, raccoon logic can also extend the genealogy of its platform more. Whether you climb up the pumice rock in the sky or land on the intestines beneath the planet’s surface, each planet is designed vertically to enhance the emphasis on this newly discovered emphasis platform.

When you initially start the game with a double jump, you end up doubled the whip which will act as a grab hook hook, allowing you to lock onto a specific surface and hone the energy rails. Combining it with a thunderous pedaling attack allows you to explore underwater, the handmade feel of each planet, and it makes sense to simply travel through these vibrant worlds. Not to mention the sense of progress from gradually unlocking all these diverse and influential upgrades. Even with an objective mark on the screen, I find myself often sticking out in multiple directions at once, as my attention is led by huge mushrooms to the cliff face, seductive cave openings, or obstacles I can now bypass through my recent upgrades. From the advancement of health and endurance to further proving Alta's crimes, exploration is often rewarded. But these four planets are also visually tempting, presenting different biogroups with unique ecosystems that interact with everything you do.

You first land on Stellaris Prime, a verdant green planet that is not different from the Ary-26 of the savage planet. When you build your home in the swamp of NU Florida, Stellaris Prime quickly becomes your base of operations and comes with a 3D printer for making new upgrades and your own customizable living space. You can use a lot of furniture and unusual accessories to make this habitat feel like the outside home. I have my own kitchen, bedroom, bathroom and gym with human-sized hamster wheels, hugging machines and toilets, sucking any waste into the tiny black hole. There is no motivation to do anything. It has no bearing or impact on gameplay, and you can't even interact with most projects, but I still appreciate some personalized customizations you can choose.

From the contrasting merger of frozen tundra and active volcanoes in Xephyr's arid desert to the Zenithian Rift, the rest of the planet covers possible biomes. In addition to aesthetic diversity, it is also satisfying to figure out new things in each sandbox and how tools interact with the ecosystem. For example, one of your most critical upgrades is the power hose and its adhesive. There are three types of viscose, all color-coded to indicate their various state effects. Some creatures and plants spit it out, while others explode with these things when they die, leaving balls of green, red and purple. By using viscose, you can collect it from a specific plant and then spray it anywhere using a power hose. Sometimes this can solve the puzzle in a satisfactory way, such as using conductive purple viscose to create a path to electricity and electricity to open the electromagnetic vine to open the path forward. At other times, you can use it to defeat enemies, use the same purple slimy incoming creature or ignite the flammable green slimy to swallow anything standing on it.

Still, in most cases, the battle is not obvious. Without any viscose-specific plants around you, you can only look at the faint pea shooter. Using this slow and unsatisfied weapon to defeat the enemy is so tedious that I mostly avoid it, but it's not always an option. This time there is a new capture mechanic, where you can stare at the weakness of your creatures and then use a whip lasso and teleport it to your homeland habitat. Doing so unlocks upgrades and cosmetics, such as different color schemes for your spacesuit, with some of the goals of the game centering around capturing specific creatures. This is a little faster than killing them directly, so even if I have caught such enemies before, I often seize opportunities. It's not mercy, but because the battle is just so dull.

Aside from these doubts, the Revenge of the Savage Planet offers a carefree adventure, whether online or on a split screen, whether solo or with friends. It's a more confident and diverse sequel with a perspective shift that maximizes the seal of its farce comedy and platform. Fighting is a disappointment, but everything around is a joy, from finding creative ways to use its gadgets and solving puzzles, to simply exploring the corners of a wide variety of and wealthy planets. The revenge of the Savage Planet may have been born out of unsatisfactory circumstances, but it is obvious from the logic of the raccoon playing it being completely intoxicated.