I've been playing a lot of different games that try to borrow here and there from a genre or two across the road- like borrowing milk from a neighbour. Which has what led to my two blog so far knocking the exploration prowess, or lack thereof, of Lords of the Fallen- a game gradually turning into one of my grumbling chores to endure. But at some point it helps to take stock and go- "Hang on! What even is good exploration in video games?" And in times like that you go to a bit more of a pure exploration title to clear up the confusion. Along with Game Pass recently adding a title I had recommended to me a while back- it was only fair I finally sit down and dedicate a day or two to Journey to the Savage Planet- a pretty tongue-in-cheek exploration focused game set on the deadly frontiers of the planet hopping spaceways. And I happen to think the game is pretty good.
Exploration is really the crux of the gameplay loop as best encompassed by the handy Metroidvania-manner in which this game handles progression. You are set loose in wild and visually popping landscapes of colourful fauna and alien creatures both passive and hostile, with a small bag of tools that slowly, through careful resource collection that doesn't loose itself under the weight of several thousand useless currencies like so many other do, the player becomes equipped with everything the burgeoning explorer needs. And a gun. This game is delightfully Blaise about the fact you interact with so much of their world by callously shooting it dead. Still there's ever the delightful fun of doubling back across environs you've treaded and spotting a new path you couldn't have reached before without your new double jump or ground pound or hand explosive-plant buds. The true scrappy-explorer experience!
Of course, just padding around alien worlds is not in itself a full gameplay recipe (just ask Starfield) so there are of course platforming puzzles that task you to make use of those upgrades you pick up across the world in order to figure your way around fairly straightforward obstacles. The game is very robust and straightforward in it's design this way, there's little wiggleroom for experimentation or solving a platforming challenge in a way the team didn't explicitly lay out, which speaks both for the consistency of the gameplay experience they created and also the stiffness of the design which comes to bite a little bit down the line.
That being said I think it's worth saying that Savage does not really attempt to challenge with any of it's puzzles, which feels like a bit of a missed opportunity. Savage is very approachable, and bite sized as far as these kinds of games go, which is absolutely a lot of it's charm. The game doesn't outstay it's welcome at all. But I felt the beginner area where I was learning how the game worked, the intermediary area where systems were reinforced and expanded upon- and the game just kind of ended. There was no 'high level play' area to speak of where you'd maybe get a bit stumped and have to figure your way around a stubborn door or two. I suppose that kind of thinking was preserved for the secrets which do sometimes take a little scouring now and then.
Savage's world is very tongue-in-cheek ultra-corporate in a manner that is faintly 'The Outer Worlds' if that game had turned the farce all the way up to eleven. You are treated to offputting ad videos everytime you enter your homebase, vaguely existentially unnerving products for everything you didn't ever want or need litter the world's lore and the companion AI who walks you through the game with an adorable folksy charm happily reinforces just how expendable your human life, and practically all life you come across, is in the pursuit of discoveries your parent company can exploit on their path to become the number 2 space faring company in the galaxy. It's all very sickly and comedic in a manner I could certainly see wearing thin if this game were a slog- but as I said- bite sized!
Where the game kind of slips for me is the combat, what little of it the game actually has. Of course, fighting isn't really the point of the game but this is 'The Savage Planet' for a reason- and savagery comes in the form of fauna in the need of-a shooting here and there. Rather curiously the decision was made to turn all of the more hardier non-fluff enemies into mini-puzzles of precise dodges and retaliation- which brings up that issue of 'rigidity' I mentioned before. All of these monsters have attack patterns that you need to dodge and retaliate with- and in the manner of a puzzle you need to be exacting. Any puzzle, afterall, needs to have a specific solution- it can't be made to have any old solution, else it wouldn't hold up as a puzzle- but that philosophy doesn't quite gell so natural with combat.
There's nothing wrong with rules to combat, I play enough Souls to recognise the importance of patterns and how they make boss fights fun and engaging. But fights like these are enhanced by order to the chaos, not defined by them. The freedom to strike out of turn and not do as much damage as you were hoping, or get punished for your carelessness, feeds into the dynamic nature of game combat. It needs to feel like by playing to the game's mechanics you are reinforcing your tool set- but even a blunt object can break through a brick wall eventually. Stubborn heads can prevail against mechanics. Unless you set it out like a puzzle where enemies are utterly immune unless you specifically trigger a retaliation window by dodging at the right time. Then it becomes a bit of a chore. Can you tell which direction Savage goes for?
Journey to a Savage Planet is a very solid small-scale game that stands firm on it's foundations as a puzzle explorer and executes a lighthearted and decently engaging journey to embark on. It's is stuffed with collectables to hunt after for the so inclined, and trickled with enough variety to keep interesting throughout it's playtime. I also happen to think the game is perhaps a bit too safe on the gameplay front, a bit too restrictive in some unnecessary areas and maybe a little too rigid in it's design principals. You'll rarely discover a piece of equipment that has several uses beyond it's explicitly designed MetroidVania-style key resolution, and that always felt to me like 'the point' of where these kinds of games were headed. Still, I think it's worth a play. -B Grade.
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