There will never be enough cooperative story games in this world. I can’t get enough of them. But, I still want them to be well-designed, fun to play, and easily accessible to play with whomever I want. Revenge of the Savage Planet is a sequel that checks every single box and does it with tongue in cheek and cheeks on face. I played through the game from start to finish with my wife and we both thoroughly enjoyed the time we spent figuring out every puzzle, exploring every cave and mountaintop, and scanning each and every living thing around us, all the while being ferried along by a wealth of humor and personality mixed into a tasty slurry.
Far Flung and Fantastically Fun Findings
At its core, Revenge of the Savage Planet is an exploration game that continuously allows you to improve your exploration abilities, giving you more and more accessible options to fully identify, combat, and conquer the worlds you visit. The goal, in the end, is to complete your catalogue of fauna, flora, and tech strewn across the solar system before finding your way off the planet that you’ve crash landed on. To accomplish this, you get an increasingly fun array of traversal choices, including gliding, sliding, grinding, diving, and grappling (along with a few others.) Whipping and grinding around the cliffs and landscape becomes an absolute joy, as your grapple eventually reaches nirvana as far as movement capabilities go. As you adventure in your first world, learning the ropes is made even more entertaining by the game’s unique sense of humor. Every voice line, name, description, sound effect, and action have a flare of funny ingrained into them. What brings the game over the top is the inclusion of co-op multiplayer, yes even local play, with two players able to complete the full game together. Most everything you do counts for one another, so you can fill up your index of findables as a team. It made for a more relaxed experience than I expected at first glance, as the enemies are usually easily dispatchable, and the platforming/puzzle elements are tame. It really challenges you more in the navigational sense than the control side of things.
You also get to play with the elements as you upgrade your weapon, slinging fire, ice, acid and more to take out enemies in lethal combos, pass through obstacles, or complete challenges that require you to figure out how to tickle just the right plant or connect a series of vines with electricity, just to give a few examples. It just adds to the possibilities you’ve got to think about as you explore high in the clouds or down in the water, identifying structures, birds, fish, and more as you go. Your scanner helps you find things you haven’t yet by highlighting them orange while everything else is a grayscale. My partner and I did find ourselves stumped with the location of the last few flora, since they were only in a small location in a few of the worlds, but we did eventually find them to complete our catalogue. To that end, I wish there was an upgrade you could purchase to maybe make locating those last few items a bit more guided. That’s not to say the game doesn’t do a good job of giving you specific counts of what all remains to be found in every segment of every world. It does, thankfully, and these are a very helpful guide to continue your exploration once you unlock all the tools available to you to reach every nook and cranny that could be hiding a gooey upgrade egg or hidden flower. This is made easier by a wealth of teleporters that can be unlocked and easily traveled between after their discovery.
A Flair for the Fabulous
Whilst you’re venturing the savage planets, you’re treated to a gorgeously wild variety of trees, geological formations, local wildlife, interactive hazards, and so much more. In addition to being able to take out dangerous creatures with your gun and whip (and boot!) you’re encouraged to capture at least one of every “animal” by grabbing with your lasso-like whip and pulling them into a vortex that plops them into specialized habitats back at your base. Once there, you get to give em funny hugs, pets, and high-fives. All of this just adds to the charm of the game, as seeing how you’ll interact with a butt-faced gorilla or long-nosed giraffe…thing is a treat. Part of the game also sets up “selfie” spots, which give great opportunities to screenshot yourself all over these lively locales. Speaking of yourself, as you open chests and find hidden spots, you’ll unlock new pieces of outfits, which can all be colored with swatch sets that are also unlocked by identifying new things in the world. It added to that personalized flair that’s always a highlight for games like this. You can mix and match set pieces to your liking, which worked out to make some perfectly personalized space suits. Oh, and not stopping with the customization there, you constantly earn a special “ticket” currency during your travels that can be spent in your base to buy and place humorous furniture, household pieces, and lots of decorative items. Do they have a functional purpose? No, but they give you a place to make the space your own, and some give that extra giggle when you interact with them. I loved when my character spun like a Sim when they entered the “shower” or jumped on the bed instead of laying down in it.
Surrounded by Silliness
Revenge of the Savage Planet is absolutely overflowing with this type of silly charm, and the same goes for its sound design and writing. Expect lots of juvenile jokes, some wittier than others, and a dose of fart noises spread throughout certain areas. Luckily, it doesn’t overdo it, and the game turns out to not be too long so as to overstay its welcome. The soundtrack, which comes in now and then to add spice to your adventures, is a Westerny Space theme that adds another theme-appropriate layer to your surroundings. With how much is going on around you sometimes, with plants, creatures, narration, and your own weapons making noise, it doesn’t get too overwhelming, and everything fits in appropriately with the fun, poppy vibe the game is going for. Speaking of funny sounds; the cutscenes, story videos, and advertisement clips seen throughout the game are some of the most disgusting, ridiculous, poignant things I’ve seen in a game since their last entry in the series. You can replay them to your heart’s delight from your trusty console in your base, which is great, since some of them will definitely make you do a double-take while they play in the background now and then.
In Conclusion
Revenge of the Savage Planet is a great sequel. It keeps a lot of the same charm as the first game, amps up the exploration aspect of things, and mixes up enough to justify a second helping of more of the same. We thoroughly enjoyed our 12-hour romp to complete the game fully as a team, and hope the team at Raccoon Logic Studios will continue to be inspired by the world of worlds they’re created. Any time I can join a friend for a raucous adventure through beautifully savage worlds that encourage me to corral and befriend as many creatures as possible while flinging myself across the lands with ease, count me in.
