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Good, and above all, games that do their own thing without a single care in the world whether someone would like them or not are a very rare breed these days. Today, when every other game looks like the next one, originality is highly appreciated; the shining example of this theory is Claire Obscur: Expedition 33—the game that dared to be something different, and now this courage is paying off very well.
When talking about Revenge of the Savage Planet, we cannot put it in the same bag with Claire Obscur; it would be unreal, but the originality is definitely something that those two games have in common.
Revenge of the Savage Planet is an action-adventure with an open-world concept and a beautiful world full of things to kill, creatures to capture, and materials to gather to upgrade your character, and if you're wondering, why the heck am I doing all that? Who cares? It's so much fun.
You're playing as a nameless worker employed by a company whose interest is finding new planets for "scientific reasons", while the truth is, like in the real world, to bleed them dry of natural resources and leave them to die.
During the deployment of the new workers on this unknown planet, something terrible happens, and our hero barely survives the crash. Later, he or she, depending on whom you choose to be your character, will find out that they're the only one who actually survived.
Upon reaching the habitat (a sort of main base), our hero will get the video that the company abandoned everyone from this expedition because the project on this planet is not profitable anymore. However, the hero, along with his drone (kind of his voice and the main companion in this game), refuses to abandon their mission and continues working like nothing happened.
This is just the beginning of the story; soon, some other characters will jump in, trying to make their own profit from this situation. In a nutshell, the story is interesting enough and will deliver exactly what it is aiming to deliver—very good satirical humour.
If you played High on Life from 2022, Revenge of the Savage Planet has a similar approach to storytelling. It isn't as controversial as High on Life, but the idea is pretty much the same. Same as the famous gun from High on Life, the drone in Revenge of the Savage Planet is hilarious.
The main character here is mute as well, and all the talking will go from the drone. Those comments the drone delivers all the time are pure humour, containing mockery of modern society and everything that we use to do these days.
Apart from the drone, all the other characters are designed in a humorous way; every new NPC that will make contact with you is a real piece of work, and their very appearance is enough to make you crack a smile, or even more than that.
Also, the commercials on TV. Oh, those are on another level. Apart from the great visual quality (every commercial is filmed as real video with real people), the quality of humour and society mocking in those is something to behold.
Gameplay-wise, Revenge of the Savage Planet is a surprisingly deep and very funny third-person action adventure. I already mentioned that the game features open-world design, but this is not just for show, really. Everything you can find in an AAA open-world game is here as well, with tonnes of things to discover and an open world that is actually very fun to explore.
The concept is quite simple: you have a bunch of beautiful planets with different biomes like rainforests, deserts, and more, and you will go around gathering resources for upgrading your equipment and finding means to return home.
You'll be using a jetpack for double jumps, a whip as a grappling hook, guns, water guns, and many other tools that will help you navigate harsh terrains and deal with their very hostile creatures.
Since your expedition is of a scientific nature, you'll be equipped with a lab for dissecting and analysing creatures for your benefit in the field, so one of the activities will be to catch different sorts of creatures for "scientific" purposes.
Dealing with all the hostile creatures on those planets would be impossible without weapons, right? Well, in Revenge of the Savage Planet, you'll fight using a gun mostly, but many creatures will require different approaches to take down, especially if you want to capture them, so don't assume you'll breeze through this game without difficulty.
Oddly enough, there are no difficulty levels to choose from, and the game can be very hard from time to time; however, you'll find a lot of resources for healing all over the planets, so every tough encounter can be overcome quite easily, especially if you're familiar with fast-paced, third-person shooters.
All your tools can be upgraded too, along with new suits and many other pieces of equipment your character will use in this adventure. Truth be told, the entire gameplay loop goes towards this single goal: unlock more upgrades to be able to traverse the world and ultimately find the means to leave this expedition and get back home safely.
Apart from playing alone, Revenge of the Savage Planet can be fully played in co-op (splitscreen included) as well, with your friends or with random players online which can definitely elevate the gameplay experience to a completely different level.
Much like the story, the gameplay mechanics lean towards comedy and good, healthy humour. The main character's movement while sprinting or slipping through the alien goo, jumping and traversing in general, is all reminiscent of a funny cartoon with funny animations and sounds that follow them.
Speaking of animations and sounds, Revenge of the Savage Planet deserves special praise for its good looks. The game looks freaking amazing, and you'll never stop being in awe every time some new biome or piece of the world games throws your way.
The graphics are cartoonish but nevertheless, the world is just beautifully designed. Be that you're inside dense jungles full of beautiful waterfalls, ponds, and towering trees, or inside the vast emptiness of huge deserts, every place in the game will leave you in constant awe.
Everything is so colourful and cosy, and when you pair all this with the futuristic design of the buildings you use as a part of this great expedition, it all creates a beautiful symbiosis that perfectly blends in, creating a really unique visual experience.
I played a PC version of the game that is, hands down, not so demanding. With all the settings maxed out and DLSS set on Quality, FPS never dropped below 70, and at certain spots, it even went over 100, even though my PC isn't among the strongest (check out my PC specs at the beginning of this review).
The sound presentation has its ups and downs, and I must point out the problems here. While the sound design, accompanied by the great voice acting, is truly amazing, the sounds themselves are a bit blunt and not as polished as they should be.
At times, the audio sounds like it was made 50 years ago, sounding like old records. This is probably just a small bug, and I believe it will be addressed in the day-one patch already, but the problem is there now, and I'm acknowledging it.
Conclusion
Revenge of the Savage Planet is a game that is very original in its own way, giving us very mature, contagious gameplay you simply cannot let go of and, at the same time, serving us a humorous, satirical story that will make you laugh out loud on many occasions.
For the price of $49.99, which is, by the way, cheap for today's game prices, you'll get more than enough fun and the game that will keep you occupied for a very long time.
The Good
Original and humorous storytelling- Beautiful and diverse open-world design
- Fun and varied gameplay with strong traversal mechanics
- Great performance and optimization on PC
- Fully playable in co-op
The Bad
No difficulty settings- Some unpolished sound issues
