Journey to the Savage Planet – Review (PS4)

Sprinkled throughout Journey to the Savage Planet are little nuggets from all of your favorite gaming genres. Want a little survival gameplay? It’s got it. Need some comedic shooting? You found it. Throw in a little bit of metroidvania mixed with a bit of platforming? This is your game.

In Journey to the Savage Planet you play an explorer sent to a planet named AR-Y 26. There’s no real mission except to scan everything you see and report it back to the powers that be. You’ve been told this planet is completely unexplored, but it’s almost immediately apparent that some form of intelligent life has been there before, and it’s a shock to everyone. Your goal for the rest of the game, in addition to collecting and scanning, is to discover what mysteries await on this mysterious planet.

Players will wake up on a ship and will be greeted with comedy almost immediately. Everything from the computer that talks to you to the emails you get on your computer to the television screens playing mostly live action absurdist commercials will likely make you at least chuckle, even if inaudibly. There’s an innocent fun to the game at the very start, but that doesn’t mean all is well. 

Soon you’ll set out to start collecting items, including items that you will need to repair your ship (in case you ever actually want to leave AR-Y 26) and bring them back in order to plug them into your 3D printer. The printer serves as the upgrade mechanic and has an incredibly simple layout. In fact, all of the menu UI is crisp and clean and never overcomplicated. In a game about exploration and collection, this has never been a more welcome feature.

The entire world is gorgeous. Bright colors abound and life is all around you. At no point does Journey to the Savage Planet try to tear you away from exploring the vast world around you. Sure, you’ll have to accomplish some of the goals set before you in order to upgrade your equipment so that you can progress, but the game doesn’t nag at you like many in the genres that inspire it. 

There’s a reason the word “Savage” is in the title of the game. Innocent creatures and ferocious monsters abound on AR-Y 26. You’re set with your upgradeable pistol and it does some serious damage. However, combat is often not necessary apart from collecting materials and passing through a few areas – so you can still do more exploring than fighting if you prefer. At first, enemies are fairly passive and simple to defeat. Explore a bit more, and you’ll start encountering enemies with massively damaging attacks and you’ll only be able to hurt them if you hit in select spots. The enemy progression is not a drastic change from the normal video game routine, but it is incredibly different from one moment to the next.

Your gun can also be used to interact with the environment and open up paths from one area to the next. But it’s not enough. You’ll also be carrying some supplies in your other hand. These may include seeds that allow you to create new grappling points, explosive goo, and the like. At no point is Journey to the Savage Planet a puzzle game, but there are certainly puzzles in it that players must solve using these items.

There’s very little indication that Journey to the Savage Planet wasn’t made by a AAA studio. The quality and time put into each part of the world are superb. By the end the gameplay loop gets a bit stale and the magic wears off, but wow… the first few hours are riveting.

As a note, co-op is heavily suggested throughout the game. Because we played pre-release and did not have an additional copy of the game, we didn’t get to experience it. However, there are many areas where it’s very obvious that a teammate would be a blast. 

Check out our Review Guide to see what we criteria we use to score games.

A digital code for the PlayStation 4 was provided by the publisher, but this fact did not affect the reviewer’s opinion.