Racoon Logic are, quite understandably, out for revenge. Founded by former members of the Journey to the Savage Planet team after Google decided that, nah, games just weren’t their thing and streaming is stupid, they resorted to exact their vengeance by making Revenge of the Savage Planet even bigger, better and indulging in even more excess. Sucks to be us, I guess?
Call me a 90s gamer all you want, but there’s something special about FMV in games. Revenge of the Savage Planet takes it to RoboCop levels of weirdness, from adverts for what’s basically Huel in binliners, to the introductory video by a VP of the space megacorp Alta Interglobal having just the right amount of bizarre camera framing, zooms and crazy eyes. I love how over the top they go, and look forward to seeing all the barmy creations sprinkled through the full game.
And that strangeness, that sense of silly fun is fed through into the rest of the game as well. Crash landing on another alien world, and stepping out for the first time, your character looks around for you in first person… until they’re shocked into the camera shooting out the back of their head to reveal the third person camera for this sequel. Journey was a first-person game, and while Racoon Logic considered the switch to third-person, it was too close to release. So the sequel gives them the chance to set that right.
One of the first things you’ll notice is just how excessive all of the animations are, almost like they’ve been lifted straight out of some early hand-drawn animated movies. There’s a wonderful cartoonish tone to simply running around the world, kicking your co-op buddy up the butt, knee sliding down slopes, and run-wading through water. It brings a huge amount of expressiveness to the game that goes together with the vibrant and equally imaginative alien worlds you can explore – yup, worlds plural this time, which obviously doesn’t quite work with the title’s singular planet, but let’s not complain too much about that.
Accompanied by your rather sardonic AI EKO, it doesn’t take long before you’ve unlocked a double jump, a blaster, dipped a hand into the orange goop bubbles that give you extra stamina and health, encountered your first goo type, and reach the abandoned space habs of Nu Florida. These were sent to the planet ahead of you, giving you a home base to return to and customise as you adventure through the solar system. Of course, you’ll pop back to visit the 3D printer and spit out some new gear and upgrades, needed to explore new parts of the world and strip back some early limitations.
The opening world of Revenge of the Savage Planet is gorgeous, a green and verdant planet that has lovely blankets of foliage to scamper through. You’ll be using your visor constantly as you reach each area, scanning all of the different flora and fauna that you find. And that fauna is heckin’ strange, including what amounts to just a giant racoon head with tiny legs, and which splat into puddles of green blood and some bulbous eyes when you shoot them. Or there’s the oversized dung beetle like creatures that try to flip their bodies over on you, or diminutive little ball of angry teeth that just want to chase after and explode at your feet. Some creatures will need tricks to defeat – the beetles have weak spots you can shoot to stun them, while green gelatinous cubes can be blasted with water…. or lava – but there’s also a goal to capture animals like it’s Metal Gear Solid V and beam them back to a sanctuary at your home base.
Jumping ahead to a later save file, we got to sample some of the extra abilities and new twists for this game. There’s still a grappling hook, there’s also now a hang-glider and some underwater gear to help you explore, going really nicely with the shift to third person, but the big new hook are the multiple coloured goos that you can squirt out around the world. The first you stumble across – well, slip ‘n’ slide across – is the green slippery goo, which feels like as much of a hindrance as a help, to be honest. You can use it to spray creatures and enemies to make them lose their footing… but then you’ll slip around on it too. It’s a good thing that you’ve got a water hose for some PowerWash Simulator action.
Or do the opposite. You’ll also get a Lava tank to fire out grenades of flaming magma, which is great fun when you manage to nail an arcing shot at a flying enemy, but is even more fun when you discover that green goo is extremely flammable. Just, uh, try not to blast it when you or your buddy is stood in it? Rounding out the options we saw was the Ferro Goo, an electrically conductive and super sticky paint.
All of this is playable in co-op, whether with online multiplayer or local split screen. I’ve already mentioned giving your co-op buddy a hefty boot, an immediate reaction to see if friendly fire is turned on like it’s Halo or something. It’s not, but the goo can have an explosive side effect that does affect your partner (and it’s invariably amusing). There’s a few kinks still to workout with the build we played, things like objective markers only playing on one side of the split screen, and cutscenes also being shrunk to half screen, but hopefully Racoon Logic is working through those ahead of launch in May. Having this possibility is honestly fantastic to see, and no doubt a real technical challenge given the open worlds.
Revenge of the Savage Planet takes that delightfully off-beast tone of Journey to the Savage Planet and ramps everything up a few notches. The shift to third person exudes a toon-like silliness through the character animations, the FMV adverts are a bizarre delight, and blasting creatures as you rampage through the world messing with all kinds of goop promises to add a lot to the Metroidvania-like exploration.
