Revenge of the Savage Planet review: "An underrated sci-fi platformer gets a beautiful third-person sequel, but I'm left cold by shallow busywork and an over-reliance on toilet humor"

Love goo? Poo? Goo and poo on people's heads? If you nodded with wide-eyed delight, then Revenge of the Savage Planet is the game for you. If not, you might struggle to enjoy this adventure. There's no getting away from this game's penchant for slime and childish humor, and since the game itself is an otherwise solid, expansive (if predictable) action adventure, it really does come down to these questions as to whether it's going to be for you.

It’s unusual for a sequel to change perspective from the original, but the big news here is that Revenge of the Savage Planet is played in third-person, leaving some fans of the original’s first-person perspective pleading for a rethink in trailer comments. While the developers have heard the feedback and are looking into providing this as an option in a future patch, it's difficult to see how it would work in practice. Some of the 3D platforming is so precise, you need to see your feet and where they’re landing.

The change has given your silent protagonist a lot more personality. Click L3 to sprint and you run like some kind of space-faring Captain Jack Sparrow, slipping around on goo-coated surfaces like Bambi on ice. There are plenty of fun animations after respawning and planet-hopping, and falling too far results in some wince-inducing spine bends. It's been implemented very well and world traversal becomes increasingly enjoyable as the stabilizers come off after the first few hours and you're let loose to explore these impressively large, alien worlds.

The plot is simple. You’ve been cryogenically frozen in order to send you a few hundred lightyears from home, awakening as you crash land on a strange, alien world. Trouble is, as soon as you’re revived, you learn that the plan has changed and you’ve been fired from the mega corporation funding your journey, and so you’re basically on your own. You can still use all the tech that was sent with you, which is good, but it’s scattered across not only this planet but several others too. It’s down to you to retrieve all your gear, explore the planets, and learn about the bigger picture – as well as find out who the mysterious character is who contacts you out of the blue on the video screen in your home base.

The platforming and shooting is coupled with documentation of the planets, with a Metroid Prime-style scanning module for your space suit allowing you to scan flora and fauna, learning about your surroundings with some quips and puns in the details for fun, while also revealing enemies’ weak spots. But rather than just attack these for massive damage, you’ll also need to capture creatures and send them back to the lab for testing. While the game implies some nasty vivisection, the critters are then put back together afterwards, which is nice, but odd considering the game absolutely revels in icky, goopy death for pretty much everything you encounter. There are 'Alpha' versions of critters too, which are bigger and meaner, and capturing them can unlock new abilities.

Dark stools

Dark Souls’ influence is still felt as you have to collect your dropped loot after you’ve died. Thankfully, the game always places it somewhere accessible rather than exactly where you died, so you don’t have to wade into lava to retrieve the thing you lost after dying in the hot red stuff. Neat. What’s also neat is the way every death leaves behind a little blue marker with a number on it, so you can see how many times you’ve kicked the gunk bucket.

The environmental sound effects are lovely, making you really feel like you’re in a jungle if you put on some decent headphones. Excellent, too, are the footfall samples, which change depending on the surface you’re walking on. However, while the music is as polished as you’d expect from a modern production standpoint, the battle music really grates after a couple of hours. Thankfully it changes a little based on the planet you’re on, but when it’s triggered even by just one small bug attacking you, you’ll be hearing the same guitar line a lot, so be warned you might find yourself heading to the option menu to switch off the music.

Similarly, your smart-talking robot sidekick’s dialogue can be a bit much to handle at times. The menu lets you reduce the frequency of its speech, or disable it altogether, but if you do that you will miss some important story beats. At present there are two voices to choose from, though an incoming patch will add many more. So far, the two voices appear to be manipulated versions of the same audio files, rather than entirely different voice actors, so the language and humor is unlikely to change much based on the incoming voice pack. The robot just isn't very likeable. It isn’t cute, and it's quite obnoxious in its commentary on what you're doing. That said, it isn't as dreadful as it first seems, and by the end it is useful enough.

In fact the start of the game pushes its wackiness and irreverence in your face far more than the second half… unless I just became desensitized to it, which is entirely possible. Bogeys, poos, vomit, satirical Ts and Cs, cartoony gore… it's not that it's written or performed badly; it just feels like noise detracting from what would otherwise be an enjoyable adventure. The production values of the in-game advertisement videos are impressive, but the satire simply isn’t as funny as it thinks it is. That said, after the first 10 hours, I have distinctly more fun as the game becomes more involved and incorporates strong environmental puzzles and traversal challenges into the good-looking game world(s).

The game is visually rich, especially in jungle scenes. At times it's a technical tour de force with massive draw distances that still display enemies, collectibles and even player-placed electricity-conducting goo even when they’re far, far away. Even on a now-aging Nvidia RTX 2070 graphics card, the game can run on ultra at 1080p with a smooth frame-rate, only juddering in a few scenes, and only really having trouble rendering the wide-open plains and distant, scalable cliffs of the fourth planet. Even then it’s still perfectly playable. It also runs on Steam Deck, though it’s not as smooth as the 2070 on default settings. Still very playable, and it does suit handheld play, even if your adventurous ambition lasts longer than the battery.

Number Two

A big bonus is the split-screen two-player co-op mode, with online co-op available too. The split screen runs impressively smoothly and games like this are always more fun with a second person. It also means parents can play with their children, helping them through the harder moments while still allowing them to enjoy the full experience.

Even so, Revenge of the Savage Planet isn’t totally child-friendly. There are some middle finger swears in there, a satire of an X-rated phone service, references to your mom sleeping with someone, and the game’s attitude towards the death of the various creatures is a little… disturbing.

Feeding an entire family of big-eyed bugs to a tree doesn't sound so bad, but the game seems to revel in their deaths. It's mean-spirited and more sensitive children might get upset. There’s no way to complete some tasks without killing cute critters, often leaving their eyeballs rolling around in the mess, which then burst when stepped on, coating you in ocular goo. Some kids will howl with delight, of course.

I found the creature capturing side-quest the most interesting and enjoyable element of the game. Most enemies have a weakness that can be exploited to get them in a dazed state, at which point you can use an energy lasso to reel them in. They're then zapped into a wormhole that opens up, and deposited back at your laboratory.

Not only does this give you a nice zoo of attractively-animated critters that you can pet back at your home base, it also unlocks new skills. You can also unlock and buy new furniture for your base with in-game currency, providing a nice customization element, and there are new outfits to find and wear too. All welcome.

Skilling spree

The game comes alive the more skills you have, and locking them all away behind busywork is arguably to the game's detriment. It's a slow start, but when you have the means to go anywhere and do anything, the element of exploration is so much more satisfying. The game engine is versatile enough to allow you to make a trail of conductive gloop and use it to power nodes from an electrical mushroom, and searching for the nodes is properly engrossing and rewarding. There are elements of Super Mario Sunshine’s FLUDD when you do this, but it’s not overplayed, just adding a neat little technical trick into the action.

As the credits roll and you listen to someone singing about the joys of getting paid for defecating during company time, you'll feel like you've been on a long and challenging journey, but not a truly great one. I finished it in some 14 hours, and while there’s plenty left to find and finish up after that, the challenge wanes as you can see where the remaining collectibles are and (eventually) grapple literally anywhere, so all that carefully-curated game design goes out the window – at least if you allow it to. But that is after the bulk of the game has been beaten properly, and there's certainly some great challenges making up the finale, designed for those who have mastered the core gameplay. If only the whole game was as robust as the last few hours, it would be much easier to recommend.

There’s no question Revenge of the Savage Planet comprises a lot of busywork dressed up in snot and large draw distances. There is enough variety to the gameplay to keep you entertained, though it always feels like you’re just skating on the slippery surface of what could have been a classic.

The combat never feels particularly satisfying, except for when you capture a tough new critter, which feels great. The planets are impressively grand in their scale and ambition, and the experience is impressively bug-free, from a technical point of view if not zoologically. Polished, slick and pretty, it can nonetheless feel mundane, inane, and mean-spirited – resulting in a slightly uncomfortable and uneven gaming experience. Cue gloop on head and… cut.

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