There’s not much better than teaming up with a friend to take on a video game, and it’s a wonderful time to be a co-op fan. We only recently saw the release of Split Fiction, which provided hours of two player entertainment with a hell of a lot of variety throughout the experience. That’s one of many co-op options you could be playing now, and there’s even more to come this year. The co-op game I’m most looking forward to this year is Revenge of the Savage Planet, because after playing an hour of split screen with Game Design Director Steven Masters it was clear it’s going to be something special.
The second game in the Savage Planet series seems to have everything you loved about the first game turned up to eleven, and so much more. As either one or two intergalactic explorers abandoned by their capitalist overlords on the edge of space, it’s your job to explore the world as best you can to get revenge. There is so much more ridiculousness to the story than this though, with all sorts of wacky characters and live action space adverts to break up the third-person planet scouring.
The big change you’ll notice coming from Journey to the Savage Planet is that change in perspective, from first to third-person. I wasn’t sure how this would affect the game as a whole, but it took mere minutes to be sold on this new viewpoint. Getting to see your character complete with their ridiculous running animation and over the top swagger adds an extra layer of light-hearted humour to the game, and I didn’t find it took away from the joy of hiking around the striking environments either.
The main event of the game is absolutely the exploration, which takes place across at least five planets. I got to check out the first one, which was a lush jungle full of exotic plants, gorgeous vibrant environments and bizarre big eyed chibi racoons. Pretty much everything you encounter on the planet is scannable, and you’ll be rewarded with funny flavour text and eventually upgrades for doing so. It’s so satisfying to clear out all the scannable things in an area, especially because they change colour in your scan visor when you do so.
Although I know when I playthrough Revenge of the Savage Planet at my own pace I’ll be scanning absolutely everything, if that’s not your style there are plenty of actual missions to complete too. For us this meant traveling to a specific area of the jungle and defending an area from enemies, and then fighting a boss. This involved a whole lot of navigating around obstacles first though, which was wonderful.
I was told by my helpful partner that we had a few movement abilities we shouldn’t have at this point in the game, but it made getting around an absolute blast. With a quadruple jump, grappling hook, and paraglider, getting around felt spectacular, and although you won’t start the game with this selection of abilities I was told that after the tutorial you’ll at least have two jumps. These among other upgrades will enable you to explore new areas and collect new bits and bobs in a Metroidvania style, which I’m sure will add even more hooks to the exploratory experience.
It won’t take long while exploring planets for you to encounter the less friendly lifeforms that make these worlds their home. For these moments you have a trusty blaster to unleash, which has a variety of powerful charge shot options to unlock for it. This will work for basic baddies, but some alien life needs to be dealt with with your squirt gun. For example there’s a blob enemy that can be filled with water and popped like a balloon, which is as satisfying as you’d imagine. Other liquids can be added to the gun too, like a flammable substance you can coat the floor in to ignite hordes of nasties.
There’s so much more to Revenge of the Savage Planet that I can’t wait to get stuck into as well. There’s the fact that you can capture the critters you find on your travels and keep them in a little zoo, or how much effort you can put into customising your little space settlement to make it your own personal home. The amount of side quests and upgrades trees I was able to peek at during this session was particularly exciting, and makes me certain that I’ll spend hours of my life playing this game whether I’m alone or with a buddy.
Revenge of the Savage Planet is a game I need to get my hands on as soon as possible, or I’ll explode like the stomped on eyeballs of the critters that inhabit it. What I played of the game was gloriously silly, seriously compelling and outright gorgeous, and it’s going to absorb my life. In a year of co-op bangers it wouldn’t surprise me if this was the best of the bunch, so don’t sleep on this Savage offering when it releases in May.
Revenge of the Savage Planet is coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X, and PC on May 8th.
