Revenge of the Savage Planet blends the Golden Age of Sci-Fi with an N64 collectathon
9.20.2024
By Francisco Dominguez, Contributor
It’s a tall order, but Raccoon Logic’s formidable AAA track-record suggests they can handle it. In my hands-off preview at Gamescom, Alex Hutchinson, Creative Director of Raccoon Logic—whose own game credits include directing Assassin’s Creed III and Far Cry 4, plus Lead Designer on the fondly remembered Spore—says it’s all underpinned by a throwback eagerness to surprise.
“We wanted to get back to the day that, when you bought a game, you weren't quite sure what it was going to be, as opposed to everything being controlled and similar to each other,” says Hutchinson.
There certainly was nothing like the first game, 2020's comedy sci-fi FPS Journey to the Savage Planet, with its blend of irreverent humor, vivid sci-fi alien worlds that belonged on a 1920s pulp book cover, bestiaries of memorably bizarre aliens, and Metroidvania-style exploration, both solo and in co-op.
All of these elements return for Revenge of the Savage Planet, this time from a third-person perspective. Raccoon Logic swapped the camera to improve the platforming (which worked in first-person, but with some creative fudging), enhance player customization, and above all else, pack even more humor into the player's animations.
The character animations in Revenge of the Savage Planet can almost be described as Charlie Chaplin in a spacesuit. The hapless Kindred Aerospace employees—space explorers abruptly laid off 20 years into a century-long cryosleep—skid on slippery surfaces like Bambi on ice, their arms whirl manically with each ragdoll leap and jetpack burst, and they raise a foot high for a melee kick like Cristiano Ronaldo lining up a shot.
“We wanted it to be a funny game,” Hutchinson explains. “It's interesting to us that humor is so huge in movies and TV and so small as a niche in video games. Our theory is that it's because people put the jokes in the script. They don't put the jokes in the gameplay.”
Slapstick humor is the answer. A one-liner is funny once (though there’s no absence of those in Revenge of the Savage Planet either), but watching someone plummet to their death is funny forever. Just ask any Dark Souls player.
But the best humor is what players find for themselves. Hutchinson likes to mention his favorite Far Cry 4 co-op moment as a design goal: The time he threw a molotov cocktail, missed, set a bear on fire and watched his co-op partner’s sudden demise at its furious paws. “Our goal as designers is to get you to walk away from what we’re telling you to do, and do whatever you want,” he says.
And with Revenge of the Savage Planet’s elemental goo system, the tools players can mess around with here go far beyond the realistic offerings of Far Cry's conventional warfare. The first tool I’m shown is the water cannon, used to blow up aquaphobic aliens, rehydrate desiccated mushrooms into usable platforms, or clean up areas covered in goo. A hot sauce cannon brings the heat. Green goo makes any surface as treacherous as ice. And combinations of goo, or interactions between elemental properties, can cause unexpected results—like the makeshift flamethrower I’m told was discovered entirely by accident.
Revenge of the Savage Planet promises a lite-version of Breath of the Wild’s freeform puzzle design, where one lock has numerous solutions. Spot a cracked wall? Throw a bomb, lure an explosive monster nearby and find a way to ignite it, whatever works.
Early on, I’m told that Raccoon Logic wants to de-emphasize the gun—but isn’t the goo gun that’s key to so much of Revenge of the Savage Planet just a gun by another name?
Hutchinson explains that context is everything. Pointing and shooting is a versatile and satisfying mode of interaction, whether that’s aiming the camera in Pokemon Snap, an AK-47 in Far Cry 4, or a water cannon in Revenge of the Savage Planet. “There's a clear threat, which means there's risk. It's satisfying to pull the trigger,” he says. “It's a good skill test to aim. There's a big visceral response when you get it right. It's a perfect mechanic.”
He’s not wrong. Seeing Kindred Aerospace’s employees fire goo all over the map recalled my own fond memories of giving Isle Delfino a thorough powerwash in Super Mario Sunshine, or Portal 2’s messy redecoration. Revenge of the Savage Planet is intended as a fun way to unwind, and with alien goo-fights like these on offer, it seems set to succeed in that regard.
Wishlist Revenge of the Savage Planet now on the Epic Games Store.