Revenge of the Savage Planet review: corporate incompetence becomes slapstick sci-fi

To make it in today’s cutthroat world, sometimes it feels like you have to be a taker to survive. It’s a ruthless mentality that makes the rich richer, crooked politicians more powerful, and countries more bloodthirsty. They take, take, and take until there’s nothing left for the rest of us, hoarding money, eliminating jobs, and destroying homes in the name of self preservation. Perhaps that’s what makes your typical video game so appealing. In something like Red Dead Redemption 2, players get to live out a true power fantasy: one where a world is theirs to take. Animals exist to be skinned, plants to be plucked, and corpses to be looted. Even in games where we’re meant to be the “good guy,” we’re often embodying the world of the worst. We become natural disasters that ravage worlds until we choose to stop playing.

Revenge of the Savage Planet takes that subtext and mines it for satirical gold, just as its hero smashes every rock in sight in search of precious metals. Building on the sci-fi comedy of 2020’s Journey to the Savage Planet, developer Raccoon Logic only gets more explicit about its targets while moving the series from a Metroid Prime homage to a third-person adventure game that hides righteous anger behind irreverence. When you don’t have the power to be a true taker, you can at least take no prisoners.

Though its story ultimately feels unfocused and its one-note action leaves it lacking in identity, Revenge of the Savage Planet succeeds as a sci-fi romp. It lets players loose into a series of interplanetary playgrounds designed to be sucked dry by a corporate drone tasked with becoming a bully. It’s a charming slice of dark comedy that’s perhaps not mean enough to totally land its point.

Sound familiar?

That setup will likely sound familiar to you in any number of contexts. Most recently, it’s the story of media holdings company Valnet acquiring gaming website Polygon, only to immediately gut the majority of its staff. If you know anything about the Savage Planet series’ developer, though, you’ll recognize a more personal target for Racoon Logic. Following the release of Journey to the Savage Planet, the studio was bought by Google as part of its short-lived Stadia initiative. Google would shut down Racoon Logic (then known as Typhoon Studios) just a few years later before it could even produce a game. That trauma is very clearly at the center of this sequel, with Alta standing in as the face of corporate incompetence.

The story is at its best when it tugs on that thread. One running sidequest has me uncovering Alta’s dirty laundry, taking what I imagine are thinly veiled shots at Google’s own issues behind the scenes. Less successful is where the narrative ultimately ends up. The stretch up to the final battle takes a left-turn into a meta-commentary about game design that feels entirely disconnected from the Alta story. It’s an underwhelming conclusion that leaves me wondering if all the corporate satire before it is there primarily as an inside joke for the developers (I can’t fully blame them; I’d jump at the opportunity to get my just desserts against my worst bosses too).

Don’t take any of it too seriously. Revenge of the Savage Planet ultimately aims for the irreverence of an Adult Swim show. ultimately aims for the irreverence of an Adult Swim show. There’s a world called Nuflorida. My habitat is filled with over the top commercials that feel like they were pulled out of a Tim and Eric episode. It features an original song about pissing on the company dime. As light as its jabs may feel at times, it still lands plenty of little hits that got some consistent chuckles out of me.

Colonialist mayhem

If the first Savage Planet game was a spoof of Metroid Prime, imagining Samus Aran as a total dick out to disrupt Tallon IV’s peace, the sequel is more of a riff on Subnautica. It’s not a survival game, but it does play with some similar ideas. I need to gather up resources and safely return them to my base to 3D print new gear, craft outfits, or make furniture to decorate my habitat. If I die before I get home, I’ll need to go back out and pick it all up again. Is it right to shoot an adorable little alien racoon just so I can have a pool table? That’s what Revenge of the Savage Planet asks through its gleeful cartoon mischief. My little space man sure doesn’t seem too upset about it, as he joyfully wobbles around and punts critters like soccer balls.

Naturally, Raccoon Logic gets to have its cake and eat it too. Even if it’s classifiable as parody, it still plays its open-world exploration straight much of the time. I get new gizmos that allow me to grapple up to cliffs, grind on rails, swim underwater, and more. I eventually gain the power to melt amber blockades with goo bombs so I can get chow down on an egg and get a health upgrade. It’s a serviceable, if a little boilerplate, Metroid-adjacent hook, but it still ultimately aims to be a slice of lighthearted fun that can be enjoyed or with a friend in co-op play. Maybe that’s why the story stops short of really pulling the big guns out: Raccoon Logic is still interested in making the kind of game it’s poking fun at.

I don’t mean that as much of a knock here; that’s just the language of this type of genre video game. If anything, the power fantasy isn’t strong enough to intoxicate and poison me. Combat is particularly weak, as my primary weapon is a dinky pea shooter laser. Most enemies just need to be taken down by peppering them with dinky shots, and upgrades like dodge rolls barely charge that. I can scan critters to find their weak spots and attack for extra stun damage, but even its by the books boss battles never feel all too exciting. If you’re going to make me feel like a power hungry prick, at least dial up the absurdity to tempt me down the path of violence.

Sometimes Raccoon Logic’s heart feels like its more in crafting fun little environmental puzzles than colonialist destruction. My favorite gameplay moments have me using conductive goo to carry an electrified mushroom’s charge to a closed door, or navigating an invisible maze by spraying green goop to reveal where the walls are. There’s a sincere joy in figuring out how the handful of alien planets work, from a worm-filled desert to a multi-level mountain. Journey to the Savage Planet‘s Metroid Prime-inspired scan visor returns too and remains a highlight, allowing me to catalogue every plant and critter I find. I’m torn between being a researcher and a menace; the former is more enticing, but the latter drives the satire.

I’m left with a delightful sequel that perhaps could have benefitted from being a little meaner. In both Savage Planet games, I find myself wishing that Raccoon Logic would really let me have it. Allow me to really screw these alien worlds up and punt me into the stratosphere once I’ve crossed too many lines. But then, I’d be a scapegoat, wouldn’t I? It’s like when The Last of Us scolds players for carrying out acts of scripted violence that they can’t avoid. I’m no taker; I’m just trying to survive in the kill or be killed environment that the developers have placed me in. I can empathize with my little spaceman through that lens. He’s just a jester in Alta’s corporate circus, just as Raccoon Logic was a cute plaything to Google.

Perhaps we’re all a little blameless for playing into a world that’s designed as a slapstick colosseum that we’re forced to compete in. And if we’re all clowns to the world’s most powerful forces, maybe it’s time to change which butts we’re punting into the sun.

Revenge of the Savage Planet was tested on PC and Steam Deck OLED.