One of my fondest, most ridiculous co-op gaming experiences was Journey To The Savage Planet in 2020. Warping forward into the future, in 2025, Typhoon Studios are back from cryo-sleep as Racoon Logic, with Revenge Of The Savage Planet. It’s an action-adventure that honours the previous title while shooting forward with updated mechanics and a more expansive universe that makes exploring strange worlds an absolute joy.

Alta InterGlobal (the “biggest company in the universe” and totally legitimate and totally not nefarious mega-corporation has taken over (or “acquired” if one prefers) Kindred Aerospace, the previous company facilitating the last expedition in Journey To The Savage Planet. Initiative Alta Interstellar seeks the complete “colonisation of space”; as such, explorers are sent to planets to see if they are habitable for colonies. My explorer’s mission was unceremoniously cut short with an immediate firing when arriving at the Habitat – otherwise known as NuFlorida- on the planet Stellaris Prime.

What’s worse, upon crash landing and coming out of cryo-sleep, all my explorer’s gear was lost, not a great start on an unknown planet. I wasn’t alone, alongside floating bot, EKO, and a base to build up in the Habitat, there’s work to be done to recover gear, find a way back home and stick it to the explorer’s former employees. Alta’s ever-presence through bizarre live-action video logs and unhinged product advertisements for porta-potties respawn stations, and beverage-turned-bait drink, “Grog”, added an extra level of absurdity that just hits that sweet spot of having devs that just want to present something fun, and not take too seriously.

Revenge Of The Savage Planet has a pretty stellar upgrade from the previous game, with a massive boost in polish and scale. I loved the last game, but it was a smaller, one-to-two-session experience. In contrast, with Revenge Of The Savage Planet, I’ve felt more immersed with the sheer amount of things to see and do, all while not feeling like it’s too much. Stellaris Prime reminds me of the original game, with a bright and funky palette, weird and wonderful creatures, and plant life. I was overjoyed when I was allowed to set off into space to explore other planets.

Each biome feels completely different, from the lush tropical forests of the base planet, sandy regions, snowy peaks and more. While the scale is bigger and better, it never feels too much. Almost everything is scannable; sometimes, the descriptions of random plants were enough for a giggle to add more oomph to exploring. Thanks to the strong upgrade progression, every inch feels covered with a thought, with plenty of collectables and backtracking that doesn’t feel like a slog. 

Story and upgrade progression seamlessly go hand in hand, given that the main objective is to recover gear to get home. Throughout the journey, our explorer must collect resources. Progression feels natural; the main storyline requires gear to be recovered, and completing the main missions unlocks blueprints to 3d print gear and upgrades. Making and upgrading gear requires resources, which can be collected by scavenging each planet for minerals, drops from enemies, and through scattered crates.

It was refreshing that collecting materials didn’t feel like a massive effort; while wandering the world, I tended to come across whatever materials I needed. Revisiting with new gear, including suit upgrades, upgrades to the Proton Whip, Jump Pack, Drone and weapons, keeps revisits to planets interesting, allowing increased verticality, new ways to get around or gadgets to open up new areas. While the beginning was slow, I became hooked once I began unlocking more equipment.

Combat is varied enough to keep it spicy. With heaps of weird and wonderful creatures to encounter, you bet they all have their weak points to exploit and bizarre quirks. Better yet, critters can be captured for research at the base and are pettable, which I take very seriously in my games. Combat isn’t too brutal; if the explorer dies, they just respawn back to the Habitat and go back to the place of death to grab gear. It could get frustrating with repeated deaths. Still, load times were so quick that teleporting back from base, so long as there was a teleporter close by on the other planet, wasn’t the be-all and end-all. Controls are intuitive and become second-nature quickly. 

I jumped into co-op with a friend and quickly got them up to speed with the controls with minimal difficulty, even though I was pretty far through the story. As a bonus, your co-op partner gets all the unlocked upgrades to easily pick up and play for drop-in, drop-out adventures. Revenge Of The Savage Planet is best served with friends. While I enjoyed playing solo, there’s something about experiencing the silliness with others, with options for local co-op, online co-op and even online cross-platform play. It’s never been easier to explore mysterious planets with your buddies. Local co-op is split screen; players can mostly run off and do their own thing. It was a delight to scout at our own pace and work together when needed.

I played on PlayStation 5 with occasional tearing and frame drops, making the game less pretty. Hopefully, these will be fixed in future updates. Load times were fast, and the game mostly performed well, apart from some slow asset load-in in more foliage-dense areas. Where I was let down slightly was in the audio. The music got repetitive, with minimal variation in the soundtrack. While the synth sci-fi tracks in some areas added nicely to the overall ambience, the combat music lacked variation. Given that I was constantly encountering creatures in the field, I spent most of the time listening to the same music repeatedly.

Though with the already great character customisation of unlockable outfits, my favourite being a cat helmeted space suit, I was able to assign a voice, which I could easily change into whatever voice I assigned my character, from an anime-girl voice to a dog, or what I ultimately settled on, a voice that went “yeet” when I jumped. Priorities. The bonus of interchangeable voices added to an already great catalogue of unlockable skins (including Dave the Diver) and colour ways. 

Revenge Of The Savage Planet is a breath of fresh air from the usual doom and gloom we’ve come to expect of modern action-adventure titles, instead being lighthearted, ridiculous and all-around silly fun. This game is a good place to start for fans of the first game, ready to jump back in, and gamers looking for a casual sci-fi trip.  There’s a heap to do – but enough freedom to do everything – it depends on how much of an explorer you want to be. Revenge Of The Savage Planet is bigger, better and more savage and well worth the trip.

Written by: Yasmin Noble