'And yes, microtransactions are an easy straw man to poke fun of as an example of corporate greed, but Journey to the Savage Planet isn't exactly bucking conventions. 'Yep, colonialism was bad and video game design often uses weapons as a crutch around which to build other gameplay mechanics, but here still is a game where you spend a good amount of time shooting hostile aliens,' he writes. This is a view supported by Christopher Byrd in his unflattering review for The Washington Post, wherein he highlights the game's failure to deliver in a few key areas. It wants to be a pulp sci-fi adventure that sees the player abandoned by their corporate overlords on some distant planet filled with strange terrors but theme conflicts with substance, resulting in a game that slowly loses its appeal as the hours drag on and the game's shortcomings become more apparent.Īs Steven Scaife writes in his scathing two star review for Slate: 'The game's themes feel like facile wallpaper over mechanics that still feed into the same ideas being critiqued.' Journey to the Savage Planet appears to be a game at war with itself. While some reviewers revelled in the fart-laced corporate satire and surreal FMV advertisements, others criticised its lack of substance and failure to fully commit. Leaning heavily on humour to sell itself, Journey to the Savage Planet walks a thin line between hit and flop. This is a point illustrated by Joe Skrebels in his six out of ten review for IGN: 'Perhaps its biggest fault is that, as time goes on, it feels as though it can't quite escape the inexorable gravitational pull towards combat video games so often have, ending with a feeling of 'cut-price Far Cry', rather than the grand science fiction experiment it could and perhaps should have been.' 'Journey To The Savage Planet just wants you to have the best possible time' Nick Gillett, The Metro However, others found the game also unfortunately weighed down by its Far Cry genetics.

Clearly taking notes from games like The Outer Worlds and No Man's Sky, critics say it still manages to stand on its own two feet. Is Journey to a Savage Planet able to deliver the goods, though? And how does Hutchinson perform with a smaller team, outside the constraints of Ubisoft's particular brand of sandbox game?Ī satirical Metroid-inspired collectathon, Journey to the Savage Planet has been met with mixed critical reception. Typhoon was actually acquired by Google Stadia in December last year to bolster its growing games division. Between the three of them, they've worked at Electronic Arts, Warner Bros., THQ, and Gameloft. He's joined at the Canadian studio by fellow co-founders Yassine Riahi and Reid Schneider. Hutchinson is a developer of considerable pedigree, having also been lead designer on The Sims 2 and Spore.

Journey to the Savage Planet is not just the the first game from Typhoon Studios, but the first game from Far Cry 4 and Assassin's Creed III director Alex Hutchinson since going independent.

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