New Scientist - 29.02.2020

34 | New Scientist | 29 February 2020

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I HAVE lost track of the number

of alien worlds I have walked on.

That is partly down to playing

No Man’s Sky a few years ago,

a universe designed by an

algorithm that offers 18 quintillion

possible planets to explore, says

its developer. I must have trudged

across a good few hundred. But

infinity gets boring – give me a

well-crafted experience any day

over random permutations.

My latest alien expedition came

in Journey to the Savage Planet. You

play as an employee of Kindred

Aerospace – the fourth best

interstellar exploration company,

its keen CEO tells me in a video

message. Your character has

crash-landed on planet AR-Y 26

and must find their way home.

The game is, in a word, wacky,

and not in a good way. One of the

first things you do after emerging

from your spaceship is to smack

an alien chicken in the face.

Humour is a tricky thing to get

right in video games – after all,

timing is everything in comedy,

and getting a player to fit the

developer’s script often fails – and

it didn’t really work for me here.

But once I decided to turn down

the volume and ignore the hit-

and-miss gags, I had a great time

ambling around its weird world.

AR-Y 26 is presented as a

pristine alien realm, but it quickly

becomes clear someone has been

here before you, and the game’s

plot involves solving that mystery

as well as finding a way home.

As in No Man’s Sky, you must

gather elements such as carbon

and silicon from the environment

to upgrade your equipment.

The game also borrows liberally

from the exploration titles of

the Metroid series, most notably

Metroid Prime. That classic sees

you playing as bounty hunter

Samus Aran, gradually acquiring

upgrades to her spacesuit that

allow you to access new areas

of the planets she explores.

The genius of the Metroid series

Walking on another world There’s nothing like crash-landing on an alien

planet, especially a carefully crafted world containing a big mystery to solve.

Just watch out for the chicken, says Jacob Aron

“ Infinity gets boring –

give me a well-crafted

experience any day

over an algorithm’s

random permutations”

Game

Journey to the

Savage Planet

Typhoon Studios

PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One

Jacob also

recommends...

Games

Metroid Prime

Retro Studios

Enjoy on Nintendo Wii

or Nintendo GameCube.

No Man’s Sky

Hello Games

Play on PC, PlayStation 4

or Xbox One.

is that obstacles early in the game

become a cakewalk as you upgrade

your character’s abilities and

equipment – a once impassable

chasm is no match for a double

jump and impenetrable walls fall

easily to a newly acquired missile

launcher. It is a great feeling to

charge through an earlier part of

the game world, having previously

spent hours painstakingly going

the long way round.

Savage Planet does the same

thing, but its best upgrades are

only unlocked by doing so-called

science experiments. These are

tasks that can theoretically be

performed at any time, such as

scanning the various alien flora

and fauna (another facet of the

gameplay with echoes of Metroid)

or taking samples from specific

creatures (basically hitting them

with a sciencey-looking stick).

Sadly, I found many of them

too fiddly to bother with because

they required you to take the time

to line up creatures in the same

location to blast them with a

specific weapon. I guess this was

an attempt to improve on the

Metroid formula, but it is hard to

mess with a classic successfully.

Despite these shortcomings,

I enjoyed navigating AR-Y 26,

particularly once I got hold of a

grappling hook upgrade that could

send me whizzing across the skies

at high speeds. But I couldn’t help

harking back to the days of playing

Metroid Prime on my trusty

Nintendo GameCube console. If

you have never had the pleasure,

rumours suggest an upgraded

version of the original game

will be released for the Nintendo

Switch later this year, ahead of

a new sequel. That’s another

expedition to add to my list... ❚

TYPHOON STUDIOS

On planet AR-Y 26,

players encounter lots

of alien flora and fauna

The games column

Jacob Aron is New Scientist’s

deputy news editor. He has

been playing video games

for 25 years, but still isn’t

very good at them. Follow

him on Twitter @jjaron