The nightmare was actual, the scenario was not.
Revenge of the Savage Planet, an journey unfold throughout quite a few distant — and fairly savage! — planets, invitations nonlinear exploration. To finish its missions and uncover all of its secrets and techniques, it’s essential to leap into an unknown the place the otherworldly flora, fauna, and even the inorganic materials are primed to kill you. So, shortly after assembling an underwater scooter that allowed my robotic sidekick to whisk me by way of the depths of alien oceans, I descended right into a sequence of caverns underneath the Zenithian Rift to see what was happening down there. The specters of dying I encountered under weren’t even designed to hang-out me.
In Raccoon Logic’s sequel to Journey to the Savage Planet, gamers are tasked with scanning each object in each nook and cranny to assemble an exhaustive log of supplies situated on every planet. At first, the duty is a stroll within the (overgrown killer) park: discover a tree, scan a tree. Discover a slobbering beastie, scan a slobbering beastie. However a counter on the map charting your scannables turns into probably the most daunting subtask — can I actually discover each single micro scannable? I discovered myself longing after finishing the core missions. To actually 100% this, there was much more cause to enterprise into probably the most uninviting areas, together with a darkish underwater cave on Zenithian Rift that completely didn’t appear like it contained any scannable objects. However I couldn’t not go in there.
It took about two seconds for me to appreciate… I had made a horrible mistake. Whereas the cave was simply accessible from the water, there have been no enemy or collectible breadcrumbs to counsel this was a spot the parents at Raccoon Logic supposed for me to. I used to be lured in by curiosity, however the pleasure of discovery in Revenge of the Savage Planet obtained the most effective of me. Now I used to be caught. I had stumbled right into a graphical anomaly, an in-game black gap that had an entrance however no obvious exit.
In Revenge of the Savage Planet, you possibly can’t beam again to beginning places on the fly or off your self with a purpose to respawn out of your final save. In a intelligent however doubtless divisive design selection, the sport forces you to navigate to transporters unfold throughout the worlds with a purpose to beam off to your subsequent desired location, which forces traversal and new encounters. However it meant that whereas bumbling round in the dead of night, hoping to discover a manner out of my watery grave, I couldn’t merely die and transfer on. I used to be truly trapped, and in a situation I haven’t skilled in fairly a while, feeling IRL like I used to be truly trapped.
I already don’t do effectively with underwater ranges out of an intense worry of drowning. Fortunately for me, most video games will throw me the lifeline of a visible countdown for example oxygen ranges, guaranteeing (1) I floor in time and (2) I don’t hyperventilate over the stress of surfacing in time. Revenge of the Savage Planet doesn’t want that as a result of there’s no punishment for having fun with the waters; you’re already in a spacesuit and the challenges you encounter by way of underwater scooter require a bunch of time-intensive backwards and forwards. Doing all of it on restricted air would merely not be enjoyable. However that meant, caught on this tight underwater cave, I’d by no means die. I used to be in limbo. Or perhaps I used to be in hell.
I spent far too lengthy trying to find a route out. Streaks of sunshine bled in from a theoretical escape that I might by no means attain — any time I believed I used to be shut, I ran into a brand new rock and located myself jetting in the other way. Not since I watched The Rescue, the riveting-yet-terrifying documentary in regards to the workforce of divers who squeezed by way of cave passageways to free 12 trapped Thai soccer gamers, had my obvious claustrophobia had its manner with my nerves. I can’t fairly clarify why I pushed myself over the sting to seek out an in-game resolution to this unintentional problem, besides to say that I actually wished to do a great job at Revenge of the Savage Planet.
Most glitches are thought of errors by programmers, annoyances by gamers, and infrequently shortcuts for the speedrunner crowd. Revenge of the Savage Planet’s dying cave would possibly fall into the primary two classes, however it’s a harrowing expertise I in the end appreciated, a novel screw up that might solely occur in a sport. I’ve by no means felt actually trapped in a movie, regardless of the most effective efforts of 3D stereoscopic results and 4DX rumble seats. After lastly rebooting Revenge of the Savage Planet, I needed to give myself a couple of minutes to let my coronary heart price die down earlier than I grabbed the controller. However I obtained proper again to it. Positive, this was a glitch, however in a sport the place exploration is every little thing, leaping into a real unknown — one which the creators of the sport clearly didn’t intend me to seek out — was its personal type of success.
Revenge of the Savage Planet is at the moment obtainable for PC, Ps, and Xbox, and it’s at the moment on Recreation Go.
