Journey to the Savage Planet Hot Garbage - Review

Expansions or DLC are always tricky, they can be as basic as a set of horse armour, or as grand as something that is more sequel then add-on. With Journey to the Savage Planet, it falls somewhere in between, part add-on and part story expansion, but is this enough, or does it live up to its name sake?

The story is quite a simple one, on a planet, near the one you have been exploring, Kindred bought it, the entire planet, with a simple goal, build a massive resort, on the edge of the waters, for those who want to get away and retire. The problem is, even though Kindred bought the entire planet, Viper, their rivals and number two in space exploration, have decided to send their AI, to take up residence, but not in order to welcome you to the neighbourhood. Viper have determined that the planet is the perfect place to dump their toxic waste, which is very anti-retirement friendly, so it is up to you, to gather the evidence and get ride of them from the planet’s surface, as I said, simple. The best thing here is that the additional AI means you get double the people to list to, rather than just your original AI explorer, though this one is slightly more insulting.

As far as gameplay enhancements go, there is only one major addition, but only in small sections, the rest of it is more or less the same as the base game, which is fine, as I had no issues with that. The newest addition is that of giant purple rings that float in the air, and if you pass through them, your jetpack will be given a significant boost, at least as long as the fuel remains. These rings will help you climb up to some incredible heights, but if you miss time the thrusts, you will find yourself falling from those same heights and this is where the biggest challenge comes into effect, navigating in a 3d space, for real. This was more challenging than the boss fights, as there is a little range on the tank, and if you mess up, you fail and it is not a matter of just restarting, but travelling back to another teleporter, to take you back to the start, once I started to get the hang of it, I was soaring, as much as I could. Thankfully, or at least in a similar sense, there is a place you can practice, at least in a safer way, thanks to your intrepid explorer, now being able to swim, because there is a beach and that means there is an ocean. Swimming is not used a lot, outside of that main area, but when you get a chance to sink beneath the surface you really should, some of the visuals on land were amazing, but under water, they take on a whole new life.

Once you have determined and completed your main mission, there are still a host of things to do and see in this new land, the biggest collect ‘em quest though, is to collect digital postcards. Some of these are literally hidden in plain view, others require a little more exploration to discover, what they do, once you collect all 42 of them, I could not say, as I am missing a few, but the hunt is still fun, nonetheless. There really is not too much more to discover, there is a lot of the same foliage, but a wealth of new plants to scan and catalogue, though the variants on some of the critters from the base locations are fun, the toucan looking pufferbird are fun and colourful. There are few Viper corp boxes to scan, which usually requires the shooting of a bunch of nearby switches, do this and then you can get a nifty upgrade, but sadly, none of those can be taken back to the base game. The only challenge in combat, comes from the new robots that Viper has brought to DL-C1, these are the same robots each time, but when the spawn, they will have a shield around the, blue, red or green and the colour refers to a type of plant that you need, green for acid for example and until you hit them with the right plant, their shields will remain on.

On the visual side, the game looks just as nice now as it did with the original release, though the underwater moments are spectacular. The new enemy design makes me think of evil corporation #17, where the basic concept is Apple, but with sharper lines and grey/black and highlights with purples and reds. There is nothing wrong with that, but given the fun that the team had with the original planet, ship, critters and more, I was hoping there would be something more fun in the design here, sadly it was not to be, even the final boss is very lacklustre in its design. The sound is mostly the safe, those same screaming birds are there, the pufferbirds are back as well, the new robots sound cool, but robots generally do. The new AI is snarky, and I liked it and while they don’t have a host of lines, the ones they do say are delivered just right, at least as far as imaginary AI’s go. There are a few new commercials to enjoy in the ship, but as with the main game, you will either like them or hate them, though the mega mansions on monster trucks was fun.

Journey to the Savage Planet could have easily just tacked on a new area to explore and called it a day with their first DLC and while that is the basic idea of Hot Garbage, the addition of a new company to deal with and some new mechanics to enjoy help take it a little higher. I would have enjoyed being able to take those new mechanics back to the main game, to help locate some of those missing collectables, but I will take it as it is for now. If you enjoyed exploring in the main campaign and want more, then this is just right for you and at only a few hours in length, it won’t demand your attention for days on end, which is perfect really.