The adventure begins in a spaceship that has just landed on the mysterious planet AR-Y 26. As an employee of Kindred Aerospace (voted fourth best interstellar exploration company!), you are tasked with checking whether this new world is likely to welcome humanity, which continues to exhaust the resources of our good old Earth. While a video message from the CEO of Kindred explains the ins and outs of your mission, the French player that you are certainly likely to be disturbed by an unexpected element: the Quebec accent of this dashing business leader. . Subsequently, the fact that the voice of the artificial intelligence that accompanies you on your journey suffers from the same syndrome leaves no doubt: it is not a matter of a voluntary style effect, but quite simply a French version which was obviously made locally, the developers of Typhoon Studios being based in Montreal. If this bothers you, it is fortunately possible to switch to the English voices. That being said, this Quebec touch adds even more to the light and comic character of the game, which takes advantage of every opportunity to place a touch of humor. Thus, when you are asked to choose your portrait, it is a beautiful gallery of bewildered (or even moronic) heads that is displayed in front of you. Among these is even a dog's head!Thanks to the fauna and flora of planet AR-Y 26, a change of scenery is guaranteed while exploration benefits from a well-thought-out level design.
Subtle and welcome detail: if you choose to play man's best friend, you will hear a typical canine gasp when you sprint too long. In addition, the on-board computer has a messaging system that will ultimately only prove to be good for flooding you with spam, while completely barred advertising videos are regularly broadcast on the various screens in the cabin. The humor of these pubs is sometimes successful, sometimes "meta" (the presence of multiple microtransactions in "Mobamobamobamobile VR V17" is presented as a positive selling point) and sometimes downright bad taste. There's a bit to eat and drink, and not all jokes work. The artistic direction, on the other hand, works perfectly well. Bright colors, variegated flora and strange fauna effectively evoke a distant world, as well understood by No Man's Sky and The Outer Worlds in the past. Success in AD is all the more important as the gameplay places particular emphasis on exploration. The player is free to carry out the various quests (main, secondary, experimental, and global) in the order he prefers, and to wander as he pleases in this semi-open world. Only the construction of the “metroidvania” style sets imposes limits, since it will be imperative to unlock certain powers to access certain areas.PLANET CHIC
Far from being randomly generated, the environments have all been designed "by hand" and therefore always offer something interesting to do or see. The gameplay is similar to a survival game. If one of the main objectives is to scan as many elements of the local ecosystem as possible, it is also necessary to recover different resources (carbon, aluminum, silicone and extraterrestrial alloys) intended for the 3D printer of our spaceship. This miniature factory allows you to craft various tools and equipment upgrades, including a pistol and a grappling hook. The latter allows you to cling to certain specific fixed points, but also to "surf" on certain ramps like a BioShock Infinite. Once again, everything is done to encourage exploration. If they are secondary, the fights are still very present. On the one hand because the game often encourages you, and sometimes even forces you, to slaughter the innocent creatures of AR-Y 26, which allows you to recover a good amount of resources. And on the other hand because the planet is also home to aggressive animals, against which you will absolutely have to fight. Some of them can only be eliminated by shooting at specific weak points, a principle which is also systematically taken up for the few bosses that punctuate the adventure.
Even if it inevitably recalls Subnautica or even No Man's Sky, Journey to the Savage Planet remains a relatively original title, which we take pleasure in browsing despite its few imperfections.
More anecdotally, it is also possible to slap and kick smaller creatures. In order to vary the pleasures and to be able to cross certain passages, it is necessary to collect different "weapons" in nature: bait to attract animals, glue to immobilize them, acid fruits to dissolve the shells, fruits allowing to deposit points of grip for the grappling hook on certain surfaces, electric fruits, explosive fruits, etc. This point of gameplay also gives us the opportunity to address the few flaws of the game, since you can only carry a very limited number of each tool. It therefore happens, for example, that we find ourselves in front of a passage that can only be crossed with the help of an electric fruit and that, because we do not have one at hand, we must then make laborious trips back and forth to unearth it. Also flawed is the backpack system that one has to pick up each time one dies. It happens that the bag is placed in a place that is difficult to access, or too far from the place where one has really perished, because of the verticality of the environments. The interface would also have deserved more care, especially on PC since keyboard navigation is not at all practical (while the keyboard / mouse remains preferable to the joystick during the exploration and combat phases). All this prevents the game from being a total success, but does not handicap it too much. After having defeated the final boss after about ten hours, we also take pleasure in continuing the exploration in order to find all the elements to collect, and in particular the barrels of fuel which allow us to return to earth. .and thus triggering the display of the end credits a second time!
