After my late-night drunken decision to step up my membership plan to the "Extra" setting I suddenly found myself receiving around 100 games that were previously not in my library. I am not going to be able to play all of these unless I develop some sort of system since I am not the kind of player that just plays video games all day, regardless of how much I like them. I'm also quite fussy about what kind of game I am going to enjoy and games that everyone else loves, don't always appeal to me.
I choose which games I am going to play indiscriminately and rarely even look at the description. I'm just downloading them willy-nilly and trying to avoid AAA studios in the process. I promise myself that I will play the game for at least an hour even if I really don't like it. The idea here is to find some "hidden gems" that smaller studios have made. I need the game to capture my attention right away and through good game design, keep me interested.
So far, most of the games have failed to accomplish that but have found a few winners in there: So far, I consider Journey to the Savage Planet to be one of the better games available.
Like almost all the other games I played, I had no idea what to expect from this but was very hopeful that it wasn't going to be another survival game since I really don't like that genre. It had a bit of a look like that was exactly what it was going to be but thankfully, it is not.
You find yourself as the lone passenger on an expedition to explore a new planet and it is your job to head out from your crashed spacecraft and find resources on the planet that are going to enable you to terraform it for other Earthlings arriving later.
The game starts out in a whimsical manner that really appeals to me. Your corporate masters clearly don't give a crap about you and haven't given you much in the way of equipment to survive. This creates a good narrative about why it is that you have to venture so far away from your ship in order to get what you need. The first enemies that you encounter are really cute and you don't really even need to kill them. You do kill them of course, even though it isn't necessary for the most part. In fact, most of the enemies that I have encountered up to this point have been very well done in a cute manner and this includes the sound effects that they make when you engage with them.
You have to go several hours into the game before you start to encounter enemies that pose any real threat to you and even then, most of them are not aggro. The game is pretty easy at first and this enable you to fully explore the silly surroundings and discover secrets. A lot of the game is based around platforming, which is yet to become anything I consider to be annoying.
As someone who generally isn't a fan of FPS games, I am happy to see that this one didn't take itself too seriously or even really seriously at all. It is intentionally comical in an almost Borderlands or Fallout light type of way.
The game also introduces easily identified metroid-vania aspects into the game such as developing a "double jump" and later a grappling ability and both of these make getting around a lot easier. This is always a welcome addition to any game in my book and it is executed quite well. New areas are made accessible and it is very clear what your next objective actually is.
I suppose if I was going to have a "beef" with this game at all it would be that there is, as of several hours into the game, not sort of overall map so if you don't immediately see the pathway where you are supposed to go towards, you can end up spending a lot of time wandering around in circles. If they give me a map system later that would be really helpful but for now it is necessary that you actually commit the landscape to memory. This only became truly frustrating in a couple of situations because the enemies frequently respawn and I had a pea-shooter of a weapon at the time so it was just tedious an annoying. I experienced all of this because I got distracted and didn't see the platform that was leaving where I was to the next area and I just ended up walking back and forth for about half and hour and finding it necessary to repeatedly fight off these flying jellyfish things.
The game is a lot of fun and because the story is meant to be childish and amusing, it really appeals to me. If you aren't really paying attention to the story that's ok because it is basically, "keep going that way." They put a lot of time into being humorous and this is a nice break from the rather serious games I have been playing up to now.
I think that Journey to the Savage Planet will appeal to a wide range of gamer types out there, even casual gamers and people who generally don't care for FPS games. While I am going to put this one on the back burner so I can continue down my path of completing all of the games, I fully intend to return and complete it.
Games played so far in my trip through all the "Extra" games on Playstation Plus
- Windbound (survival game with rogue-like elements - not recommended)
- Magicka 2 (top-down humorous multiplayer hack and slash-sort with immense spell system - maybe recommended)
- Tearaway: Unfolded (charming casual 3D platformer with inventive graphics and gameplay designed for all ages - recommended for casual players)
- Spiritfarer (casual simulation / resource-management style game with an extremely good story - recommended for all)
- Observation (point and click survival sort of... interactive game of sorts set in space - found it very boring after just one hour and do not recommend)
- Gabbuchi (simplistic puzzle game that I feel is better suited to mobile devices. Not recommended on consoles)
- The Messenger (8-bit style action/platformer that is a throwback to original Ninja Gaiden. It's simplistic fun. Recommended)
- Megadimension Neptunia VII (typical JRPG with some adjustments made to combat for uniqueness. Could be fun and I lukewarmly recommend for someone willing to dedicate 50 hours to a turn-based RPG)
- Monster Jam: Steel Titans 2 (monster truck racing game that will appeal only to people who are already fans of the sport - not recommended for any other people)
- Entwined (Visually appealing rhythm pace game that is very easy to pick up but gets repetitive after 30 minutes or so - recommended for anyone that can get it for free.)
- 2Dark (8-bit graphic survival horror/stealth hybrid. The game becomes extremely difficult really fast and therefore failed to hold my attention - not recommended)
- Virginia (interactive-cinema...not really a game and it is over in a couple of hours. Not recommended)
- Trials of Mana (simplistic action RPG that will definitely appeal to the casual gamer that is a fan of old-school RPG combat mechanics - recommended)
- Journey to the Savage Planet (FPS exploration game in a semi-open-world environment. The game is intentionally silly and I loved it - recommended)