Journey to the Savage Planet Review (Acierocolotl)
Sure!
I mean, on its own, it's an FPS exploration game, in the mould of other games where you explore a limited area, find tech that lets you explore more area, to find tech that lets you explore more area, and so on. You know the name of the genre, and typing it in gives me the hives.
The game is visually lush and the combat hasn't been hard either. The majority of the damage I've taken in-game came from flubbing jumps trying to go off the beaten path. Since there's a lot of hidden gewgaws, going off the beaten path is kind of the point.
The real difference here is the guy who did the writing for Borderlands 2 has done the writing for this game. It's clear he's got a style, a style I described as "Ha ha dystopia" to my wife. Terrible things happen (off-camera, as part of the universe) and they're presented for yukks. There's a lot of social satire action going on with in-ship commercials. Things that buff your character you are casually informed give you "benign cancer", haha, because the corporation views the human assets as having less value than the mechanical ones. Ha ha, the crew are fungible assets.
Here's a commercial for a food product that morphogenically adapts itself to taste like any one of 21 billion different possible delicious foods. It also kills you slowly. Ha ha! It's a dystopian world, and that's the guy's style.
You are sometimes encouraged to do horrible things to the friendly fauna "for science". Like drop-kicking them through whirling blades. I guess you don't have to, but those science experiments won't conduct themselves. Ha.
Now, I'm also playing it in French, and it's all in Quebecois French, which makes my day like you wouldn't believe. "icitte", "déniaise," etc.
Oh yeah, and coop! We started playing, my wife and I, got to bumbling about a bit, and then got distracted by other things and didn't go back so I'm playing it alone. But that's not a reflection on the game, more than it's a reflection on our senses of whimsy.
So yeah, get it. Especially if you thought the writing in Borderlands 2 was ace.