The nightmare was actual, the state of affairs was not.
Revenge of the Savage Planet, an journey unfold throughout plenty of distant — and fairly savage! — planets, invitations nonlinear exploration. To finish its missions and uncover all of its secrets and techniques, you have 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 means 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 demise I encountered beneath 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 essentially 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 to be it contained any scannable gadgets. 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 very best 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 areas on the fly or off your self with the intention 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 the intention to beam off to your subsequent desired location, which forces traversal and new encounters. But it surely meant that whereas bumbling round in the dead of night, hoping to discover a approach 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 nicely with underwater ranges out of an intense concern of drowning. Fortunately for me, most video games will throw me the lifeline of a visible countdown as an instance oxygen ranges, making certain (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 through underwater scooter require a bunch of time-intensive forwards and backwards. 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 wrong way. Not since I watched The Rescue, the riveting-yet-terrifying documentary concerning the staff of divers who squeezed by means of cave passageways to free 12 trapped Thai soccer gamers, had my obvious claustrophobia had its approach with my nerves. I can’t fairly clarify why I pushed myself over the sting to search out an in-game resolution to this unintentional problem, besides to say that I actually needed to do a very good job at Revenge of the Savage Planet.
Most glitches are thought-about errors by programmers, annoyances by gamers, and infrequently shortcuts for the speedrunner crowd. Revenge of the Savage Planet’s demise cave would possibly fall into the primary two classes, however it’s a harrowing expertise I finally appreciated, a singular screw up that would solely occur in a sport. I’ve by no means felt actually trapped in a movie, regardless of the very best 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 fee die down earlier than I grabbed the controller. However I obtained proper again to it. Certain, 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 search out — was its personal type of success.
Revenge of the Savage Planet is at the moment accessible for PC, Ps, and Xbox, and it’s at the moment on Recreation Go.