Journey to the Savage Planet (2020)

I was really enjoying this, but it has gamebreaking glitches that will never be fixed because Google fired everyone.

The first time you return to the ship with Alien Alloy, no matter how many you've collected, the game only counts it as one. Every other one you collected will be permanently lost. You can no longer 100% the game, and if you collected too many, you'll be unable to progress at all!

I'm not a big fun of jumping puzzles, but the colorfulness and humor of JttSP make it fun enough that I could take more of them. I liked the expanding abilities and the exploration, I found the fauna benign--to-annoying and the flora varied (and with little jokes in the description. I thought the humor was wacky-cute and not wacky-annoying as it largely stays out of your way. In fact, I only had little niggles with this game, like the 10 seconds wasted on "getting out of the cloning chamber" animation every time you die.

All that said, while I liked the experience, I'm not a big fan of "searching for hidden secrets" so I skipped a lot of the number-counting side quests and didn't bother with the included DLC.

Stadia Developers Can't Fix The Bugs In Their Own Game Because Google Fired Them

More red flags about the state of Stadia. Worse than that, given Google is the publisher of the game and they shut Typhoon down completely at the beginning of the month (1 Feb 2021), I suspect that means this also will affect any future updates (or lack thereof) for the other platforms. 505 published the game on all other platforms, but there is no Typhoon to work on updates. And if Google owns the game, it's up to them to deliver any patches or updates, which is unlikely now that the devs of the game are no longer employed by Google.

Bad news for fans of the game and for Stadia subscribers alike.

This game is simultaneously a lot of fun and exceptionally annoying to play. It's well crafted but things like platforming and combat feel shoehorned in, with neither feeling smoothly integrated or enjoyable. Perhaps it is intentionally, to provide a sense that your explorer is a bit bumbling and crashing their way through the alien landscape. But it makes for very uneven game play. Sometimes its a joy to play, and at other times it feels like you'd gain more enjoyment from banging your head against the wall than you would trying to accurately jump to another platform in Journey to the Savage Planet. I also think the devs are aware that the combat in the game is not particularly fun, which is why combat encounters are fairly rare. Again, maybe it is to make you feel a bit overwhelmed by the alien creatures you face, but combat seems unnaturally bolted on.

On a positive note, the game is gorgeous and exploration is certainly a blast. I just wish the game felt a little less disjointed overall.