Basically, I’m just happy that Journey to the Savage Planet on the Switch finally has it living up to the potential the game showed back when it was first teased. It’s kind of ironic it had to be visually downgraded to achieve that, but if I have to sacrifice a bit of performance to get a lot more fun out of a game, that’s a trade-off I’ll take every time.

Journey to the Savage Planet is a wonderfully unique mixture of No Man's Sky-style exploration and Metroidvania puzzling and platforming with a wonderfully dark sense of humour that arrives here on Switch in a slightly compromised but still eminently playable state. ARY-26 is a fantastically vibrant planet to explore, filled with cute creatures, bizarre flora and fauna and super-slick platforming and environmental puzzle design. The monolithic tower that sits at the middle of this alien planet is a compelling mystery to work towards and the game doles out plenty of fun new tools and toys at just the right rate to keep you highly entertained as you jump, grapple, boost and blast your way to the secret at its core. There have been obvious graphical concessions made and the framerate does wobble from time to time – performance definitely feels worse in docked than handheld – but overall Typhoon Games has created an adventure that's strong enough to transcend any of these slight technical shortcomings and absolutely remains an experience you should check out, if you get the chance.

At its core, Journey to the Savage Planet is an incredible game that only misses a couple quality of life issues that make navigation a little more frustrating than it should be. That being said, the rest of its excellent design blows right past that oversight. The Switch version in particular brings with it its own unique issues, but once again the design outshines these issues. While I can’t say the Switch is the ideal way to play this game, it is worth playing in whatever form you can.

Journey to the Savage Planet is a bit of a modern classic, and so giving Switch monogamists a chance to play it too is something to be celebrated.

Journey to the Savage Planet is a fun and involving first person adventure game that is filled with humour and with interesting details to explore in its vast world. While its technical performance on the Nintendo Switch could be sharper, there's plenty here that will keep players captivated in this witty and addictive adventure.