Welcome to our review of Biomutant, a game that has been years in the making!
Biomutant is an open-world, post-apocalyptic Kung-Fu fable RPG, with a unique martial arts-styled combat system allowing you to mix melee, shooting, and mutant ability action. A plague is ruining the land and the Tree-of-Life is bleeding death from its roots. The Tribes stand divided. Explore a world in turmoil and define its fate – will you be its savior or lead it to an even darker destiny?
The martial arts-style combat system allows you maximum freedom of movement and agility while mixing shooting, melee, and powers from your mutations. Learning new Wung-Fu combat forms through progression and learning from masters you’ll meet, will constantly add to your choices and make sure combat never gets old.
You’ll be able to re-code your genetic structure to change the way you look and play. This will of course affect your attributes and in addition to this, exposure to bio-contamination in the world will lead to mutations like the Turtleform and Mucus Bubble, while exposure to radioactivity found in bunkers from the old world will affect your mind and unlock psi-mutations like telekinesis, levitation and more.
You are totally free when crafting weapons. Mix and match parts to create your own unique 1H or 2H slash and crush weapons. Revolvers, rifles and shotguns and add modifications like cork-screws and battery-powered chainsaw modules to bio-contaminated sludge vials adding to your combat arsenal. There are even characters you’ll meet that’ll craft cool stuff for you, like bionic wings, a jump-pack, and even let you modify your Automaton – the scrap-toy sidekick!
You are totally free when equipping your character. Not only when it comes to choosing weapons you created, but what type of gear you wear. Equip a gas mask and an oxygen tank for exploring the Dead Zones, thermos-resistant clothes for venturing into cryonic areas, or protective gear for taking on bio-contaminated creatures, the choice is up to you.
You are free to explore the world and what lies beneath its surface, by foot, mech, jet-ski, air-balloon, or area unique mounts. Explore the dying wildland, the tunnels, and bunker networks of the underworld, and find your way up the mountains or out in the archipelago. There are lots of discoveries to be made, mysteries to unravel, creatures to confront, and weird characters to meet in this vibrant and colorful world.
Your actions play a major part in the unfolding of a story where End is coming to the New World. A plague is ruining the land and the Tree-of-Life is bleeding death from its roots. The Tribes stand divided, in need of someone strong enough to unite them or bring them all down… You are guided through the world by a Storyteller that narrates every step of your journey, but it’s your actions and choices that’ll decide how your story of survival ends.
When I first got confirmation for the release date of Biomutant, I was very happy, to say the least. I would be getting the game during my annual holiday and with the entire pandemic preventing me from going to Japan, well, you figure out what I was going to be spending my time on.
Fast forward to today, having had the game a few days, I must say I am very underwhelmed at how this game performs on the Series X. I often have blurry images, the loading screens are not how I had hoped this next-gen to be performing and well, it does not even support Quick resume, each time I go out of the game, it insists on redoing the entire boot sequence, which (spoiler alert) is painstakingly long.
The game itself is also not the brightest of bulbs I have played in the past years. When first asked for my impressions by some friends, I told them this looked like it was 5 genres/games smacked together and they had one ugly baby. Mind you it is not all bad, I just had my annoyances and I have to vent a little.
First up, as an open-world game, the game looks and feels exactly like the usual suspects, BOTW/Genshin Impact, and the likes. Nothing wrong there, but also very little novelty in this aspect. I felt like I was playing a cheaper, yet polished knock off. Does that even make sense?
Second, I am not a religious man, but my god, there are some mighty complicated game mechanics. Sure, proper tutorials and all, but damn, it’s overwhelming how many things you need to take care of. From how you look to how you fight, what your guns will look like, and how they perform. The map is hidden behind a button that needs 2 button presses to get out of, … So many small details that just did not do it for me.
Third, looking like a kung fu panda game, but playing like you are in a more docile Monster Hunter environment. I know I am not being very nice here as the game mechanics do work for this game, but it is just all about mindless hacking your big slow weapon or shooting those bullets that barely scratch enemies. So many weird design choices.
Fourth, I get annoyed by the way the narrative is handled. First off, you get the in-game conversations from the characters in a fictional language, which is then narrated by the same voice for pretty much everything. It kind of presents itself as trying to be different, but I got annoyed by it, it added at least several minutes of speech to a lot of played hours so far.
Fifth and final, this is purely personal, but the switching from young versus mature. I get that that they are needed for the story development and all, but with all the side missions and the abundance of narrative bits, this can get on the boring side.
In all honesty, that was a lot of complaining. Not that this is a really bad game or so, it just failed to grab my attention and I was just not getting into the game. Especially the lack of a quick resume really bothered me, an accidental menu press, bam, good luck. With all the bugs and annoyances, I am sure most will be evened out in the future but is that really good enough for now?
In conclusion, I wish Biomutant was a better game. I originally held off on ordering that massive and impressive collector’s edition and while I still want it for the figure, it is no longer for the game. I barely enjoyed my time as the ronin and will probably jump back in from the start in a year or so, hoping most issues got solved… For now, the charming world can not overcome the issues so sadly this is a 6 out of 10.
