4 reviews
.story
Biomutant tells the story of a silent mouse-looking mutant, an avatar fully created with a basic in-game editor. The world is populated by many kinds of mutants split between who wants to save and carefully use the planet's resources and who wants to take everything for themselves and see the nature rot. It is clear since the first hours of gameplay that Biomutant doesn't focus too much on the plot. The game is fully voiced by narrator that talks a bit too much sometimes and takes his time despite the world's ending. Our main role in all this is re-enstablish the order by putting down the Wolrd-eaters, giant beasts that will oversee the world once defeated. They will also take the same pose of the four Divine Beasts of Breath of the Wild. We also have to reunite the tribes by fighting three factions of two sides, dark of light, depending on the side we take. Nothing is really well thorough and to be fair I don't complain. It isn't that much interesting. Biomutant is developed by Experiment 101 and some of them were behind the Just Cause franchise which isn't exactly that kind of game you buy for the storyline. When the NPCs are not focused on telling us 100 times our goal or breaking the 4th wall by saying that we need to protect and respect the planet Earth they can be quite funny but they didn't put much effort on developing any of them. Right after the beginning we are asked to choose a side between dark and light that reflects our actions, evil or good. This impacts the Psy powers we can get, despite being able to get the powers of both sides later in the game, and the ending. Don't expect anything mindblowing anyway.
.gameplay
Biomutant plays a lot like Ratchet and Clank. There are different playstyles, given early by choosing different classes: melee, dual, ranged, psyonic. This affects the beginning of the game because later on we will be able to mix them all even though they will still keep some of their identity with some unique perks and skill that will make them more proficient in that playstyle. The most fun part is defeating the world-eaters. Fights are unique and have multiple phases. Point is all of them have the same mission's scheme which require us to find the specific weapon and ammo before the assault. They are not well fused into the story and all we know is we have to defeat them to save the world! In order to defeat some of them we can unlock a mech, an underwater mech and a water bike. Only the latter has a purpose outside this fight. The others are useless and forgotten by the game after we land the relative kill. It was just a waste of time to develop them and all we have are just a couple of cosmetics for them and that's pretty much it. Another main story path wants us to liberate or conquer the different tribes and reunite the world. After taking side of one of two factions, 3 good and 3 evil, we just complete different tasks for them and think it might have any impact in the game. It doesn't. Pad at hand Biomutant is quite fun. Psy and ranged style are more favoured and easy to master. Also playing melee makes the game a very boring hack n slash by smashing buttons and try to parry enemies, which takes a lot of time to master and a 3-button combination to land the complete counter-attack sometimes. Ranged is the way to go but on the long run it becomes just an infinite rolling while shooting type of game. Biomutant has loot boxes hidden in numerous outposts on a medium size world map. I would say it's still big enough to get bored of walking back and fourth despite a good amount of teleports and the map's feature to track all the completed outpost. Crafting is a thing and doesn't require lots of planning to get good weapons with the level of challenge the game offers. Other than fighting there are some mini-puzzles in-between, nothing special but cool enough to deserve a mention.
.sound
Hardly anything much to say. Biomutant is pretty much a flat line in this front. I appreciated the idea of a single narrator for the whole game, well done and gave a unique touch.
.graphics
Biomutant runs pretty well on PC. After some patches most of the bugs are gone but I still had to load a previous savestate when my mech disappeared completely from the game. The worldmap has a good size. The game world is colorful, detailed and all the creatured are well-animated but still looking generic and lifeless. I like this kind of post-apocalyptic saturated colour adventure game but it doesn't have the same soul Enslaved and Horizon showed in the recent past.
.verdict
Biomutant is the first game from Experiment 101, a small studio with many ideas. Unfortunately most of them just drafted and left to die in a shell that wanted to do too much.
Biomutant tells the story of a silent mouse-looking mutant, an avatar fully created with a basic in-game editor. The world is populated by many kinds of mutants split between who wants to save and carefully use the planet's resources and who wants to take everything for themselves and see the nature rot. It is clear since the first hours of gameplay that Biomutant doesn't focus too much on the plot. The game is fully voiced by narrator that talks a bit too much sometimes and takes his time despite the world's ending. Our main role in all this is re-enstablish the order by putting down the Wolrd-eaters, giant beasts that will oversee the world once defeated. They will also take the same pose of the four Divine Beasts of Breath of the Wild. We also have to reunite the tribes by fighting three factions of two sides, dark of light, depending on the side we take. Nothing is really well thorough and to be fair I don't complain. It isn't that much interesting. Biomutant is developed by Experiment 101 and some of them were behind the Just Cause franchise which isn't exactly that kind of game you buy for the storyline. When the NPCs are not focused on telling us 100 times our goal or breaking the 4th wall by saying that we need to protect and respect the planet Earth they can be quite funny but they didn't put much effort on developing any of them. Right after the beginning we are asked to choose a side between dark and light that reflects our actions, evil or good. This impacts the Psy powers we can get, despite being able to get the powers of both sides later in the game, and the ending. Don't expect anything mindblowing anyway.
.gameplay
Biomutant plays a lot like Ratchet and Clank. There are different playstyles, given early by choosing different classes: melee, dual, ranged, psyonic. This affects the beginning of the game because later on we will be able to mix them all even though they will still keep some of their identity with some unique perks and skill that will make them more proficient in that playstyle. The most fun part is defeating the world-eaters. Fights are unique and have multiple phases. Point is all of them have the same mission's scheme which require us to find the specific weapon and ammo before the assault. They are not well fused into the story and all we know is we have to defeat them to save the world! In order to defeat some of them we can unlock a mech, an underwater mech and a water bike. Only the latter has a purpose outside this fight. The others are useless and forgotten by the game after we land the relative kill. It was just a waste of time to develop them and all we have are just a couple of cosmetics for them and that's pretty much it. Another main story path wants us to liberate or conquer the different tribes and reunite the world. After taking side of one of two factions, 3 good and 3 evil, we just complete different tasks for them and think it might have any impact in the game. It doesn't. Pad at hand Biomutant is quite fun. Psy and ranged style are more favoured and easy to master. Also playing melee makes the game a very boring hack n slash by smashing buttons and try to parry enemies, which takes a lot of time to master and a 3-button combination to land the complete counter-attack sometimes. Ranged is the way to go but on the long run it becomes just an infinite rolling while shooting type of game. Biomutant has loot boxes hidden in numerous outposts on a medium size world map. I would say it's still big enough to get bored of walking back and fourth despite a good amount of teleports and the map's feature to track all the completed outpost. Crafting is a thing and doesn't require lots of planning to get good weapons with the level of challenge the game offers. Other than fighting there are some mini-puzzles in-between, nothing special but cool enough to deserve a mention.
.sound
Hardly anything much to say. Biomutant is pretty much a flat line in this front. I appreciated the idea of a single narrator for the whole game, well done and gave a unique touch.
.graphics
Biomutant runs pretty well on PC. After some patches most of the bugs are gone but I still had to load a previous savestate when my mech disappeared completely from the game. The worldmap has a good size. The game world is colorful, detailed and all the creatured are well-animated but still looking generic and lifeless. I like this kind of post-apocalyptic saturated colour adventure game but it doesn't have the same soul Enslaved and Horizon showed in the recent past.
.verdict
Biomutant is the first game from Experiment 101, a small studio with many ideas. Unfortunately most of them just drafted and left to die in a shell that wanted to do too much.
If an rpg & a nature documentary had a baby, this would be the result. Graphics, soundtrack, customization, & combat are all a joy. The fluidity/speed of movement hits that sweet spot pretty well. Stumbles here & there from frame rate issues & repetitiveness, but more than makes up for it with charm & wit (plus patches nowadays can change all that). Do not listen to official reviews a more accurate assessment would be 8/10. Not groundbreaking but a fun romp worth every penny!
- teenagemutantninjadaniel
- Jun 5, 2021
- Permalink
Biomutant is an expansive open world game about mutants & monsters . It's a different experience with interesting gameplay .
- carol-danv
- May 25, 2021
- Permalink
The game is super enjoyable and there's a lot to admire. Sure it's not groundbreaking, but that shouldn't detract from how fun it is and how much passion and effort was clearly put into it.
I may be biased as a person who loves quote unquote "BOTW clones", games set in ancient China/feudal Japan, and games staring animals.
But a 6/10? I think the game is worthy of a bit more than that. Especially as a game made by a small Swedish team and not a triple A studio.
The art direction and music is beautiful. The graphics are nice and colorful and detailed. It feels like I'm playing through an animated movie. The world is massive, strange and very unique.
The game certainly isn't without its faults though. For example I found the UI to be very buggy at times - when I go to craft a weapon, sometimes the add ons would flat out not show up until I closed it and reopened it. The load times are very long and sometimes the graphics tend to "flicker", IE the textures wouldn't fully load at first but pop in. These can probably be explained by me playing on a vanilla PS4 slim. What can't be explained by that is one of the game's biggest detractors - the narrator. The NPCs speak in a gibberish similar to the characters in Hollow Knight or Ori and the Will of the Wisps. There is a translation of what they're saying written out, but even so, the narrator feels the need to read it out every time. Thankfully you can turn this off in the options menu.
Don't go in expecting something revolutionary. If you know what you're getting into you'll probably have a good time. If you're a fan of mascot platformers, games with an ancient Eastern tinge, and/or games similar to Zelda BOTW and Horizon, I'd definitely recommend it. Just don't expect something as polished as Horizon or BOTW. I can definitely understand someone disliking the game whose interests don't align with the game as it does with mine. But even so I still think there's a lot to appreciate.
I may be biased as a person who loves quote unquote "BOTW clones", games set in ancient China/feudal Japan, and games staring animals.
But a 6/10? I think the game is worthy of a bit more than that. Especially as a game made by a small Swedish team and not a triple A studio.
The art direction and music is beautiful. The graphics are nice and colorful and detailed. It feels like I'm playing through an animated movie. The world is massive, strange and very unique.
The game certainly isn't without its faults though. For example I found the UI to be very buggy at times - when I go to craft a weapon, sometimes the add ons would flat out not show up until I closed it and reopened it. The load times are very long and sometimes the graphics tend to "flicker", IE the textures wouldn't fully load at first but pop in. These can probably be explained by me playing on a vanilla PS4 slim. What can't be explained by that is one of the game's biggest detractors - the narrator. The NPCs speak in a gibberish similar to the characters in Hollow Knight or Ori and the Will of the Wisps. There is a translation of what they're saying written out, but even so, the narrator feels the need to read it out every time. Thankfully you can turn this off in the options menu.
Don't go in expecting something revolutionary. If you know what you're getting into you'll probably have a good time. If you're a fan of mascot platformers, games with an ancient Eastern tinge, and/or games similar to Zelda BOTW and Horizon, I'd definitely recommend it. Just don't expect something as polished as Horizon or BOTW. I can definitely understand someone disliking the game whose interests don't align with the game as it does with mine. But even so I still think there's a lot to appreciate.