Biomutant Review
Release Date: May 25th, 2021
Developer: Experiment 101
Platforms: PC (Reviewed), Xbox, PlayStation 4
Price: $59.99
When games are revealed and then go dormant for many years, it's no surprise that the feeling of abandonment or turmoil within a project is either certain or imminent, and after Biomutant's reveal way back in 2017 - with many dates following that were delayed or just ignored - it's incredible to see one of the most unique and vibrant titles of the last few year finally get a release. So many great ideas find themselves never coming to fruition either due to do an ambition that falls through, or, if a project does release, falls short of many expectations due to a lack of resources or cut content that ends up hindering - and sometimes ruining - the entire experience (see: Cyberpunk 2077). Biomutant has been one of those games that I've thought about consistently for years since its debut, and one that I always wondered what the state of it was because preorders for its insane Collector's Edition have been available since then and they were never taken down from storefronts. Years later, Biomutant makes its debut in a wonderful and beautiful post-apocalyptic world and still holds its unique look, feel, and flair, retaining its integrity and stand out features in 2021, which, thankfully, has mostly stood the test of time versus something like Werewolf: The Apocalypse. Biomutant does well to be a solid blend of adventure and RPG keeping things deep but straightforward without overdoing the stats and questlines in favor of more traditional exploring that rewards the player for their curiosity, and while the gameplay is consistent and its combat feels mostly fluid, especially as you get more and more abilities and moves, its open world and martial arts coating feels more like a disguise and dressing for what is essentially an all-too-familiar action-adventure RPG experience, and you can tell without a doubt that the ambition may have been much larger than anticipated for a smaller team to handle.
The Biomutant experience is an interesting one that sees players take on the role of an intelligent mammal in a post-apocalyptic world trying to survive. With a huge emphasis on martial arts but also creating your own adventure, Biomutant starts players off with an interesting character creation mode to make sure you're playing the way you like with the stats you would most enjoy, choosing a breed and resistance, bonuses, and class that will determine how you look as your creature begins to morph depending on the stats you've chosen. It's an interesting way to create a character that will look and move to the stats you've chosen versus actually adjusting any sliders and choosing the shape and feature of every part of the body, giving more of an emphasis to the "genetic sequencing" that's happening when you first begin and continue to grow throughout the duration of your playthrough. After you've set your character up the way you'd like with the choices that you feel would be the most attuned to your playstyle, you'll quickly begin the narrative of Biomutant, which, for what it's worth, is a straight-forward story about the creation of Wung-Fu in a post-apocalyptic world where humans are gone and the Tree of Life is threatened by World Eaters that are gargantuan monstrosities aiming to completely destroy it, though while this sounds like a normal case of "protect the weak", the choice is ultimately up to you as the game constantly has a series of Moral Choices that completely shape (and then reshape) the game with no real linear outlook, making every choice impactful leading up to the next in a Fable-esque approach to its structure.
You'll quickly be taken from fight to fight understanding the ways of Wung-Fu and how the different setups and mechanics work between waves of enemies versus larger singular ones, or even a mix of them, understanding the basic combat setups and how to mix and match all of your buttons into a pattern that makes for an exciting enough time, though admittedly isn't as flashy as one would hope given the skills and chi/aura that's emphasized in its sort of "mystical" martial arts world. Combat feels fairly intuitive, though one of the big caveats of Biomutant's fighting system is that it's not particularly friendly to a keyboard/mouse experience on PC, and, while far from the worst keybindings I've used, it's clear that there's enough in Biomutant that a controller is much preferred for an optimal experience. Combat upgrades via gear and other sequencing allow you to get extremely fancy with mutations and parts through experience and salvaging that help enhance and unlock other move-sets and gear sets as well as your usual passives and buffs that would help you both in and out of combat. In my experience, the game reasonably works with you through these upgrades and none ever felt too hard to acquire through the various resources you'll use up when wanting to unlock whichever you'd prefer, and it's also nice that rather than go through a tree of sorts, you can select whichever you please seeing as you have the necessary points to do so. A big plus that I loved also is every category of Biomutant's enhancements have their own points, so you never have to worry about how you'll spend you skill points and the sort across a variety of categories like in some other titles that have only one real set of points to distribute.
Interestingly, for as much of an emphasis Biomutant puts on its unique weaponry and clearly hoping you'll enjoy the combat as well as all the fancy gear, gizmos, and exoskeletons, it's unfortunately the weakest part of the game, and most of its strengths lie in the overworld where you get to explore and go sightseeing, dealing with the various factions that will either aid you or go against your desire to save or destroy the tree of life. Utilizing the Karma system in Biomutant's gameplay is what will help you with your persuasion, but also in doing so give you many perks allowing for companions and recruits as you engage in combat and travel towards your end goal. As one can imagine, some of the factions you choose to go against, depending on your route of choice, will obviously consider you their rivals, making for more enemies in the world of Biomutant as you go on your quest of morale questioning. While out and about, the fast travel system as place as well as traversal on ground or airborne will give the player as much freedom as it can, and I say this because while Biomutant does have that luscious world to play around in, it's easy to get bored, though that doesn't necessarily mean that Biomutant isn't a good time, it just tends to wear off rather quickly from session to session. The world also, while a fairly decent size, doesn’t do much in the way of collectibles and secrets, and though they're there, they just never feel important enough to the point where exploring feels rewarding. It's an odd sort of bittersweet experience where we finally have an action adventure open world game here that doesn't bombard you with needless bloat, but there's also so little to the point where Biomutant could have possibly been better off as a linear experience with more open hub areas akin to Tomb Raider or The Last of Us instead of going for what I consider the Days Gone template of having a story in a world that simply doesn't complement the nature of the narrative. The freedom, I'm sure, helps give the player less weight as they can run around at their own pace, but when you're so accustomed to the design of RPGs and other adventure open-world games of this nature, all my time spent looking in every corner and in places where one would assume to find something to inevitably be left with nothing but more textures and assets to look at is for naught, leaving instead a feeling of frustration and time being wasted - and time being wasted is a big pet peeve of mine. At the very least, for those that find themselves getting heavy into the lore of Biomutant, every main story beat you come across will be riddled with notes for you to read that look further into the happenings of how these mutations and post-apocalyptic world came to be, giving more background and depth to a story that, at the surface, would otherwise just look like a "save or destroy" trope.
I think it's also worth mentioning that Biomutant at some point feels like it had a few areas where, after years of working on it, it reached a point where the team simply settled once an area felt finished enough to move on, and once an area was revisited that the polishing was mostly done at a minimum to make it feel whole and sturdy enough. It's an odd analogy, but imagine if your freshly made coffee was poured into a Styrofoam cup rather than a ceramic mug—it'll hold and you'll still accomplish your goal of drinking the coffee, but there is a very visible and tangible difference between the efficiency and practicality of both, especially when the handle alone on your ceramic mug will already give you a better grip for stability. It just really depends on how bad you want your coffee, and in this case I think the team was just ready to finish up work on it and get it out into the world once it felt like it was simply good enough - and it totally is - but there's clear room for improvement where Biomutant constantly feels like it hasn't reached its full potential. That said, for all its downsides, Biomutant's 15-20 hour playthrough is undoubtedly a good time - and some may even be able to stretch this to 35+ if they decide to do tackle the sidequests and get all unlockables as well as achievement hunting - but depending on all of the games you're looking at this summer, Biomutant feels like a 'roided up Legend of Kay on a budget to help it realize a vast world with beautiful graphics that help the colors pop further in HDR and 4K, with immense detail on the fur and the areas that matter within Biomutant's presentation, so to some the $60 price tag may be a bit steep, but I think there's enough to enjoy here to justify it if you look in the right places, though admittedly you'll have to be enthusiastic about the prospect of Biomutant to begin with, otherwise you're not missing out on much if you decide to wait for a more enticing deal while you tackle some other experiences in the interim, but I do think regardless that Biomutant is worth checking out and keeping on the radar despite a less than stellar package that loses focus of its overall outline. An unfortunate mishap throughout the development of Biomutant from when it was first revealed to what we have now at retail is that along the way the UI and HUD got changed drastically enough to go from being a clean and minimal design to what feels very dated by comparison. It's possible that as development proceeded the idea and ambitions got greater and greater and the way the user interfaces were set up just couldn't accommodate for or display the information good enough that it was done this way to better convey the information to the player, but while the interface isn't necessarily bad or difficult to go through, Biomutant in its reveal, even in 2017, felt like a much more modern game versus what we got in the end.
Biomutant overall is a competent adventure game that really gives that sense of world building and fun, almost superhero-esque storytelling, though the comic book features and quips, while nice, almost feels like an afterthought now compared to when Biomutant first had its reveal, and I don't really think the game would feel any different by any means had those "KWAK" and "BOOM" bubbles been removed. The martial arts-inspired story and how it implements itself into its gameplay is really nice, however, though again here we see the martial arts stand as more of a narrative flavor, as, outside of weaponry and naming, Biomutant's combat in both ranged and close-quarters doesn't necessarily feel or look like it has much martial arts flair at all, but it's still satisfying and solid nonetheless. Sections of Biomutant's post-apocalyptic world continue to show off the eastern influence through Shinto shrines, torii gates, temples, dojos and the like spread throughout the lands including the Tribes that inhabit the various areas of the region further complement the martial arts storytelling and lifestyle of Biomutant, but this is, again, something that acts as more of a flavor, as ultimately with everything being overrun with foliage, moss, and the usual dilapidated infrastructures, a lot of the architecture of Biomutant starts to become lost, and only really feels different because of the size difference between the structures and animals. The World Eaters give a further sense of scale as you come across them towards your aiding of the Tree of Life (should you choose to walk down this path), but their vicious and ferocious designs, while gargantuan and uniquely monstrous, could be placed just about anywhere well outside a martial arts and comic book setting.
PROS:
Unique setting putting the player in the role of a mutant
The combat feels mostly fluid and is easy to pick up, while being intricate enough for variety
Branching storylines among branching storylines in a vibrant world give a tailored experience
CONS:
Its sense of direction both artistically and narratively loses focus rather quickly
Feels way too linear, despite a big world to play around in
Even with all the extra time given after multiple delays and radio silence, still lacks in some departments.
A big thank you to THQ Nordic and Experiment 101 for providing us
a copy of Biomutant for the purposes of this review