Biomutant is an ambitious game that wants to be a lot of different things. Part role-playing game, part open-world adventure, part action-shooter with looting, crafting, faction, and morality systems. All of these gameplay elements combined with a cautionary story about how people treat the environment (with a dash of kung fu) make up the 30+ hour experience. While Biomutant offers up fun, acrobatic combat, and an engaging progression system, the game is ultimately hindered by odd and archaic design decisions centered around a story and characters that fail to keep the player emotionally invested.
As a brief story primer, Biomutant revolves around a post-apocalyptic Earth that nature has by and large reclaimed. Humans are replaced with mutated animal creatures and the planet is kept alive by a monolithic tree aptly named the “Tree of Life”. Or, more accurately it was keeping the planet alive until it became poisoned and started unleashing a dark and gooey plague on the land. Worse yet, massive beasts dubbed the “World-Eaters” have begun to destroy the roots of the Tree of Life, threatening the stability of the entire planet. And if that wasn’t bad enough, rival tribes of mutated animals are warring with each other over how best to handle the situation with the World-Eaters and the Tree of Life. It is up to the player to return to the land where they were born on a quest to find the creature responsible for killing their family as well as decide the fate of the world and its inhabitants.
At the start of the game, players are tasked with creating their Biomutant. You will begin by adjusting the proportions of your mutant, making a bulkier mutant will cause them to move slower while a more slender mutant is more nimble. Players also get to choose what color fur they have. Once the physical aspect of character creation is complete, next comes the RPG aspects where players will pick a character class that offers incentives for a number of different playstyles. One class might start with stats or skills that prioritize the psi abilities (special attacks), while another class might focus on brute strength and melee weapons.
For my Biomutant, I slightly altered the preset mutant named ‘Rex’ and chose the ‘Deadeye’ class (purely based on the aesthetic), and focused on upgrading strength and health attributes. As the game progresses further, Biomutant allows players to become somewhat of a jack-of-all-trades, never locking skills or abilities behind specific classes. By the end, I was swinging dual-wield swords, blasting akimbo pistols, and spitting pools of acid at my foes. While it is liberating to be able to unlock any ability that one may desire, it does have the unfortunate side effect of each character class lacking any sort of significant weight or variation. In the end, the gunslinger deadeye sort of character I was going for was more of an imagined character type rather than one that was directly referenced on screen.
While we are on the topic of slashing, shooting and spitting, let’s talk about the moment-to-moment gameplay in Biomutant. Like many other games in the open-world genre, Biomutant’s core gameplay loop consists of exploration, combat, and looting. Players will explore vast open areas, dark caves, and abandoned homes and bunkers in search of enemies to pummel and trinkets to find ranging from weapon parts for crafting stronger weapons to healing items and unique armor sets.
The map in Biomutant is large and will take players some time to fully explore. Beyond having a big map, the most interesting thing about the world is the way it locks players out of certain areas. From the very beginning players are able to go in any direction they choose, but their initial trek may be cut short due to coming across a hazardous zone or a large body of water. Hazardous zones appear in many different forms; biohazard, radiation, cold, hot, and hypoxia, all of which are deadly to the player should they spend too long in the zone. The player can upgrade their resistances to these hazards or seek out a special suit that fully protects them. Similarly, the Biomutant hasn’t been blessed with the ability to infinitely swim and will need to do a quest in order to receive a jet ski-like vehicle called a ‘Googlider’. And even out on the waves, different types of waters necessitate getting better engine upgrades in order to fully explore.
It’s this intentional nature of cutting off access to these areas that make the world way more interesting to explore. In a sort of Metroid-esque style, the player will have to mentally note an area that may have enticed them with promises of shiny loot or an unfinished quest marker, and return at a later time. The world is also separated by a number of biomes ranging from rocky mountains, to green forests, and frozen islands. Each biome is quite large and does a lot of the heavy lifting in regards to keeping the exploration fresh.
The best aspect of Biomutant’s gameplay loop has to be the combat. The combat blends melee bashing with Max Payne-inspired slow-motion gun shooting in a satisfying way. Enemies will change up two basic attack strategies, switching between aggressively rushing the player or firing at them from afar. Because of this, the player needs to constantly switch between all the tools in their arsenal. The fun factor is elevated by the ease of which the Biomutant controls. Rarely would I become frustrated with moving, parrying, or dodging. The introduction of mutation abilities, unlockable combos, and special moves add a fine degree of variation to the combat. My favorites consisted of the ‘Mud Punch’ ability, a move that would summon a muddy fist out of the ground that would launch enemies into the air and ‘Freeze’, an area of effect attack that unleashes a circle of icicle shards and freezes some enemies in place.
Boss fights add another interesting layer to the combat. Each World Eater fight has multiple stages that are, for the most, part unique to each boss. One boss might have you tow mines into its stomach using your Googlider, while another swallows you whole, forcing you to attack its insides. Unfortunately, many of the bosses look visually similar, but these unique stages and strategies required to take each one down makes them stand out as some of the best fights in the game.
Looting is another big aspect of Biomutant’s gameplay, and it’s an aspect of the game that has its positives and negatives. There are many unique items that the player can find; weapon parts like handles, blades, and gun barrels, individual items of clothing, armor, and much more. The customization options are dense, I swapped outfits multiple times throughout the game, which was made simpler by a nice ‘outfits’ section in the menu that allowed for saving multiple outfits to swap between. The act of finding loot out in the world has one major quality of life feature in the form of a notable loot list for any given area. This makes it abundantly clear to the player what loot lies in a location and allows the player to decide if they want to clear the place out or pick and choose what items they desire to collect. This helps alleviate the typically boring act of looting and becomes a bit more fun to engage with.
That said, while the pool of customization items is large, items inevitably pop up multiple times and lose their sense of uniqueness. There is a large amount of looting that takes place and while the items animate on the screen in a fancy way, I ended up resorting to button-mashing through many of the animations in an attempt to lessen the number of starts and stops I experienced when playing through the later hours of the game. Biomutant also has resources that can be collected throughout the world and by breaking down unwanted items. Not a unique system, but by the nature of there being so many items in a given item category (I.e. one-handed swords) that are so similar, I found that I rarely engaged with the crafting system at all. I crafted a couple weapons here and there when I felt I wasn’t dealing enough damage, but beyond that, the game didn’t seem to necessitate constantly crafting new weapons. And seeing as the weapons you craft don’t break, resources don’t need to be spent on any sort of repairing or maintaining of those items. Resources could be spent on upgrading weapons at a weapon bench, but the costs are on the higher end and it was usually an easier (and cheaper) call to just craft new weapons when the time came.
Another system that has its pros and cons is the morality or ‘Aura’ system. Basically, actions you take in the world and specific speech options will give you light or dark aura points. Once a player passes certain aura thresholds, they are able to purchase different combat abilities. Many of the factions have a specific aura they lean towards, giving the player a small decision on which group to ally with that share the most similarities to them. Perhaps most interesting is how some NPC characters may accept or decline invitations by the player based on whether or not they agree with the player’s morals.
The aura system is fairly basic in its implementation and there lies its problems. The game incentivizes gaining both light and dark aura in order to unlock all the special combat abilities, should a player choose one or the other, they will be locked out of obtaining certain moves (some of which are quite beneficial). The factions’ aura alignment boils down to good, bad, kinda good, or kinda bad, and it doesn’t really flesh out the factions in any sort of interesting way. And while the NPC interactions are interesting, they are used few and far between so it would have been nice to see that aspect explored a little deeper.
I opened this review by saying Biomutant is an ambitious game that wants to be a lot of different things. Ambition is like a mechanical bull; creatives are always trying to control it. Sometimes a game so flawlessly achieves the goals of its ambition that it looks effortless. Other times the bull gets its way and bucks the rider off onto the dirt.
Unfortunately, there are many aspects of Biomutant in which the bull got its way. That is to say, many aspects of the game’s design don’t coalesce into a game that is a runaway success. There are many contributing factors such as a lack of variation in enemy types and locations, overly simplistic and repetitive puzzles, a very odd dialogue system, characters that lack relatability and emotion, capped off with small technical issues, and underwhelming visuals.
While the combat is action-packed and fun to control, the enemies leave much to be desired. The vast majority of enemies you duke it out within Biomutant are other mutated creatures like the player. Some hold guns, some hold swords, some are big and some are small. All of these enemies are dealt damage by attacking them with your own swords and guns. Occasionally enemies will have armor that deflects bullets or a shield that protects them, but most of these combat scenarios don’t require any different strategies to complete. Over time, especially in the latter half of the game, the fights begin to feel quite routine due to the enemies not requiring anything of the player but basic attacks. Aesthetically, there are a few different types of enemies like beasts and rock people, but like the other mutated animals, these don’t require any different strategies to defeat other than the odd dodge or parry.
This sameness is further felt in the locations spread throughout the game world. Abandoned towns, villages, factories, bunkers, and caves dot the landscape everywhere you go. An open-world game is a significant undertaking even for massive studios in the gaming industry, so a player should always expect to see some degree of reusing assets in order to fill out the world. The unfortunate case with Biomutant is that these reused assets are very abundant and oftentimes, buildings that are reused in multiple locations have the exact same physical layout (ex. stairs and furniture being placed in the exact orientation at multiple spots). There are multiple factories that look very similar, houses that look similar, villages that look similar to the point that many locations in the game begin to blend together in a haze of sameness. It also doesn’t help that many locations have vague titles as if playing into the fact that they are manufactured areas (ex. Two different locations named Bangshelter 2E and Bangshelter 5D).
One of the bigger disappointments on the gameplay front is the implementation of puzzles. The overworld map is covered in activities that require a puzzle to solve like fixing old TVs and radios, spinning globes, and dialing phones. The issue is the player essentially solves a variation of the same puzzle for each of these activities. They all revolve around creating a path that matches yellow and white lines with their corresponding colors, usually by rotating or sliding pieces into place. That’s it. You have a set number of moves in order to complete the puzzle but the solutions are oftentimes so easy to spot that a move requirement isn’t even a thought in the mind. There isn’t even a real punishment for failing a puzzle, you might take some damage but it immediately heals back up. Should you use all your moves you will be kicked out of the puzzle, but then it resets for you to try again. Failing doesn’t lock the player out of solving a puzzle, just a few wasted seconds of their time. There are few alternate puzzle types like one that involves moving cables to add and subtract values from a required amount to power a door, but these puzzles are practically non-existent in comparison to the color matching puzzles.
One of the most confusing aspects of design is the approach to Biomutant’s dialogue system. First of all, the game has a semi-omniscient narrator that describes things in the world to the player like the time of day or offering a bit of lore about a specific town. The other responsibility of the narrator is to translate what other NPCs say to the player. All the mutated NPCs have their own languages that they speak that are not subtitled and are only approximately translated by the narrator. For reference, think of the dynamic between R2D2 and C3PO, R2 communicates in a series of beeps and boops, and C3PO translates those boops to the audience. It’s at first an interesting deviation from other video game dialogue systems but it rapidly grows tiresome to sit through. I ultimately began skipping the incoherent chatterings of the creatures to get to the information I needed to hear for a quest or story beat. During the game, you have a number of opportunities to select between multiple options of what you would like to say. However, due to the nature of the writing and translation delivery, many of the responses come off as vague interpretations of what characters are saying mixed with philosophical musings about life and nature. It all blends together in this weird concoction of confusion and clunky back and forths that feel harder to navigate than talking normally should.
As a result of this dialogue system and the overall appearance of the NPC characters, it is hard to have any sort of emotional attachment to the characters you interact with. Setting aside the conversational style, the characters emote very little in one on one dialogue scenes. Even the voice performances that are speaking in the gibberish language rarely impart any sort of emotional flair in their speech so lines that are meant to sound sad end up sounding the same as lines that are happy. Characters rarely move when being interacted with so they end up feeling static and lifeless. Adding to this sensation are random moments where character models snap into predefined places when transitioning in and out of conversation scenes. Ultimately any sort of emotion the story tries to convey through its characters falls flat on its face and the story overall suffers greatly from it.
Perhaps the most obvious disconnect between the game and its overall ambition is in visuals and technical issues. It is clear that Biomutant has an artistic vision and direction between the different biomes, character designs, the nature reclaimed environments, and the intense uses of color. However, when it comes down to the finer details, Biomutant doesn’t leave as great of an impression. Texture quality isn’t exactly high, relatively flat lighting and an inconsistent draw distance make the visuals look a little muddied when compared to the relatively high detail of the main characters’ outfits and fur. At times, Biomutant can look very picturesque, and other times it looks as though it were a 7th generation title that they forgot to release.
The game also has a number of small technical issues I felt like highlighting. To the game’s credit, on the PS5 the game runs smoothly consistently with minimal framerate drops and no load times while exploring the world on foot (there are load times when fast traveling). However some of the rougher edges I came across include frequent and noticeable texture pop-ins, objects phasing through level geometry, some items not having collision properties, stiff animations during cutscenes, one instance of getting stuck inside a wall (that was fixed via fast traveling to a nearby location), and one instance where the game crashed. Most of these technical issues can and are being addressed in future patches but I still felt that it was important to share what I encountered during my playtime.
Ultimately Biomutant is a mutated amalgamation of game ideas that stumbles more than it sticks the landing. In the end, fun combat, interesting art direction, and the satisfaction of clearing off checklists aren’t enough to offset the myriad of other design quirks that make the story and the game as a whole suffer. There is a ground floor established that would allow developer Experiment 101 to make a great sequel. One that hopefully has a bit more budget and is more restrained in its scope, cutting the fat, and refining its best qualities into a game that is as interesting to ponder as it is fun to play. Biomutant is out now on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC via Steam, GOG, Epic Game Store, and Origin. A review code on the PlayStation 4 was provided by the publisher.
Biomutant | 6 | Decent
