Biomutant – Review

After a long wait, with the release date being pushed back several times, it’s finally time to get our hands on the long-awaited Biomutant. The game is an open-world, post-apocalyptic RPG that mixes kung fu in a special combat system that combines melee and ranged combat with mutant skills. With a huge open world, many side quests and what seems to be an intriguing story, Biomutant is expected to deliver a lot to its fans. Will this indie-developer game deliver? Or will it get punished for having a triple-A publisher backing it?

Story

Biomutant is set in a post-apocalyptic world where humanity has successfully destroyed itself and where mutated wildlife has taken over. The world of Biomutant is yet again in danger with the Tree of Life being attacked by four humongous creatures called Worldeaters. On the other hand, there are six tribes of evolved mutated creatures scattered around the world of Biomutant that all have their own visions about the future of the tribes and the Tree of Life. It’s your job to decide to unite or destroy the tribes and you can also decide the fate of the world by saving or letting the Tree of Life be destroyed by the Worldeaters. On your journey, you’ll encounter many familiar faces you know from your past, and they are there to assist you in finding your path.

At many points in your journey, you’ll have to make choices that have an effect on your aura; which defines if you’re on the light or dark side. During a lot of these moments, two small critters will appear with one referring to the righteous path and the other to the dark side. They’ll always start an argument in trying to win you over to their side, which is quite funny. Your aura will lead to getting more dialogue options with certain people when you have a larger affinity for one of the two.

Graphics

Biomutant looks absolutely amazing in every way. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to play it at max graphics, but even at 1080P/60FPS, the game looked absolutely beautiful and we can only imagine it looks even better if your hardware allows it. From the beautiful post-apocalyptic world, to the quality of your fur and the many different crafting parts you acquire, it all looks amazing. The world is filled with old-world remnants like buildings, boats, electric devices, and more. What’s funny, is that each of the electric devices has a peculiar name that is fully determined on what their function was, like a flush-stool for a toilet, a clothes-soaker for a washing machine and a pling-plong-booth for a phone booth. When in combat, you’ll see some classic comic book effects with words appearing like “klick”, “whack” and more, including the names of the special attacks you perform.

We did encounter a few clipping errors, such as rain pouring in, even with a roof above your head. Also, the flashlight your Automaton provides will turn off each time you’re inside a menu, and you’ll need to wait several seconds before it turns on again.

Sound

The soundtrack of Biomutant is more than okay, but at many points, while walking around the world, the background music will keep changing when entering new areas by crossing some sort of invisible boundaries which trigger the beginning of a new track, which can sometimes lead to you hearing a new music track starting over and over again. The narrator gives us a bit of a mixed feeling as well. His voice sounds very soothing and when he explains things, the narrator fits perfectly, but the narrator being used as a translator for all the gibberish each and every character says grows to be quite annoying. He keeps referring to everything they say in the third person, while we’d rather hear the characters themselves. The sound effects in Biomutant all sound great with each rarity of loot having their own satisfying ‘ding’ sound.

Gameplay

Biomutant is a third-person open-world, post-apocalyptic RPG where you will choose your own path with the affairs between the tribes and the fate of the Tree of Life in the world of Biomutant. It features a huge number of side quests along with the main quests. It is recommended to not only play the main quests but also focus on the many interesting side quests in this game. Sure, some of them can feel quite repetitive, but they can also be quite fun and will sometimes grant you some epic loot.

Biomutant starts with building your own character out of six different breeds, allowing you to customize your looks, defining your genetic structure to distribute points to five different attributes, and finally choosing a class that grants you a boost in a certain playstyle. Each class has its own benefits, which means you are free to pick the one that fits your playstyle the most. The character creation can feel a bit overwhelming at the start of the game, but rest assured, you can still learn all skills and use all weapons or armor as you level up. During the game a mechanical grasshopper follows you around, providing light with its flashlight, and eventually, it will unlock more handy skills as you progress in the game.

The combat in Biomutant certainly looks amazing and is quite fun in general, but not everything is perfect here. The game uses a type of auto-aim that will automatically select an enemy in the range of your reticle, which is quite big. The accuracy of your weapons is also not always that good, resulting in a lot of bullets missing their targets from a distance, especially for assault rifles. Pistols and rifles seem to have fewer problems with this, as they have a pretty high hit chance. The melee combat plays quite well, but some combos are hard to pull off, and certain special attacks do not pack the punch you’d like them to.

As in many open-world RPGs, you can find a lot of loot in Biomutant. Each area you discover shows an amount of superb loot you can find in that area, along with old-world gadgets, resource totems and more. The quality of loot increases the further you travel from the starting point of the game, but with this, the enemies grow tougher as well.

Crafting is one of the best aspects of Biomutant. We have rarely seen such a good crafting system in games. On your travels, you’ll find a lot of parts to use for crafting, and each and every part is compatible with each other, resulting in the craziest weapons you’ve ever seen, be it melee or ranged weapons. You can easily craft a weapon where the handle is part of a vacuum cleaner combined with a knife, or an assault rifle with crossbow elements. This makes for many hours of crazy crafting and intuitive weapon building that can lead to awesome weapons that are powerful as well. Of course, after you’ve leveled up and your enemies grow stronger, you’ll need stronger weapons. If you want to keep using your favorite weapon, you can also upgrade it by using the upgrade benches that are scattered throughout the world or simply disassemble your weapons, which returns all the parts to your inventory, so you can use them to craft an even better weapon.

Conclusion

For the biggest part, Biomutant is an amazing game where you can easily spend a lot of hours exploring its big open world, find a lot of loot, and complete quests. The narrator is one of the things we disliked the most, but this certainly isn’t that off-putting as his soothing voice makes up for it a bit. The combat feels quite good and the combination of melee, ranged and mutant skills is done quite well, but some combos need further polishing. Aside of some of these minor issues, we can definitely say that Biomutant is truly a gem, considering it was made by a very small team. Maybe the price tag at the moment is a bit steep, as the game still has some flaws, but with some updates, we can see the game getting even better. When you’re out looking for a good RPG that balances exploring, crafting and decision-making, you can’t really go wrong with this one.

Nickskuh

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