Biomutant

Biomutant is a game I would recommend everyone play.

It isn’t that Biomutant is an exceptionally dazzling game capable of redefining genres. Nor does Biomutant reek of any particular stench that would personally offend.

What makes Biomutant such a solid recommendation is that, after a point, players will find themselves in the midst of a game attempting to fire at all cylinders and mostly chugging along smoothly. Set in a massive open world teeming with a confident art direction and things to do. Combat brimming with possibilities and customization options. Morality choices that define the outcome of the narrative. Clashes between massive bosses and strange contraptions. Imaginative creatures dueling against each other.

Think of a game you’ve played in the past ten years; it’s likely used a handful of these elements in one way or another. The small band of developers at Experiment 101 have used the world of Biomutant as a canvas for many of the major defining gameplay mechanics that have become standard over the past couple generations. This is a game so packed to the brim with ideas and creativity. At times it may feel misguided or excessive, yet there is a specific charm to Biomutant that shoves it past the finish line.

Charming might be the wrong word because many of the characters in Biomutant are strange, rabid looking beasts that may cause you to be fearful of a future in which your household pets learn kung-fu after thousands of years of irradiated evolution. Maybe I’m a touch biased because there are few open world games I don’t like. But I can’t imagine a player diving into Biomutant and not finding something they enjoy, something worth talking about. Players may go into it seeking out a specific draw, a hook to reel them into the next 20 to 60-plus hours. It’s possible they won’t find what they were looking for and instead be dazzled by something else. Because Biomutant has issues, I can imagine it turning less persistent players away as they seek a game more polished or more catered to their needs.

I suspect Biomutant will be dissected like one of its many lab rat-like entities. What makes it tick? What could be removed and still allow its heart to beat? It may be an off-putting analogy but it works, just like Biomutant.

Unfortunately, Biomutant does not give a glowing first impression. The opening section of the game acts as a lengthy tutorial, nudging players into the basics before dropping them into the deep end.

Things start off admirably enough with a deep character customization. Players are given the option to choose the general appearance of their mutant hamster-gerbil-rodent-mouse-thing based off a specific race that mildly influences core stats. From there, a circular genetic slider can be swirled in any direction to create a character focused on strength or agility or intelligence or a blend of multiple other stats. It’s an early peek into how deep Experiment 101 is hoping to go with all the systems packed into Biomutant.

Players should feel a good sense of flexibility at how granular they can invest percentages into things like charisma over health points. The UI indicates how a tiny flick of the control stick will add or subtract values to each stat and what they will mean for the character starting out. One of five classes is selected from to help further define if your mutant is going to be a gun-toting baddie, a melee fighter, or a bizarre spell-throwing mage.

I had a great time fidgeting with the sliders and choices, piecing out what I wanted my version of Biomutant to play like. It felt empowering to have this type of control but I was also frustrated that there was less choice of how my character could physically look. The race selection forced my mutant into having a specific looking head while the genetic slider further altered their appearance. More intelligence translated to a bigger head where a “dumb” character with high strength would basically be a pinhead.

Players are also able to fiddle with the color and fur scheme but I was let down by how basic it felt. The colors I selected had little pop and the fur patterns weren’t bizarre enough. But my biggest gripe was that the fur just didn’t look that great, appearing jagged and harsh.

After taking control, it’s apparent that Biomutant looks rough from a technical standpoint. Playing the PlayStation 4 version on a PlayStation 5, it’s hard not to argue that parts of the game look generic and dated. Textures aren’t very smooth and detailed and with the camera zoomed in, the world isn’t given the chance to breathe.

During the tutorial, players are taught how to whack enemies and shoot them from afar. The lock-on system usually works but has a tendency to shuffle between targets. I had trouble shooting an explosive barrel clutched by an enemy before it was thrown at me. But melee is in the same vein as the Batman Arkham series, bouncing between targets and dodging with ease.

Yet players will spend a decent chunk of time confined to small or large rooms until they master bullet time dodges and how to use and find healing objects. It’s busy but necessary considering the amount of things Biomutant will eventually hope players will learn to grasp.

By the time players are ushered into the open world, there’s a sense of relief but also exhaustion. Leveling up, consumables, item and enemy rarity, parrying, skill exclusivity, morality systems, combos, and more are introduced with teases of more depth and complexity.

Probably the vast majority of complaints levied at Biomutant will be in regard to the many things it tries. A jack of all trades but a master of none you might read elsewhere. Take, for example, the narrative, which can be both bloated and sparse at the same time.

At the center of Biomutant‘s world and narrative is the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life looms in the distance of nearly every visible angle of the open world and it is dying, its four roots being devoured by the monstrous World Eaters. Players can choose the side of good and rescue the Tree or allow it to be consumed in an act of evil.

Six tribes of Biomutant‘s world want to see the Tree prosper or perish. Players will pick sides and align with the varying tribes, attempting to unite or destroy the opposition. Two entities acting as a figurative angel or devil will pop up and speak to the player after a choice is made. Exclusive skills and powers are granted based on a player’s light or dark affinity. World Eaters can be defeated entirely or fought and then allowed to continue their snack.

It’s an approach used time and again by countless games before Biomutant and it will be used time and again in the future. Giving players a choice in a scenario is fine and often provides a peppering of agency over the story. Here, the choices made by players do feel primarily black and white, as if the option to make a decision exists just because other games have done it previously.

Mass Effect forced players to make hard decisions that would echo into future games, despite those decisions often amounting to whether or not you wanted to be an asshole. Biomutant feels more like Fallout 3, where there is variation but it ultimately leads to a handful of predetermined ends. And yes, I’m aware of where Mass Effect leads.

Are you feeling good or bad? Biomutant funnels you into a similar path either way. Siding with one tribe means that you’re going to be completing similar objectives across the world. It’s certainly a dated design, especially when most missions culminate in players going on fetch quests to gather the items to craft hulking machines meant to take on the World Eaters. And while it may feels unnecessary, the morality and choice system didn’t particularly offend me.

Instead, I was more fascinated and impressed by Biomutant‘s incredible world building and environmental design. When free of the narrative reigns, players can explore a massive world packed with unique biomes and creatures. Here, Experiment 101’s size of about 20 developers doesn’t show. The world comes alive and the character art for enemies and friendly NPCs shines. Players can infer and learn about why mankind died out and why animals took over and learned how to do kung-fu. Flashbacks to your character’s past are also teased out for supplemental storytelling that make me wonder what direction the game would have taken with just a bit less freedom.

Perhaps Biomutant would have felt more focused had Experiment 101 ditched most of the morality system and forced players to pick a side early on. The tutorial could have presented the arguments for the Tree of Life in the first few hours and laid out that narrative for the remainder of the game.

Experiment 101’s growing list of ideas also included a kindly British narrator who constantly speaks throughout the entire game. Without a doubt, it’s a choice.

The creatures and friendlies encountered across the game speak a kind of gibberish–think Banjo Kazooie–except soon into speaking the narrator will kick in and provide an explanation of what’s being said. It’s not always a direct translation, often the narrator explaining a character’s feelings or how they interpreted the player’s actions. Additionally, his voice will chime in during combat and exploration as a bit of flavoring for what’s transpiring.

Here’s the thing: I didn’t mind the narrator that much but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a strange choice to incorporate him into the story with such frequency and omnipresence. Biomutant throws subtlety out the window often enough when it gives ridiculous names to objects like phones and having this guy narrate everything like a nature documentary can have comedic effects but also be flat-out weird or out of place.

Interestingly, players have the option of toggling the frequency of the narrator and the gibberish in the menus, restricting it only to story bits. It’s as if Experiment 101 knew a fair amount of players would get tired of the voice. I think exploring the open world and combat would have felt slightly lonely without the narrator’s accompaniment but, like many decisions in Biomutant, there could have been a happy compromise. Why this voice? Why so often? I feel like there’s an explanation but was this choice truly crucial to the vision of Biomutant if is a way to silence him?

Rather than listen to mutant gibberish for a few seconds and then listen to the narrator, why not just have him butt in almost immediately? Plus, it weakened my attachment to characters knowing that I wasn’t hearing the actual words they were speaking, instead having them filtered through another person. Perhaps the narrator was created to have Biomutant seem like some sort of twisted fairy tale and that’s another reason why onomatopoeia appear during combat.

Biomutant throws a lot of things at the player but combat was consistently the most thrilling element of the game and one I was happy to engage with. Think Devil May Cry or a similar type of action game that blends close and ranged combat. Button mashing will get you far in the easier difficulties but I suggest trying it on Hard.

Players have a standard bit of melee attacks and can toss in guns to provide space when things get hairy. But I gravitated towards special psi abilities that were both basic and weird. There’s the typical elemental attacks but players can also summon mushrooms to bounce on, slam down with a toxic blast, or run over enemies Katamari-style with a mucous bubble. Upon leveling up, players will unlock different “wung-fu” combos that are activated with easy and complex button presses. So yeah, you’ve got a hack-n-slash mixed with some Street Fighter.

Slowing down time with bullet dodges and trying to pull of a multi-button combo to deal massive damage is surprisingly fun in a combat system that often feels incredibly complex. It’s here that the influences Experiment 101 borrow from don’t feel entirely tacked on, rather just a delivery system for a choose-your-own style of fighting.

And if that wasn’t enough, players will also gain access to crafting in the game. Different armors and weapons can be found that provide standard bonuses and resistances. However, players can craft equipment and build upon their current stock to increase efficiency or unlock new perks. Not only will this allow players to take on enemies well past their current level, it will allow them to explore dangerous territory. Damage types like fire and radiation can impede progress and finding gear to raise that resistance to 100 can prove to be useful.

On the back of a mechanical horse or gliding down a gorgeously green chasm, Biomutant is a spectacle to take in. The massive world Experiment 101 has created is both literally and figuratively a lot to take in. For better or worse, this is a game bursting at the seams with content. While the main story can be completed in around 20 hours, it’s off the beaten path where players can get lost. Often I thought Biomutant would crumble under the weight of ambition, piling influence after influence on top of each layer of new mechanics. It has a flawed story. There’s a convoluted system of choices and morality. It even looks kind of gross at times.

Yet with every flaw or complexity Biomutant throws at the player, there’s another redeeming quality. It’s a wholly unique world that might seem to copy and paste from the past decade or so of gaming but it’s blended in such a unique way that I haven’t seen anywhere else. Perhaps enough players will find the diamond in the rough so that a second, more focused go round will happen down the line. Biomutant is digestible, weird, off-putting, entertaining, baffling, engaging, and a million other variables. But, thankfully, it is never bad.