Review Creative, Colorful and Strange, Biomutant Is Unique But Familiar
Video games, like any form of media, have evolved over the years. You can almost tell which games from which generation / era are based solely on aesthetics and sensibility. Biomutant seems as if the old-fashioned game has been discontinued in the current generation - just as the Dreamcast and PlayStation were conceived around the 2nd generation, built with modern visuals and controls. A lot of modern influences are gone, or in the background. It is a strange game that blends its post-apocalyptic setting, anthropomorphic mutated animals, and touches of Eastern themes together to make it unique, but familiar
Biomutant is a single player third person open world action game. You play the role of a Ronin warrior in search of revenge which becomes a chance to save the world. Orphaned as a youth, and marked by the carnivorous Lupa Lupine, you return to the place of your youth to meet your destiny. And that fate is up to you as you explore the open world after the apocalypse, which men have destroyed in their pride and greed. Man's time is long gone, as their structures are being wasted under generations of new growth, and they are replaced by mutated animals that are sometimes products of the Old World, a type of post-apocalyptic cargo cult Let's give some new look. Like the world of humanity before it, the new world of biomutants is ending: the tree-of-life is bleeding, and dying. Four world eaters have emerged to end the world as the five tribes fight among themselves. You can choose to unite these tribes and save the world, or play them against each other and see the chaos as the world ends.
Combat is an essential part of biomutants, and is one of the things that first made me notice when it was announced nearly half a decade ago. It takes on a slow endurance-based Dark Souls-style combat, with a lot of modern game work. Instead, the biomutant listens back to an earlier era of war, as quick reflexes with a short style about dealing with loss. Combat is a mixture of melee and dyed attacks, and is combo-based, meaning that you can chain together to create attacks combo, and unlock different combo as you move through the levels. Combat in Biomutant is fun and fast, but it can feel a bit overwhelming at first, especially with the addition of Sai powers and mutation options. Mutation and Sai Shakti can both give you powerful new abilities, or you can choose to spend your Bio Point on upgrading resistances instead. Sometimes you have to face harsh environments, and without proper protective gear, resistance can come in handy.
While I enjoyed the bout in Biomutants, it took me a while to really click. It wasn't until I was several hours into the game that I felt that the combat was ultimately fun. I think the reason for this was the weapon I was stuck with. Probably the way I was playing the game, but it seems that I had no new or interesting gear for many hours. The time to kill enemies is slightly longer, and with bad gear, it was worse. But once I got enough mats to dig into the crafting system, and my damage numbers went up, the combat was finally fun. Which is good, because it's hard not to like the combat system of biomutants: a combination of melee and ranged attacks, mixed with mutations and the synergy you get with Sai powers, can be quite gratifying. There is also a turbo-mode called Super Vung-Fu that you can activate after successfully unloading multiple combo, and this is a great way to quickly destroy groups of enemies.
Crafting is important in biomutants, and is surprisingly diverse. The best gear crafting system I have in Biomutant was made from. Exploration through Old World ruins of Biomutant can yield powerful components that can be used to augment current weapons or build new ones from scratch. Each weapon in a biomutant is modular, and each piece can be mixed and matched with other pieces. While I really appreciate this system, it requires crafting mats to eliminate any weapon assembly. It is not as easy as mixing the pieces. Instead, you are forced to cultivate resources around the world - usually in the form of totems that must be destroyed. These totems are not marked on the map, and as far as I know, there is no way to track them — so I caught them as I went about my business. This made me extremely hungry for material to make weapons.
Armor in biomutants has a modular quality, but is not customizable like weapons. However, you can add modifications to pieces of armor. Each piece of gear has its own stats, including the possibility of damage output or environmental resistance. Armor can be modified and upgraded with benches found around the world - so if you are connected to a certain one, you can use crafting mats to bring that look stats-wise to sniffing . I really appreciate the variety of gear in Biotmutant, and I enjoyed exploring my character's fashion style as much as I did in their play style.
Biomutant is a strange game with a clear sense of humor that does not dominate, all tied together by a persistent narrator who gives clues in the story, and tastes the on-screen action. When you cannot close the narrator, you can reduce the frequency of his or her comments. I really enjoyed her contribution to the story of the narrator and the biomutant. I think part of it is my obsession with Warhammer: Vermintide 2 and the fact that the narrators of Franz Lohner and Biomutant share a voice actor. But the narrator also serves as your window into the extremely strange world of biomutants, and when he literally translates what the characters are telling you, he is the translator between us from the past and the biomutant's vision of the future. Also works in The objects with which we interact every day in our world are remnants of the past in biomutants, a silly name usually added.
The open world of Biomutant is not gray and brown - it is succulent and vibrant. It has been a long time since the fall of humanity, and the world has progressed significantly. Unfortunately, humanity's waste is always present, and its factories and ruins are often places filled with radiation or other deadly hazards. The world of biomutants is colorful, and a pleasure to explore, however. If you enjoy side quests, there are plenty of activities to complete (though most of it is of the "find this puzzle and solve it" variety), and powerful gear and components in deep, dangerous parts of the world. Are hidden. Biomutants also have a diversity of organisms that I don't often see in video games. This is not just an aesthetic, either. The creatures look like they might be at home in the Muppets, but others look designed by Tim Burton. While the open world of biomutants is very beautiful and often interesting, it still suffers from growing up — and a lot of it is meaningless to the story.
Biomutant has not just one interesting story, instead three: the story of your character's past and revenge, the story of the tribes you can unite or conquer, and the threat and destruction of the four world eaters . Flare up again. Tribal conflict can be seen as a common open world activity sink, especially since it involves capturing too many outposts. Interestingly, once you prove yourself to be a force, rival tribes can also surrender. This is something I have never seen in an open world game before. Behind all this is a binary reputation system - light and dark - that affects the story and possibly the end you get. In about 25 hours or so for my first playthrough, I did not have the time to see how different the results would have been if I had taken different decisions.
Biomutants is a strange game. This is the shortest way to apply it. Is this a fun game? Yes, it is definitely fun, and has a highly compelling combat system, and interesting post-apocalyptic world. There are just so many moving parts and systems to worry about, it can seem overwhelming at times. If martial-arts, a vibrant colorful open-world combo-based combat sounds interesting, then biomutants are highly recommended. But its story told in a series of flashbacks did not quite pay off for me in a way that felt like the decisions I made had any effect. Still, I enjoyed the time I spent with Biomutant, and I know its characters