A short open-world, post-apocalyptic adventure with a variety of gameplay mechanics, is Biomutant worth visiting?
What Is It? Biomutant is a post-apocalyptic, open-world action RPG game from Experiment 101, published by THQ Nordic in 2021. The game follows your created character on a journey around the land’s Tree of Life. You must choose the light or dark path towards restoring peace to the world.
To begin Biomutant, you create your character as a kind of modern pirate in the form of an anthropomorphic creature. Mine most closely resembled a fox. You pick an archetype to start, assign some skill points, and you are off. On the story front, the world has ended and there is now a lot more wildlife in between small, abandoned cities.
You will find yourself needing to choose between light and dark on many of the main story beats, which feeds into a karma system, and also deciding which of a handful of the land’s tribes you want to side with. One will want to rule via hostile takeover while another wants cooperation. The decisions you make will affect the ending you see, but I didn’t see anything really notable along the way as my character went fully down the Light path.
The game’s combat occurs as you wander upon enemies while traversing the world. You will get a melee and ranged weapon and are able to switch between a few of them with a selection wheel. You will unlock some combos as well as special abilities which can be used during fights at the expense of energy points.
A typical fight will play out with you keeping a distance to thin out two or three smaller enemies until one the larger enemy remains. Fight it any way you can, including well-timed parries and dodges, until it drops. Collect your loot from the bodies and move on. Combat is nothing special but it’s entirely functional. I found myself more frustrated by it early on but I was enjoying it by the end as I was able to upgrade my preferred weapons to deal heavy damage.
Speaking of which, the game features extensive upgrade capabilities. This applies to both weapon types as well as a half dozen or so different wearables. The whole system was a bit much for me, but I had fun going into the menus every hour or so and seeing what cool improvements I could make to buff up my attack and defense.
The game features many typical open-world mission structures. Mainly, you will be going to a point on a map then doing something. This mostly involves exploring an area, reaching the end point of the area after a handful of fights, then either collecting an item or taking out a boss before considering this a success. It’s not revolutionary by any means, but it’s functional.
Mixed in with the combat and exploration is a small dose of platforming and a hefty heaping of rotation-based puzzles. Platforming works fine for the most part, with some expected weird spots to be found in the open world such as getting stuck on a riverbank. Puzzles are abundant with a small handful showing up during many missions, particularly any which have you heading underground. You need to rotate a few different do-dads on the screen in order to align white and orange lines. The actual look of the puzzles change among a handful of different types, so they aren’t all the same. Your appetite for these will vary, I had a decent enough time with them, but I can see them getting frustrating for some people.
The game looks good, it features bright colors and unique characters in a graphical package which looks slightly dated but that’s just fine. Roaming around on a horse-like creature in a vast field in the daylight with glimmering water and a variety of terrains in view is a very nice sight to see.
The Best Part: This is an open-world game which respects your time. I hit credits in about 12.5 hours and I rarely used the fast travel or even the horse-like creature. I preferred seeing things on foot so I could scavenge and fight. Even for completionists, the platinum trophy on PlayStation can be snagged in about thirty hours. There are smaller examples of this respect of time, such as the game providing checkpoints at each stage of the bosses (with a notable exception) and none of the dungeon-like areas ever taking more than 10-15 minutes. Additionally, the side quests are kept to a minimum and aren’t just “find the tall building in each area” or something else repetitive and bland. As someone who is fairly burnt out on the map-vomit style of open world gaming, Biomutant provides a nice change of pace in the genre.
The Worst Part: The combat is often frustratingly close to being something really fun. From the start, enemies are pure hit sponges and the game prefers to send three or four small enemies at you along with one bigger one throughout most of the game. Each of the small ones take at least a few full magazines of your ammo to knock out, that’s if you can aim at one the entire time to hit them. The attack powers you can unlock are all fairly weak so you are left with your ranged weapon attack for the most part. The melee? That falls apart pretty quickly when you’re surrounded by a few enemies. Nothing here is bad, and the inevitable 1:1 against that larger enemy after you dispatch the small ones is almost always a fun time. Dodge, parry, sweep in for the attack, use your ranged weapons, etc… It comes together pretty nicely, but you have to fight the game a bit to get there. Secondarily, but related, the boss fights last too long to the point of trigger finger getting tired. The core combat system here is sound, it just needed some refinement.
The Verdict: Biomutant grabbed my attention around when it was initially released. Some combination of the bright colors, anthropomorphic characters and mash up of combat styles made it stand out among the sea of dark Souls-likes that have dominated the action-adventure space for a while now. As far as providing something a little more relaxed and different, Biomutant absolutely delivers. Pick any one of the headline aspects here and it is something unique: a 12 hour open-world game, getting to roam the world in a mechatronic hand, customization on every part of your gun and melee weapons, from the handle to the tip of the blade.
Being unique, or at least offering a unique combination of things, is a worthy accomplishment in its own right, but that doesn’t necessarily make a game great. Where does Biomutant fall, then? Somewhere in the middle, but definitely on the “good” side, in my book.
The game is fun. It is a nice world to roam through and explore. Run in any direction for a few minutes and you’ll find abandoned remnants of a city with buildings to explore and loot. Pick up enough cool parts and pieces so you can add more power to your weapons and gear. This is a fun gameplay loop that rewards exploring and seeing sights first hand instead of fast traveling or using a ride to zoom through the wide open world. The game is far from perfect, with the absolute hit-sponge enemies leading to repetitive combat encounters being at the top of my complaint list. For every nit such as that, getting stuck on a riverbank, NPCs who talk too much, or whatever else, however, there are a handful of good, fun mechanics in the game that kept me interested enough to see the game through.
Biomutant provides a unique experience in a crowded gaming space. Your particular enjoyment, or lack thereof, will depend on what you are looking for out of an open-world action-RPG style game. If combat is at the top of your list, feel free to look elsewhere. If customization, an interesting world, and a good ol’ fashioned morality system is what you want, Biomutant might be exactly what you’re looking for.
How to Play: PlayStation 4/5*, Xbox One/Series, Switch, PC
*console played on for this review
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