What do you get when you combine Animal Planet with Fallout and Ratchet & Clank? When it works, you get the open-world action RPG Biomutant from a studio called Experiment 101. When the game tries to carve out a unique identity it’s interesting, other times it falls into the open world repetitiveness that plagues the same genre games from bigger studios.
Biomutant
Developed By: Experiment 101
Published By: THQ Nordic
Available For: PS4, Xbox One, PC
Set in a post-apocalyptic green world where animals are the last living beings, Biomutant tells a heavy-handed story of environmentalism. As the chosen orphan furry protagonist tasked with united the tribes of the land against the massive creatures known as the world eaters. It’s a serviceable narrative layered with furry characters a group of developers came up with after marijuana was legalized in whatever part of the world they’re in. I say that because you’ll see things like an otter Elvis, wheelchair-bound squirrels, and kung fu master raccoons.
Biomutant’s strength comes from its incredibly vibrant and sprawling open world. The terrain is mostly forest and parts of run-down buildings, but it also carries muddled deadly hazard lands like venturing through Boston in Fallout 4. While Biomutant doesn’t do anything groundbreaking with its open world, it does more with its real estate than some bigger budget games like Ghost Recon. In addition to the main story, the amount of side quests you can opt to do is vast, some reward you with bits of backstory as to how the world became this way while other parts of the side quests tie into the main story in order to reward you with better and more vital weapons/gear.
Everything about Biomutant utilizes RPG DNA. You’ll create a character from a handful of classes such as commando. Different classes will determine your character’s strengths at the beginning of the game though you’ll be able to earn various upgrades to puzzle solve, negotiate with NPCs, armor, etc. Another part of your character is their martial arts and bio powers. As radiation has mutated living creatures, you have superpowers that are crucial in combat. You’ll be able to do things such as shoot electric bolts out of your hand and other powers you’ll earn will let you do things like shoot ice to freeze enemies.
Another part of Biomutant you’ll appreciate is the combat. Not only will you battle wave after wave of creative beasts created by the toxic mutations that crop the world, but you’ll also have a choice when it comes to how you battle. As the game’s chosen one, you can fight using hand-to-hand skills, blunt weapons, and your powers like Neo from the Matrix or you can battle using ranged weapon skills like John Wick.
Biomutant is a journey that can eat up dozens of hours, but for the most part, it does so in an entertaining way. There are about half as many moments where the game doesn’t play to its strengths. As I began the journey, I quickly dropped from the gorgeous scenery into a dank cave for the tutorial. It sucked to be taken away from the best thing about this game into what amounts to a delay. You definitely need to get through about a first hour of mediocre tutorial before you’re let off the leash to play however you want to. The game can also get a bit repetitive as you grind for progression. I did find that once it got to that point there were always boss battles with the world eaters I could jump into to break up the monotony.
On the surface, Biomutant is an average RPG when you compare it to larger budgeted triple-A titles. In reality, the game belongs in a mid-tier and I don’t say that to belittle how good it is or cover for flaws but in gaming today we tend to only look at things as an indie base or giant blockbuster level title. We need more games that carve out their nice in the between. Days Gone, Control, we don’t have enough games that don’t spend the extra millions on a famous actor as the lead or carry the weight of the financial expectations of their publisher.
Ultimately, Biomutant is a well-made game that’s come out in the right year. So far 2021 hasn’t been a blockbuster year for games even with new hardware in the market. THQ has put out a game that anyone looking for something new to play that’s going to eat up hours of their life. While you may not love the story, the catch is that you will be entertained by the vast amount of RPG mechanics that make the game fun.
