Biomutant Released, Reviews
-
Category: News ArchiveHits: 1964
Experiment 101 and THQ Nordic's open-world, post-apocalyptic Kung-Fu fable RPG Biomutant that was originally announced way back in 2017, is now live for PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4, priced at $59.99 or your regional equivalent. Notable for its vibrant art style, the game promises a unique combat system, complex character development and crafting systems.
Here's the official release trailer:
And the game's description:
BIOMUTANT® is an open-world, post-apocalyptic Kung-Fu fable RPG, with a unique martial arts styled combat system allowing you to mix melee, shooting and mutant ability action.
A plague is ruining the land and the Tree-of-Life is bleeding death from its roots. The Tribes stand divided. Explore a world in turmoil and define its fate – will you be its saviour or lead it to an even darker destiny?
Key Features:
A NEW TAKE ON 3rd PERSON COMBAT
The martial arts style combat system allows you maximum freedom of movement and agility while mixing shooting, melee and powers from your mutations. Learning new Wung-Fu combat forms through progression and learning from masters you’ll meet, will constantly add to your choices and make sure combat never gets old.
EVOLVE YOUR GAME-PLAY
You’ll be able to re-code your genetic structure to change the way you look and play. This will of course affect your attributes and in addition to this, exposure to bio-contamination in the world will lead to mutations like the Turtleform and Mucus Bubble, while exposure to radioactivity found in bunkers from the old world will affect your mind and unlock psi-mutations like telekinesis, levitation and more.
NEXT LEVEL OF CRAFTING
You are totally free when crafting weapons. Mix and match parts to create your own unique 1H or 2H slash and crush weapons. Revolvers, rifles and shotguns and add modifications like cork-screws and battery-powered chainsaw modules to bio-contaminated sludge vials adding to your combat arsenal. There are even characters you’ll meet that’ll craft cool stuff for you, like bionic wings, a jump-pack and even let you modify your Automaton - the scrap-toy sidekick!
GEAR UP FOR ADVENTURE
You are totally free when equipping your character. Not only when it comes to choosing weapons you created, but what type of gear you wear. Equip a gas-mask and an oxygen tank for exploring the Dead Zones, thermos-resistant clothes for venturing into cryonic areas or protective gear for taking on bio-contaminated creatures, the choice is up to you.
SURVIVE IN A VIBRANT OPEN WORLD
You are free to explore the world and what lies beneath its surface, by foot, mech, jet-ski, air-balloon or area unique mounts. Explore the dying wildland, the tunnels and bunker networks of the underworld, and find your way up the mountains or out in the archipelago. There are lots of discoveries to be made, mysteries to unravel, creatures to confront and weird characters to meet in this vibrant and colorful world.
AN UNUSUAL STORY WITH AN UNUSUAL END
Your actions play a major part in the unfolding of a story where End is coming to the New World. A plague is ruining the land and the Tree-of-Life is bleeding death from its roots. The Tribes stand divided, in need of someone strong enough to unite them or bring them all down...
You are guided through the world by a Storyteller that narrates every step of your journey, but it’s your actions and choices that’ll decide how your story of survival ends.
Unfortunately, the game's critical reception feels a bit lukewarm, with middling scores across the board. Here are a few examples:
IGN 6/10:
With excellent enemy creature design, a rich and diverse world, and piles and piles of choice when it comes to combat and customisation, Biomutant has a lot of the building blocks of a top-drawer action RPG. It’s really missing only a few, but they’re big ones: its cookie-cutter approach to objectives and puzzles feels two-or-so generations off the pace of other open-world action games, and that leaves the quest to gather all of the things feeling repetitive early on.
PC Gamer 60/100:
Biomutant's stunning world barely survives the painful narration, broken progression, and dearth of stuff to do.
Eurogamer Scoreless:
It hurts to say that about the effort of a team that tried to work crunch-free and was given an amount of time and creative freedom other developers can only dream of. But the whole game feels like an exercise in adding certain open-world staples, always erring on the side of caution. I've said this before, but even when gaming, more so than any other medium, feels like the place where we gladly accept being served the same things over and over, the safer we play it the more oversaturated the market feels. Biomutant is not a bad game, but it is a mediocre one, and ends up the very thing it tried not to be.
Game Informer 6.5/10:
Biomutant consistently shows glimmers of promise but it takes patience and a pair of rose-colored glasses to see them. I genuinely loathed my first several hours with the game, but once I made cooler weapons that made combat more tolerable or admired another postcard-worthy sight, I felt more disappointed than anything. Biomutant has all the ingredients of a unique, entertaining adventure. It just spends too much time doing everything possible to try and impress its audience instead of polishing its handful of strengths.
WCCFTech 7/10:
Biomutant is a competent open-world role-playing game featuring a charming atmosphere and some solid RPG mechanics. Sadly, it fails to stand out due to its by-the-books open-world formula and the sluggish combat system. While the game does work for the most part and there are some interesting ideas here and there, there isn't a lot that Biomutant does better than most open-world games out there, resulting in an experience that is somewhat forgettable.
PCGamesN 5/10:
If there's something to love in Biomutant, it's the vibrancy of its environments and its brilliantly dynamic combat. Unfortunately, you have to wade through so much repetitive, tedious open-world slurry that it becomes hard to enjoy.
Windows Central 3/5:
Overall, Biomutant is an okay game with potential, if the developers address future feedback. However, I would only recommend this game if it's on sale since the $60 price tag does not reflect the game's quality as of writing. With subsequent updates, that could change, and hopefully, it will. But as of right now, Biomutant does not live up to the hype.
