For the longest time, Biomutant has been my white whale. Like clockwork, a life sign would emerge, with the announcement that yes, it’s coming, definitely, just not right now. In part, this is due to developer Experiment 101 having been granted an unusual amount of freedom by their publisher to keep adding stuff, which led to a game that always sounds like a lot on paper – a character customisable down to their genetic makeup who can wield any weapon, a crafting system allowing you to make virtually anything, a morality system, a map dwarfing even Skyrim’s. It’s full of superlatives any marketer would love, confident in selling itself as something you’ve never seen before. Trouble is, you absolutely have.
To be fair, you’ve never controlled a character quite like this. The protagonist here is a mutant, a furry being reminiscent of a cat, or maybe more of a rodent, depending on which visual you’re going with during character creation. You and others of your species are adept in the art of kung-fu, but you can also wield giant swords, guns, rocket launchers and karate weapons such as bo staves, sai blades and more. You can pick up any weapon regardless of your character class, which makes the classes superfluous – you can even find multiple ways to learn the starting perks each class comes with even if you chose another.
Biomutant reviewPublisher: THQ NordicDeveloper: Experiment 101Platform: Played on PCAvailability: Out May 25th on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC
To understand other areas in which Biomutant can’t live up to the expectations it set itself, it’s important to remember this is a game made by a team of just 20. You see it in the way copies of environments exist around the map, how some animations had to be foregone, how text repeats with certain actions.
In many ways, it remains a marvel when considering the size of the team. The giant map often looks exquisite, its lush and vibrant forests flanked by ruined towns and toxic wastelands. The game runs like a dream on PC, with next to no need for loading screens and the framerate plummeting very rarely during some of the heavier action. The sheer amount of crafting items – screws, blades, bent metal, bats – is just as impressive as the many different skills the team thought of, like the psi attacks and toxic bio powers you can use in addition to melee and ranged combat.
Biomutant – Explanation Trailer | PS4 Watch on YouTube
But every feature falls victim to the game’s quantity over quality maxim. Take the crafting. Visually it’s a lot of fun to tool together an axe and a vacuum cleaner, but of course near-endless variety in weapon design can’t lead to endless variety in fighting styles. Instead, each weapon you make falls into one of four different categories, and just like that, we’re on familiar ground again. To be clear – four fighting styles is still a lot, but then you have to keep in mind the strength of each weapon, meaning that if you want to switch, you might have to farm the right materials first. A great idea foiled by underlying mechanics. Biomutant simply wastes a lot of its own energy – and mine – in ways like this. You can tame mounts, only to find they’re slower than your own running speed. In a lengthy side quest, you can search for materials to upgrade the mech you’ll use in one boss fight, only to find the encounter is already too easy without them and you shouldn’t have bothered.