REVIEW : Biomutant (PS5)
Experiment 101’s biomorphic animal-populated world is the setting of Biomutant, a tale of rebirth and survival. You’ll play as a vengeful fuzzy warrior in an open-world action role-playing game set to the theme of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as he encounters a brand-new, apocalyptic menace.
Over the ruins of an Earth-like civilization that perished as a result of pollution lies the world of Biomutant. The Toxonal Corporation’s extreme neglect resulted in an ecological catastrophe that polluted the soil, destroyed the oceans, and sped up animal mutations. Eventually, the mutated creatures took control and established their society of six tribes that coexist peacefully and protect the Tree of Life, a massive tree with deep, life-giving roots.
Yet further catastrophe is posed by the appearance of enormous creatures known as Worldeaters. Faced with this threat, the tribes have split. The majority of them think they must band together to fight the monsters. The others prefer to establish dominance and conquer. The player’s quest for vengeance against an old enemy runs parallel to this end-of-the-world story. The journey offers the hero a chance to consider vengeance and forgiveness while possibly saving the world.
A lot Of Long Walks
The main flaw in this open-world game is how tedious it is to go around and explore. The map is huge, and primary and secondary quest threads frequently disperse across the whole universe. There is a lot of unusable space. I anticipated finding activities in the woods, such as racing, fishing, and treasure hunting. Instead, there is hardly anything to keep my interest during the long walks I take to reach my mission’s goals. Ruins that contain loot are scattered widely apart. Additionally, there will be enemy hordes that are eager for conflict, while you are not required to engage them in combat.
In Biomutant, you spend far too much time moving the analogue stick ahead until you arrive at your destination, which can often take an abnormally long period.
The encounters I had with hazard zones were the funniest ones. To survive in these hostile environments, which feature toxic clouds, extremely low oxygen levels, and severe temperatures, special protective gear is needed. I had spent too much time sprinting towards an objective an hour or so into the game, only to stop and be advised to hike to another remote spot in search of hazard gear. Why not incorporate these tasks into the main quests? What use do they serve if not to artificially pad length since you can’t advance the game without them?
The most offensive narrator in video games is the one who keeps you company. This isn’t Bastion or The Stanley Parable. A disembodied voice that doesn’t know when to stop talking serves as the narrator of Biomutant. He makes an effort to be hilarious and frequently waxes philosophic with out-of-context aphorisms. The biggest transgression, though, is when he talks to the athlete in crude and demeaning baby speak. After playing for almost five hours, a tooltip appeared that explained how to change the narrator’s line frequency. Sadly, changing it to “0” doesn’t entirely disconnect him.
Unwanted Commentary
A conventional levelling process found in popular RPGs can be used to advance your mutant warrior character. When creating a character, base stats are given points, and a combat class is chosen. These classes provide extra stats appropriate to their fighting philosophies. More points are earned as a player advances in levels, which may be used to unlock new special fighting skills and upgrade qualities and abilities. A karma/morality system is another component of character management. Morality plays a significant part in the plot, and your choices will move the moral scale back and forth throughout the game. But most of these decisions seem insignificant and don’t do much more than set the stage for the outcome.
Combat between Biomutants entails combining ranged and melee attacks to create combinations and unleash unique abilities. A lengthy move list encourages innovation by providing a wide range of alternatives. Although combat has some excellent diversity, the process of swinging about weapons isn’t very noteworthy. You can feel more confident swinging large swords and firing firearms in other games. This is partly due to how sluggish fighting seems, even when using one-handed weaponry. No matter how many points I allocate for agility, my opponents always seem to be far faster and more nimble.
An Excellent Crafting System
You can make your one- and two-handed weapons out of scrap materials rather than scavenging or purchasing new ones. It’s entertaining to fasten hammers, swords, and other pointy things to pipes, baseball bats, and other improvised handles with Biomutant. Additionally, you can apply mods that add elemental effects like fire and shock using recycled garbage. The crafting system’s mix-and-match features are entertaining and encourage innovation. But some minor alterations would have been wonderful. There are numerous leggings, shoulder pads, and chest parts to give your fur warrior a unique aesthetic, but you cannot create armour.
Strong Last Generation Vibes
Biomutant’s aesthetics won’t blow you away for a PlayStation 5 title. It wasn’t a visual powerhouse when it was first released on consoles from the previous generation. You can choose between performance options on the PS5 version, which raise the resolution at the expense of framerate. Others disregard visual fidelity for a significantly more fluid performance. Whatever setting you select, the environments seem good. There are glimmers of beautiful scenery due to the sun and moonlight reflecting off the green hills and the enormous draw distance. However, some inside appears to be kept together with bubblegum and saliva. Regular texture tearing makes it difficult for the camera to follow activity in small, cramped areas. Although Biomutant is ambitious, it isn’t that much fun in the end. In their game, Experiment 101 assembled an odd chimaera of concepts that never quite connects in meaningful ways. The story isn’t amazing, exploration is tedious, and combat is passable, so having fun was difficult. The Worldeater boss battles’ puzzle-like style appealed to me because it broke up the monotony of the tasks. The game looks and functions adequately in terms of technology. However, I ran into a couple of glitches that needed to be fixed by passing out or returning to the title screen.
