Review of Biomutant-an action game about intelligent animals
14 / 11 / 19
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Biomutant took a long time to get to the release. The game was announced in 2017, and development began a couple of years before that (the developer studio Experiment 101 was founded in 2015). First, the action game about a funny animal that knows kung fu and owns firearms, wanted to release in 2018, but at that time the game was clearly not ready. We then worked on it for another three years. The result, however, did not get any better.
Biomutant turned out to be big, and it was not as easy to pass it at this point as it might seem. For this reason, we decided to divide the review into two parts. The first — impressions from 20 hours, the second-the conclusion with an assessment.
Biomutant is an open-world game, and That's Not a compliment
Biomutant is a typical action game with RPG elements, a game with a third-person view and in an open world. You wander around the map, capture enemy outposts, complete story and side tasks that are not very original, solve puzzles and collect a lot of junk for sale and for materials for crafting. There is nothing wrong with this formula itself. The bad thing is that Experiment 101 didn't even try to bring anything new to it.
And even worse, for some reason, the studio has collected in its game all the elements of the genre that players hate the most. So, the capture of outposts is necessary for the progress of the plot. The map is large and almost empty. And there is no diversity among the enemies.
At least a little to dilute this despondency, the different-looking biomes that make up the game world are designed. But this Biomutant will hardly surprise anyone, since the set of beams is as standard as everything else — forests, fields, swamps, destroyed cities and devastated bunkers full of monsters. On the other hand, some locations look great: the artists of Experiment 101 tried very hard to fill the game world with bright colors and lots of details.
The gameplay is spoiled by the weak implementation of each element
During the first presentations, Biomutant was promoted as a "post-apocalyptic kung fu story", and it sounded quite good, although the first impressions of the gameplay were mixed. In four years, the combat system was brought to the state that it appeared in the stories of the developers, but this was still not enough.
At the heart of local battles is the ability to use cold and firearms, as well as magic. It still sounds interesting: he hit the enemy with the door from the safe, fixed on a piece of rebar, and then shot him with a machine gun, to be sure, frying him with an electric discharge. In reality, though, the battles are almost always very hectic. The hero rushes around the battlefield and uses all the abilities available to him, and in front of his eyes at this moment — dozens of special effects, behind which it is impossible to see anything.
There is no depth in the Biomutant combat system. The character can collect simple combos, but usually the battles take place according to the same scheme: you fly into a bunch of enemies, conduct three combo attacks, charge the super-reception scale and finish off the survivors with it. Difficulties with ordinary opponents do not arise, you will have to tinker only with bosses — but in battles with them, the problem is not in the complexity of the game, but in the fact that the screen is blocked by special effects.
You will collect weapons from the trash. Parts are scattered at every turn, and you can make anything from a machine gun that freezes opponents to a shotgun that burns all living things. At the same time, any created weapon can be reassembled, replacing individual parts, or disassembled entirely to create something new.
The same goes for melee weapons. No one will stop you from forging a huge sword, similar to the one that Cloud is armed with from Final Fantasy 7. Its opposite is a small dagger, or better yet, two. You can even collect weapons that will crush enemies into the ground — you just need to get heavier parts.
Spare parts are divided into two types — these are fragments of the weapon itself and resources for its creation. The first are scattered around the world, the second you will get by taking apart clothes. Unlike weapons, armor from opponents falls ready-made-it can either be worn on yourself, or disassembled into components, or made stronger by attaching some improvement to it. There are a lot of items, they have all sorts of parameters like rarity and quality, special skills and other features that slightly change the style of the game.
Biomutant Story — Standard Favorites Story
The world tree, which has kept the world in balance for a long time, is dying. Because of the oil coming out of the ground and the huge monsters called Miroedami. The latter gnaw at the roots of the tree. The hero," one-eyed Ronin", returns to his native land after a long absence, and must do something about what is happening.
Biomutant is a story about a chosen one who is destined to save the world. The problem is that there don't seem to be any surprises in the plot.
And this story unfolds very slowly. The plot is divided into two lines, and both require certain actions to pass. The branch associated with the destruction of monsters that eat the roots of the Tree, suggests that you will explore the world, improve your vehicles and fight bosses on them. And the line dedicated to the unification of the six tribes, and at all rests on the fact that you need to repaint the world map in "their" colors, crushing all opponents. And that, in turn, means clearing outposts, fighting tribal leaders, and all that. All this will have to spend a lot of time.
From what the developers said before the release, it could be concluded that the development of the plot will be tied to the karma system, but no. The final outcome is determined by which side of the conflict you have joined — the "defenders" of the Tree of Life or those who reject it. Karma only affects how the NPCs react to you, and also some of the available abilities.
Biomutant is a very problematic game. It can be a beautiful and atmospheric post-apocalyptic fairy tale, but the typical problems of the genre do not really allow you to enjoy it. The developers seemed to be trying to hit the jackpot on unsuccessful solutions — and it seems that they succeeded.
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