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Biomutant is an adventure-driven open-world game released by Experiment 101 in late May. Initially announced in 2017, the game has seen countless delays, so many fans are finally excited to explore the game. The main character of the game is a mutated animal. As you explore the world to make progress, you learn more about your backstory. I’ve been playing the game on Mac via NVIDIA GeForce Now…
Table of contents
At the beginning of the game, you get a wide variety of options to customize your character’s look and play style. If you’d rather skip the steps, you can randomize it. Some of the play styles will affect how your stats start as well. The various options help the game live up to its title, for sure. There are countless variations you can pick that can drastically change your appearance. In the first few moments of the game, you’ll choose between a dark and light side that will affect futures interactions with other characters and dictate various aspects of the story.
In Biomutant, you’re exploring a post-apocalyptic world resulting from the corporate greed of a toxic chemical company in the prior world. Humans are now extinct, and mutated animals now roam the new world. As you wander the world (in a somewhat linear fashion), you collect items, upgrade weapons, expand your abilities, etc. Even though the “old world” is dead, there is enough to make cities feel like ancient ruins. The game does an excellent job of weaving aspects of the old world into puzzles in the game.
The good of Biomutant
Biomutant is a fun game, and if you only remember one thing from my review, remember that. If you come to the game looking for a fun way to spend an hour, you’ll enjoy yourself. The story is quirky, the NPCs are ironically funny, and the game is paced very well. It’s challenging enough to make you work at it, but not so hard that you’re left frustrated.
One of my favorite aspects of the game (and one that would give it replayability) is the tribal war quest. As you start the game, you pick a tribe to ally with and unite or defeat the others. You have complete freedom in your decision-making, and it’s not an either/or situation either. You can collaborate with some while conquering others.
What should have been improved
The single biggest weakness of the game is the combat, which is frustrating because it’s a core part of the overall story and experience. Nothing about the combat stands out overall. It feels like it was an afterthought to the story. The game bills itself as a role-playing action game, but the action isn’t on the same level as the RPG aspect. Major combat moves felt exactly the same as small jabs, and I was constantly surprised by how little or how much a particular move did damage-wise. Also, when you’re in a battle with multiple enemies, targeting different ones seems nearly impossible.
The shooting experience leaves a lot to be desired as well. I am not sure if this problem could be resolved with future patches or if there is something fundamentally broken with the mechanics.
Experiment 101 has announced that a patch is coming soon to address many common complaints by users.
“We are working on the pacing of dialogues, narrator settings, difficulty settings, video settings like depth of field and motion blur, loot and enemy tuning, as well as sound and combat.”
If it can improve the combat experience, it’ll be a much better game.
GeForce experience
I played this game on GeForce Now on macOS, and I was pretty excited about how it performed. I’ve had a long history with gaming, and while I don’t play as much as I’d like today, I do firmly believe that cloud gaming is the future. Technology is moving so quickly that cloud gaming is the easiest way to get started, stay up to date on the last technology, and avoid the need to continually install patches/updates. I think that console/local gaming will likely exist for some time, but it’ll end up like streaming vs. Blu-Ray players. The vast majority of gaming will be through streaming game clients. With platforms like GeForce Now, any device you have is a powerful gaming client. Even for a game like BioMutant that isn’t available for the Mac, I was able to play it on my Mac after purchasing it on Steam.
Wrap up on Biomutant
Overall, it’s a fun game that isn’t perfect. Experiment 101 is a brand new development team, and its first game is quite impressive. Biomutant isn’t going to win any game of the year awards, but it’s well worth the price of entry and the time playing it. It’s a unique story with aspects from a lot of previously popular games.
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