In some ways, the $59.99 Biomutant is a deeply weird and unique action-RPG. Early on, you encounter a humanoid, ferret-monk talking in a Star Wars-style alienspeak that’s translated by the game’s English storybook narrator. Later on, the monk—named Out-of-Date—is dressed like a greaser and humming Elvis-themed pidgin. In other ways, Biomutant is the result of the game industry working away at the open-world whetstone. It’s a vast world of action combat, copious loot and locations to discover, mounts to tame and travel upon, and a variety of local gangs to subdue. In terms of mechanics, you’ve experienced something like it if you’ve played an open-world game in the past decade. Given its indie beginnings, however, Biomutant doesn’t quite land near its AAA brethren in every aspect. Still, Biomutant is an intriguing and exciting PC game, despite frustrating combat and poorly explained game mechanics.
The Tree of Life Blooms Again
Biomutant begins in the ruins of our world. Megacorporation Toxanol polluted the Earth to the point that it mutated and fought back, extinguishing humanity. In our place is a race of tiny humanoid mammals; there’s no real analog to any one type of animal, merely a semi-marsupial mélange.
You are the Ronin, a young orphan of an ancient tragedy who must take up a blade and save the world. (Or destroy it, as player choice is Biomutant’s hook.) During character creation, you can choose between six breeds, each proficient in different areas. Then you mutate your character, with its genetic code determining the warrior’s overall stats and general look. Finally, you can pick your class: Dead-Eye, Commando, Psi-Freak, Saboteur, or Sentinel. Each offers different, unlockable perks as you play.
Biomutant throws a lot at you in its early hours. There’s a rather forgettable light/dark morality system, a war between competing animal tribes, and the main quest. The latter sees you set out to save the Tree of Life by defeating the World Eaters that feast on its massive roots. To do so, you must upgrade the Ronin by collecting Bio Points, Psi Points, and Upgrade Points, and dropping those points in new Psi-Powers, Perks, and Wung-Fu abilities. There’s an extensive crafting system, too.
Biomutant offers significant mutant-building flexibility, but it would have benefited from some power consolidation. Not all powers feel meaningful, especially some combat-focused skills, and the differentiation between ability subsets, such as Psi-Powers and Bio-Genetics, could probably be wiped away. At times, it feels like Biomutant adds a lot of cruft to compete with its AAA counterparts, rather than asking if it’s necessary.
Biomutant, Biohazard
Despite the development team at Experiment 101 being a relatively small squad—under 20 full-time employees—Biomutant visually punches above its weight. The world that stretches out in front of you is gorgeous. There are rolling plains of grass dotted with flowers of every hue that sway in the gentle breeze. In addition, your journey takes you across small hamlets and ruined cities, through the contaminated marshes and vast deserts. At the center of all of it is the Tree of Life, a massive structure that shifts as you continue your journey, a giant monument to your progress. Its roots tower over some parts of the landscape, making it a sight to behold.
Experiment 101 decided to forgo the Ubisoft-style towers that categorize many open-world titles. There’s no structures that reveal each region’s landscape; you just explore on foot. Generally, that exploration is rewarded with a new location to loot, Tribal fort to overcome, or hazardous zone to survive.
Hazard zones prevent you from just going wherever you please. As you wander the map, you’ll find areas bathed in a thick, colored fog or haze that usually corresponds to a different hazard type: Heat, Biohazard, Cold, Radioactivity, or Hypoxia (lack of oxygen). When you enter those zones, the effect count upward to 100%, at which point you’ll start losing health. You can tackle hazard zones by combining gear with resistances attached, raising your own innate resistance, or finding the specific suit set for that hazard. It gives you options: Do you try to brave a hazard zone for a short period of time, or wait until you have the resistance to tackle it?
Then there are vehicles. Each of the four World Eaters requires a new tactic to tackle. In one region, the Googlide jetski lets you traverse polluted waters, while the giant Mekton suit in another region lets you survive without air. Combined with the hazard areas and lack of towers, Biomutant truly pushes the feeling of exploration. Wandering untouched through a biohazard zone’s green haze is an accomplishment.
The Rot Within
Biomutant tries to do so much, and succeeds at a good deal of it, but it falters, too. Its combat is similar to many other action-RPGs, with your character hacking and slashing through foes. The problem is the hack-and-slash combat isn’t as tight and tuned as Nier: Automata’s, and you don’t fight control as you do in Immortals Fenyx Rising or The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
You tend to fight large enemy groups, typically with one, plus-sized ringer. This usually breaks down to slashing and parrying the smaller enemies, but being unable to commit to a combo because of the attacks from the big ones. Psi-Powers, such as Freeze and Blaze, might affect the smaller foes, but the big ones sometimes ignore them outright. So, fighting is just dodge, dodge, dodge, parry, shoot, slash. It feels slow and tedious, whittling down the small enemies until you can focus on the larger one. I’d like more direct control of the battlefield and the tools required to fight the many different enemies.
Biomutant also struggles to explain itself at times. One quest demanded that I find an item that was hidden inside bushes. Slashing the bush didn’t work. The Blaze ability didn’t set the bush on fire. Running at the bush did nothing. The answer? Dodging through the bush. That’s not particularly intuitive solution, and the game didn’t present that as an option.
Some of the boss fights are equally obtuse. The second boss is invincible unless you expose his weak spots. How you do that is unexplained, and I only came to the answer after two previous, failed attempts. Still, the fight remained a struggle, even after discovering that solution, due to the small window to damage the boss. It wasn’t a hard fight, it was just a tedious one that lacked clear signposting. A game should give you the information needed to succeed. It’s a shame that Biomutant stumbles in this area, because it’s these tiny cuts that add up over time.
Can Your PC Play Biomutant?
Biomutant is a looker, but it won’t stress your PC. Biomutant’s minimum specifications demand an AMD FX-8350 or Intel Core i5-4690K CPU, Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 or Radeon R9 380 GPU, 8GB of RAM, and 25GB of storage space. The recommended specs kick that up to an AMD Ryzen 5 1600 or Intel Core i7-6700K CPU, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660Ti or Radeon RX 590 GPU, and 16GB of RAM. That’s not recent PC hardware, so if you keep your rig relatively up-to-date, you should be fine.
My gaming PC houses an AMD Ryzen 5 3600X CPU, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 GPU, and 24GB of RAM. I had no problem running Biomutant at 3840 by 2160 resolution, with most of the additional visual features turned on. There are options for draw distance, resolution scaling, and frame rate limits, but it’s missing other graphics settings, such as ray tracing and ambient occlusion, to really tailor your visual experience. Otherwise, Biomutant ran at a mostly locked 60 frames per second on my PC.
The One-Eye Ronin
With Biomutant, developer Experiment 101 created an intriguing world that contains a beautiful aesthetic and a strong feeling of exploration. The team’s filled it to the brim with loot and progression systems that really let you craft your character. Unfortunately, that complexity isn’t always needed, and areas that should be explained aren’t.
Biomutant isn’t a fantastic game, but it’s a good one that comes with caveats. It’s different, clutching all its influences close to its chest with such intense love that you’ll want the studio to be able to build upon it. You’ll want that sequel or expansion. The first step wasn’t as strong as it could be, but Biomutant’s future could be a bright one with some refinement.
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