Biomutant Reviews
While lacking the polish of its well-funded cousins, Biomutant brings a whole world of heart to the open-world RPG genre that can’t be found anywhere else.
Despite some interesting ideas, Biomutant commits the cardinal sin of media — it’s boring, and that ultimately seals its fate. The game has a gorgeous world and adorable character designs, yet it’s soulless and falls far short of its ambitions.
While its combat can use a bit more touchup and some presentation bits need a bit more tweaking & smoothing, the overall action and open-world gaming package offered by Experiment 101 is not to be missed. All in all, come for the furry critters & pro-environmental stance, stay for the grand adventure.
There’s some fun to be had with Biomutant, but it’s the type of fun that’ll attract a specific group of gamers that’ll throw on a podcast as they mindlessly explore the game’s world.
I name-dropped and compared quite a few games to Biomutant in this review and it is because Experiment 101 has clearly taken influences from so many games and attempted to incorporate it all into Biomutant. However, in the pursuit of taking so many concepts and creating something unique, Biomutant winds up feeling derivative and dated. It never does anything exceedingly well but also never does anything terribly bad, it simply exists in the middle and its biggest success is being an average game with a good combat system.
From the world to the character designs and the environmental themes the game plays around with, you can sense the passion from the team making Biomutant. It's an undeniable passion from the team, and there's a lot of ideas to love, but the scope here is beyond what the team could deliver in a well-wrapped package.
BIOMUTANT is an adventure like none other. With its character creation and morality decisions, this is one that has near-infinitesimal replayability. At times the game’s ambition gets the best of it by feeling like it’s doing too much at any one time, but it just manages to pull it off. It’s wild, beautiful, and an amalgamation of the games it is so clearly inspired by. Offering the best of modern games, with enough originality to distinguish itself from the rest. BIOMUTANT is an accessible, exciting RPG that I can’t get enough of.
Throughout the game characters remind us that it’s alright to remember the past but the past is just that, the past. We need to focus on the future while using the past as a guide. The team at Experiment 101 have done just that with Biomutant. They created a game that uses elements from games that we’ve loved in the past, while simultaneously moving these elements forward and blending them together to show us that video games can be so much more than we ever imagined they could be.
Biomutant is a statement of intent, a deliberate step away from the excess of old and toward a genuinely exciting reinvigoration of the genre.
Biomutant has a lot of issues that more lenient players might be willing to look past for its fantastic strengths, but the overall package is a tough sell.
Biomutant is an open world role-playing game of a different kind and in a positive sense. Even if you use numerous gameplay elements from other titles and thus appear overloaded at the beginning, the beautiful game world fascinates with its look and its sound. Anyone who can overcome this initial hurdle and come to terms with the narrative weaknesses can expect a refreshing adventure that is worth every minute of the game.
Review in German | Read full review
Despite the few aforementioned hiccups, Biomutant is an expansive and thoroughly engaging open-world exploration game that fans of Fallout might recognize and enjoy. The game may have some rough edges, but it is especially impressive for an outing by an indie developer with much less resources and manpower than a major studio. Don’t miss this title!
Biomutant comes out the gate incredibly strong with high customization and a stunning world to explore. Players have agency over the adventure through interactions providing an immersive experience unique to the player, making it a must-play for any action-adventure fan. However, the more time you spend in this world, the more you notice where it could be improved. As some missions become less fun with no help from the low difficulty, you'll likely want to speed past some portions. Still, that's one small issue to an otherwise grand adventure full of wonderful features, gameplay, and beauty that can't be overlooked.
Biomutant is an ambitious animal populated open-world with so much to do most players could spend 60-70 hours exploring without seeing everything. However, size is its downfall. The player will get lost, and bogged down in the morass of thousands of side quests, thousands of superfluous items, before they realise there’s not much plot to hang it all from. Add a number of glitches at launch, no lock-on in combat, and a narrator that will drive many players to distraction, and sadly Biomutant does not live up to its lofty ambitions.
So while I can’t give Biomutant the across-the-board praise I had so hoped to when I started, it nonetheless delivers great gameplay, deep customization in numerous ways, and gorgeous visuals that will leave you awestruck for many hours as you explore the wide-open world it contains. Combined with its determination to not unduly punish players by keeping systems intuitive and making crafting choices easily reversible, Biomutant keeps its fun gameplay and beautiful environments open to many gamers who otherwise might struggle with the game’s many systems and combat.