There are a lot of game design decisions in Biomutant that left me scratching my head. Character progression was off, with too many upgrades for powerful playstyles and not enough for weaker ones. Loot progression was mishandled -- I only ended up finding 2-3 upgrades on the weapon type I liked in the 25 hours I played. Assets were blatantly and distractingly copied and pasted across zones in many occasions. The combat could be clunky at times, and the balance was just off between melee and ranged weapons. The story line was also very minimal.

Despite all of that, I had a great time with Biomutant. The environments were gorgeous, and the world was fun to explore. The character and creature designs were unique and endearing. Despite being clunky at times, the combat was overall very fun, allowing you to combo gun and melee and pepper in psionic and mutagenic abilities. The storyline and characters were charming. The various mounts and vehicles were particularly enjoyable ways to traverse the landscapes.

I think Biomutant shares a similar fate to the original Fable -- it promised a world of innovation, but only delivered a charming action RPG with a few gimmicks. I'm fine with that. I wish the systems were a bit more fleshed out and impactful, but in the end, I enjoyed myself and the game put a smile on my face.

I'm giving Biomutant a 4/5. Most of the individual components of Biomutant were 2/5 or maybe 3/5, but, for me, it just came together to be an all around good time despite its shortcomings. A game only needs to do a couple of things really well, as long as its mediocre aspects don't detract too heavily from the experience. Biomutant nailed the atmosphere and environments, while delivering plenty of fun along the way.

I really wanted to love Biomutant. I really did. When it was first announced it seemed to tick all the boxes for an open world adventure game that I would love. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite make the mark.

In Biomutant, you are a small humanoid-ish creature who is trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic Earth, where humans had destroyed the ecosystem, causing creatures to mutate. While the humans are long gone, as long as the ‘Tree of Life’ continues to thrive, all other life on Earth is safe...ish. Unfortunately, four giant creatures, called World Eaters, have decided to go vegetarian and the tree’s roots are their new favourite snack. This is where you come in. You are tasked with tracking down each of these World Eaters and killing them but, in order to do that, you must unite the various tribes to work together to face this threat.

On the surface the plot seems pretty solid. Sure, it is your standard travel-the-world-and-hunt-down-the-threat story but it does the trick. Unfortunately, Biomutant suffers from the usual open world game issue, in which the story does take a backseat to the exploration. In fact, aside from the first couple of hours of the game setting up the story, you don’t get much more added to the story after that. It is essentially the excuse for your character to go and explore the world.

There is a side story which is tied to your past and the fate of your parents. I’ll be honest I wished the developers at Experiment 101 had spent a bit more time on this storyline, as I felt it had the potential to make Biomutant stand out amongst the other open world games. This part of the game also explained what happened to cause the tribes to separate, as well as giving your character an antagonist to oppose. Unfortunately, this whole storyline is introduced at the very beginning and is pretty much forgotten about until the very end; which is a shame, as this could have helped players feel more connected to Biomutant’s world and more invested in saving it.

Speaking of the world of Biomutant, I feel like this is the game’s strongest point. The world is bright and colourful- a complete contrast to other post-apocalyptic games out there. Not only that, but the variety in its environments make it a joy to explore. The game has a range of different environments, ranging from desert to swampland. One of the aspects I really liked was if you went to either a hot or cold area, you had to either have a high enough resistance or wear the right clothes, as you will suffer damage otherwise.There are some assets that are clearly used multiple times but I think for a small development, I think that is OK. The map size is, I feel, the perfect size. It is large enough to justify the term ‘open-world’ but not too large that the world feels empty. At least for myself, the exploration was the best part of the game.

The combat was OK. It wasn’t the best combat I have experienced but it wasn’t the worst. For combat, there are a number of different aspects to it. Firstly, there is the classic melee and ranged combat. For the most part this was OK. You have various combos you can use, which if done successfully gives you the opportunity to use a ‘super’ mode. I didn’t like the lack of control I had on targeting enemies when using ranged weapons. Then there are the mutations. Throughout the game there are bio thingies which you can use to unlock mutations that give you abilities like a bubble which you can stick enemies to. These felt a little gimmicky. Then there are psi powers, which are tied to the karma system. Depending on your karma, you can unlock different powers, like shooting electricity out of your hands. I’ll be honest, I didn’t really use the mutations or psi powers, as the melee was all I really needed. It feels like the developers had several ideas of what they wanted the combat to be- combo focussed, as well as ability focussed and couldn’t decide on which they would go with. This leads to all of the combat systems not being fleshed out. In fact, I had maxed out the skill lines around the same time I reached the half-way point in the game.

The combat could have been much improved if the enemies were a bit more challenging. Basically, if it is a big creature: it will charge you, you will dodge and then hit it. Rinse and repeat. If it is a small creature: it will try and attack you, you will counter the attack and then hit it. Rinse and repeat. There are some variations, such as the small flying enemies but they are few and far between. In fact, the best fights are against the World Eaters, in which you have to use different tactics to take on each one. If there had been a little less repetition with the enemies, this would have gone a long way in making Biomutant a strong open world game.

Finally, we have come to, probably the most divisive part of Biomutant, sound design and voice acting. The developers decided that for the game there would only be three characters that actually speak human: the Narrator, the good karma angel thing and the bad karma devil thing. The two karma entities are brilliant. They remind me of the advisors in the Black & White games. However the Narrator is a little irritating. The voice actor does a brilliant job but the Narrator’s dialogue gets repetitive and dull. At some points, the Narrator was just uttering gibberish that did not reflect what was currently going on in the game. It felt like he had read a whole lot of fortune cookie fortunes and decided to impart his new found knowledge on the player. This wouldn’t be too bad if there were other characters you could speak to. However the developers decided everyone else was going to talk in their own Sim-like language. I completely understand the design choice, after all it does make sense that these creatures would have their own language; but if you are playing this game for thirty plus hours, this nonsensical dialogue can start to grate. In the end, I started to listen to podcasts and music, rather than listen to the game.

Overall, Biomutant was an ambitious game. It is clear that the developers had the best intentions and wanted to create the best open world game possible. However, I feel like their ambition got the better of them which leaves the game lacking a strong strong or combat system. It is not the worst open world game, not by a long shot but it certainly isn’t one of the best. I would definitely be interested in what Experiment 101 creates next but as for Biomutant, I would only recommend it to open world fans or if it was selling at around £30-£35.

I got the platinum trophy. I played everything required for that and then some. I rented the game. Played on PS5.

My take: it's not worth $60, not even close, and I'd feel pretty burned if I paid $60 for this game. If you're like me and want at the very least a mediocre story from a game, this game is not for you. The story is terrible, the dialogue is straight up obnoxious, the major characters have less personality than Skyrim bandits. The main problem with pretty much all of this is the straight up awful approach they took with the narrator. There's great narrators, like Disco Elysium, Bastion, Transistor, then there's this game, where he's translating for characters in the most awkward and irritating way possible, so even if you turn him off, the subtitles still ensure all NPCs have no personality and you still have to read the annoying phrasing. This is one of two games where I got so sick of the story I straight up started skipping it, the other game being Kingdoms of Amalur (which oddly enough this game reminds me a lot of, good and bad). The cardinal sin of Amalur is that it was insanely boring. The cardinal sin with this game is that it's annoying and boring.

If you played any new Assassin's Creed and thought "god this game feels f***ing bloated and there's too many boring side quests" stay away from this game. It's got all the worst open world quest design in the world. Fetch quests upon fetch quest with no good justification or reason for doing them. This part ties back to the awful story in many ways.

Anyway, if those two things are issues for you, this game is not only not worth the money it's not worth the time to play it. Now, onto the good parts.

Gameplay wise it's alright. The sound effects are awful but the devs say they are fixing that, so that issue could just be dated pretty soon. Honestly I like the combat well enough, it's not genius or buttery smooth, but if you enjoy combat from other games like new Assassin's Creed, Amalur, Witcher 3, you'll like it well enough. If you go in expecting God of War or Demon's Souls quality you'll be disappointed though. By around the 20 hour mark I wasn't really interested in fighting that much anymore, so it does get kinda old after awhile.

Where the game really shines is in it's "zen" exploration, which is helped and driven by the neat art design. it's got a water color + comic book style to it, and it's kinda just a joy to do your own thing and enjoy the trees and fields while looking around in ruined building for another green item you'll scrap.

It's also super polished and I had no issues with bugs or glitches. That was kinda nice lol.

I think it's brilliant such a small team essentially made an Ubisoft game. I think that's dope and I really hope other smaller devs jump on that. While the narrator, characters, dialogue, quest design, and story straight up ruined it for me, it might not for you if this isn't an issue.

3/5 but far closer to a 2/5 than a 4/5