▷Biomutant: what went "wrong"? 🥇

Biomutant has finally arrived! After a long wait, which began in 2017, and some postponements, the long-awaited adventure video game by experiment 101 e THQ Nordic has arrived in the PCs and consoles of impatient gamers. But something did not go in the right direction, it seems, and the wait did not pay off the players. Since the day of Biomutant's release, the Internet has been populated with contrasting reviews and disappointed enthusiasts who have brought down the number of Biomutant players in just a few hours. But what went wrong? Are we really facing an unsuccessful video game? Let's find out in ours Biomutant Review.

Our Biomutant review

Biomutant is an action / adventure video game with Open World mechanics, which immerses us in a fantastic world post-apocalyptic inhabited by humanoid animals. The land of Biomutant was in fact hit, many years earlier, by an environmental disaster caused by a powerful company that poured toxic substances into the environment and waters that inevitably poisoned the planet. The pollution has hit the Tree of Life, a tree that is located in the center of the world and that radiates it with its energy.

The latter, however, is running out and the planet risks collapse, threatened by ecological disaster, by enormous hostile creatures and by strong contrasts between the civilian population. This is in fact divided into a series of tribes each with its own ideology and its own goal. Collaborating could lead the planet to salvation but the road is still long to do and the threats are manifold.

To resolve the situation, or at least try, we will have to be us. The protagonist of the game, which can be created from scratch, in fact, he will have to take on the task of uniting the tribes under a single banner, with peace or with war. The ultimate goal is to save the Tree of Life and its roots scattered around the world by defending it from hostile creatures and of course, surviving.

Biomutant - PlayStation 4

A post apocalyptic open-world rpg that combines hand-to-hand combat with firearms and mutant skills
Survive in an incredible open world experience
Third-person combat system inspired by martial arts

60,98 EUR Buy on Amazon

Our Biomutant

At the beginning of our adventure we will have the opportunity to create the protagonist with a simple but comprehensive character creation system. The typical mechanics of role-playing games immediately come into play with different classes to choose from that alter, in addition to the physical appearance, also the characteristics. Each class has one or more specializations ranging from the use of ranged weapons to those in melee to the use of chase psionici. The class will also determine the initial amount of features such as Vitality, Strength, Intelligence, Agility, Charisma e Fortuna.

These features will affect our style of play depending on our preferences to make it easier fight enemies from afar, with melee weapons and so on. There is also a system of choices in the game that will affect our benign or malignant alignment. The choices will also affect the course of the game's plot that will be shaped by ourselves. In fact, we will have to choose which tribe to side with, how to act to bring unity to the world and so on. The world of Biomutant is in our hands.

In action

From a Gameplay point of view, Biomutant is presented as an action and adventure game. During the game we will be free to explore the large map in search of new weapons, items and NPC characters that will keep the story going. The latter has many varied and original implications that will let us know the past and present of Biomutant, the story of our protagonist and his family and the current situations of the rival tribes.

The game sequences alternate between exploration and combat. The stages of scouting they will take us to the heart of the world of Biomutant made of ruins, thick forests and all that is expected of a post-apocalyptic world. This is also inhabited by menacing creatures that will characterize the sequences of combat. The latter is distinguished by a fast pace in which we will have to alternate basic attacks with special abilities, parries and ranged attacks. From ours we will have a vast arsenal of weapons and armor with more than imaginative names with which to attack and defend ourselves.

By fighting and exploring, our character will gain experience and thus levels. At each level we will develop a skill point that can be used for acquire new powers, moves or passive buffs. The branch of skills, if you can call it that, is not very large but it will take several hours of play and many experience points to complete it all.

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The first flaws

Already in the first moments of the game you realize that Biomutant has a strong flaw regarding the movement of the character and consequently, the fight. The movements are in fact very woody and not at all fluid which also inevitably influences the action sequences. Hitting enemies does not give the satisfaction that it should and in general the rhythm of great adrenaline that Biomutant would like to give to the player is lost in a series of low-impact commands that are reduced to a trivial Button Smashing. The fights at the Monster Hunter, a game to which Biomutant has very often been compared, are a distant memory.

From the same disinteresting impact, we find the general animations of the characters. For a game of this type we expected an exaggerated amount of animation and well-made, but we got some mild scenes with little impact. Well-crafted animations, such as our hero's run, alternate with those practically non-existent such as the repetitive and emotionless movements of the NPCs that reminded us of the games of about 15 years ago.

A bit of technicalities

On the other hand, taking up the previous chapter, Biomutant explodes when it comes to the work done by the developers for the settings and general graphics of the game. Here too the defects are not lacking. Some models e texture they are loosely crafted and we found ourselves walking through props too many times. In general, however, the glance is truly spectacular and gives us a colorful and original world with a great visual impact.

From the point of view of colonna sonora there is not much to say. It stands out neither for particularly emotional melodies nor for engaging sound effects. Particular note of demerit instead goes to the dubbing of the game. Although it is dubbed in Italian, the narrator, practically the only voice of the game together with our "conscience", is devoid of emphasis and, all in all, annoying. It is in fact a constant in our game and although it manages to give us a great taste of the tutorial, after a few hours of play it becomes almost irritating. Fortunately, an audio option gives us the possibility to reduce his interventions.

So, is Biomutant a good game or not?

At this point in the review, it's time to ask, but is Biomutant a good game or not? Leaving aside for a moment the extreme subjectivity of a possible answer to this question, let's try to coldly analyze what is happening with Biomutant. Since the release of the game, dating back only to May 25, video game critics and gamers have been unleashed against the title and against THQ Nordic for having "deluded" the public with an apparently intriguing title that turned out to be rather bland.

The double blade of the Hype

One of the triggers for this accusation was generated by the so-called Hype. This English term indicates the emotion and expectation that is created around a video game, in this case, through images, trailers and so on. The hype generated around Biomutant has created very high expectations in gamers that, it seems, have been disregarded. But is it really so?

Although the game was announced many years ago and aroused a lot of curiosity among the public, neither Experiment 101 nor THQ Nordic created false expectations for the title, on the contrary. In the last months before the launch, the software house has in fact shown the game in long gameplay videos which, although they do not manage to show elements such as playability or feel with the controller, have still shown the game as it would have been at the release. .

The responsibility of this case and of high expectations created on the basis of too few elements, is to be attributed only to ourselves and to an idea that we have created for ourselves. Biomutant needs a lot of patience and many hours of gameplay before it can be fully appreciated, elements that the very busy contemporary gamers, including us, do not have.

Definitely…

… Biomutant is a good video game, with as many defects as it has merits. An original plot set in an equally creative and lively world manage to give body and soul to a new IP that, for better or for worse, will leave its mark.