It’s been a long road for biological mutationof the Switch release. The action role-playing game originally launched nearly three years ago, in May 2021, with the Switch version gradually being pushed back time and time again. However, Experiment 101’s first title is finally here, but perhaps it should be saved for the Switch’s successor.
Biomutant takes place in a post-apocalyptic open world where the Tree-of-Life, a giant natural wonder that gives life to the entire world, is slowly being destroyed by five creatures that are gnawing at its roots. its. You begin the game by creating your mutant character, who, during the adventure, can choose to save the Tree of Life from these creatures and let the tree heal or let the world fall. After the introductory tutorial, you can visit various tribes scattered all over the world, work side by side with them, and complete quests that fulfill their wishes for the world. Some wanted it to fall into plague and others united to try to save the Tree of Life.
At first, Biomutant seems like a game with a fairly flexible narrative. However, that illusion of choice quickly wore off and before long we found ourselves stuck in a repetitive cycle of completing the same monotonous tasks for the tribe we belonged to. I’m allied. This number of missions wouldn’t be an issue if they felt innovative or gave us unique characters to talk to. Instead of quests that allow you to help the creatures of this world, it’s all just busy work. Biomutant feels less like a story you embark on and more like being guided through request after request, and it feels woefully outdated for a game in 2021 , let alone 2024.
While the game tries to present itself as a classic storybook-like fairy tale by using a narrator, it ultimately lacks the content and impact that those beloved stories have . Additionally, the narrator is used to give the characters their own personalities and voices. Instead of the quest giver telling us their story, the narrator fills in the details and says, for example: “This creature is lost and needs to find its way back to its tribe.” This completely drains any life and identity the Biomutant world had. It feels less like we’re discovering it and more like we’re being told about it in a university lecture.
We completed mission after mission and talked to character after character while listening to the same deadpan voice that, while initially entertaining, soon wore out its welcome. . We should have seen that time and energy were spent voicing multiple characters around the world. Thankfully, there’s an option to reduce the narrator’s input, but it makes the game feel quite bland and empty as there’s nothing to fill the void left by doing this.
Thankfully, the rest of Biomutant works much better. The game’s open world is vast and varied with every area, each feeling distinct from the other. The combination of real-world infrastructure like highways and buildings as well as vast forests and hillsides are among the highlights. This is combined with impressive enemy and creature designs DO lives up to the fable-like impression that Biomutant gives. We constantly discover intriguing enemies that seem different from each other.
Taking on these enemies is also fun because combat is easily the strongest part of Biomutant. When crafting your mutant at the beginning of the game, you can choose a class and some basic weapons. As we played, we found a lot of unique equipment and weapons that allowed us to develop our little mutant in any way we wanted.
That freedom has a powerful impact when it comes to combat, and unlike the story, the choices here dramatically change the way we fight enemies. We start with a gun and a simple melee weapon, but eventually we can take on enemies and many imposing bosses purely with ranged weapons or using a combination of abilities. abilities, strength, guns and melee weapons. Honestly, combat is where we had the most fun with Biomutant, and it helps make by-the-numbers missions and exploration fun,
Switching quickly between jumping and spraying bullets, firing a ranged ability, then jumping into a melee attack with a dash feels great, and upgrading the stats allows us to dig even deeper mutant core powers and hone a specific build. There are so many options here that you can play Biomutant multiple times in completely different ways each time.
However, the Switch port might make you abandon that idea. Biomutant ran mostly fine during our time with it, with no crashes, stuttering, or significant frame rate drops, the game doesn’t look great on the console. The world looks muddy due to lower quality textures, reduced draw distance, and poor quality character models, especially compared to what you can find on other platforms. These problems exist in both handheld and docked modes, and the game doesn’t exactly look great, especially since so many other RPGs have been ported to the Switch in pristine ways.
Conclusion
Biomutant has a solid core. Unique enemy designs, a variety of weapons to use in combat, and fun, fluid combat are all highlights, but the narrator is difficult and the story is monotonous filled with quests and missions. Repeated actions will make the experience burdensome. Combine all of this with unpleasant visuals and low-quality textures, and we have to wonder whether the game should have waited for Nintendo’s next console. The actual gameplay experience is great, but instead of feeling like a slick handheld version of the game, Biomutant feels like it was rushed out the door and left standing on the porch a bit disheveled.
