Review of the action RPG Biomutant -apkrig

I can’t say stubbornly that I nervously counted down the remaining days until the release of Biomutant. When I first saw the title of the play years ago, I automatically imagined a dark matter in the spirit of the books by the writer Miroslav Žamboch, but that Biomutant would have to have a few more adjectives. Like bloody, rough or cursed. That’s why you probably understand that I was a little surprised when the first videos were crowded with mutated squirrels, rats and other rodents in cowboy or samurai clothes. Fable? Can it appeal to me? And what about other adult players? Many similar questions have been waiting to be answered these days, and I am glad to be able to dispel some of these concerns. Biomutant is definitely not a game for children and only a few centimeters below the surface hides a full-fledged action RPG. At the same time, however, it is not the game that fans have dreamed of over the course of four years, and regardless of the fact that it is the work of only a handful of developers, in some respects it remains behind the competition.

A small big game

Biomutant is an action game from the approximately 20-member Swedish studio Experiment 101, composed mainly of former employees of Avalanche Studios. These are people who have signed up to games like Just Cause or Mad Max and could therefore be expected to want to make full use of their experience in their own project. The biomutant therefore received a relatively large open map, which you will ride with the main character, complete story and side quests, meet other characters, explore various nooks and cleverly fight enemies. The reason why I name such obvious issues of the action RPG is to try to prove that the size of the study was not an obstacle and that there are no compromises regarding the scope of the work done. So much for the price tag, which is set at 60 euros, respectively. 1500 crowns in Czech shops. I couldn’t help but notice the comments from people who are done quickly and are already clear in advance that they would certainly not pay more than 15 euros on sale for the game according to the pictures. No, Biomutant offers entertainment for about two dozen hours and, thanks to a great character development system, is a material to play again.

But first you have to survive the first two hours, which definitely didn’t impress me as an attractive presentation of the game world and the game as such. Although the introductions usually belong to a more extensive explanation and tutorials, which I logically do not object to, it is extremely important to strike a balance between when you can play and when you just passively watch the story unfold. In the case of Biomutant, this failed for several reasons, and some confusion is eventually reflected in the whole game. As for the world, it is presented as a place that previous civilization destroyed with toxic waste and sent itself to hell. You will still realize that these were people, but the rest remains unexplained and there are always hints of something big, which will then bury another dialogue or routine repetition of what you did before the storyline and what you will repeat until the end of the game. The reason your hero is trying to do something is to save the dying tree of life. Naturally, you suspect that if this fails, the entire planet will be doomed, but the sight of a lush and colorful landscape all around you makes you think about how serious the problem is.

Is this world really dying?

However, the roots of the tree are bitten by disgusting monsters anyway, which you must get rid of and solve your own past through flashbacks and, above all, reconcile the quarreling clans of mutated rodents. Naturally, I will not tell you what, but I must say that the game will end as strangely as it begins, and even though the animals are trying to convince you of the urgency of everything that is happening in the world, I could not believe them. This is partly due to the absence of full-fledged dubbing, which can be understood with reference to a large number of supporting characters. But even though the developers tried to solve it in the role of a narrator who speaks for all NPCs and comments vividly on your actions, in reality, it doesn’t work as well as the idea might look on paper. The dialogues are not interesting and will literally beat you with their length, because the narrator always waits for the character to complete the loop of his incomprehensible chatter. And even though you can shorten the length of that chatter a bit in the menu, the flow of the whole experience cannot be corrected, and I must admit that in many places I just flipped through the headlines and skipped the dialogues.

Fortunately, most of the gameplay works, so we can move from the inconvenience to what was done in Biomutant. First of all, it is the development of the character mentioned a while ago. At the beginning, a handsome editor awaits you, in which you have the opportunity to customize the appearance of the main character, but above all to give him basic features. You select not only the origin, but also the class from which the hero is based and redistribute several basic attributes. It’s nice that these changes are reflected in the form of the hero, so if you increase the intelligence, the character will shrink and his head will grow, while in the case of higher strength, the exact opposite will happen. The editor itself then works great as a promise of future things, in which you can include a lot of issues that are not available at the beginning. By gradually playing, you will be able to direct your development outside the selected class, unlock special abilities and learn new elements of Wung-Fu. They are projected into the game as really impressive combos or effects associated with fire, ice or, for example, toxic acid, and in addition, everything can be very elegantly connected in combat with the basic duel at close range and at a distance. It’s fun, sophisticated enough and, given that the fight is represented for most of the game time, it can eliminate a number of shortcomings.

Perfect and variable duel

In other words, the moment you get involved in a fight – and that it will happen really often – you can start a colorful dance of death on the monitor or TV a few hours after the start and deal with a whole bunch of evil rodents and larger monsters at once. It is the combination of all available elements that attracts further exploration, discovery and development of the character, and it is almost impossible for you to master everything in one pass. In addition, it is safe to say that the choices you make in the tables and menus in general are very significant in the game itself, and only changing the weapon or swapping unlocked abilities will change the character of the whole fight and force you to approach it a little differently. The game – even if it doesn’t try to slow you down too much or sends you in a certain direction – then pushes slightly to make these changes with different resistance of enemies to some of the elements or specific attacks, but it didn’t seem like something I would have to play Biomutant differently than I would I wanted and actually appreciated that after a few hours the game forced me to take a pair of shorter daggers in my hand instead of a long sword, or to move from a powerful pistol to a submachine gun with less efficiency, but even more cadence.

The only thing I would blame for the fights is the small variety of enemies and considerable clutter if you get a little closer to your opponents. The camera captures the protagonist through the eyes of a third person standing at a really close distance, and the orientation does not help to jump quickly before the blows, which is usually linked to nice, but quite long and stretched animation of various jumps or slides under the feet of larger monsters. The control on the computer is also slightly octopus, where you have to use several “shifts”, which give the buttons used to give other functions, so after a while of playing I softened and reached for the gamepad. The boss is the fights with the bosses, which are not as unique and difficult as in Returnal, for example, but the combination of their portrayals and the places where you encounter them simply works and underlines the good feeling from the fights. Especially when you don’t always stand up to the so-called Eaters of the Worlds face to face, but for example from the cabin of a large mecha, from the back of a local variation on horses, or from behind an underwater vessel with tentacles.

Good intentions, average processing

If you are not fighting or listening to story dialogues, Biomutant will also take you to a whole host of side missions. But I can’t say too glorious on their account. These are not explicitly filling tasks, in which you should bring five pieces of this and seven of this one, but most of the time you want nothing more than to come to a place, participate with someone, or solve a really trivial logical puzzle. You will either enjoy the loot yourself, or you will give the thing to someone so that they will be satisfied and give you something else, or make another place that is not important for the story available. In this way, you can also improve the mentioned machines and means of transport, which can be a bit overwhelming, given that there are dozens of parts needed for improvement in the landscape and it is not always easy to get them. On the other hand, the adjustment of your own carried equipment and clothing is perfect and the crafting system will reward you with truly bizarre results. However, in the case of weapons and equipment, you can combine a lot of things, or modify individual parts and modules and gradually change or improve their properties to the desired result. In addition, everything is underlined by a really imaginative graphic presentation and it is another important element that will reliably keep you at Biomutant.

The game also operates with a system of morality based on a penchant for darkness or light, but I can’t determine exactly how much impact it has. It is certain that some improvements are made available only if you are on one or the other side of the moral spectrum, but the story affects little, or in a very small space and without overlapping until the end of the game. But it’s just underlining that although Biomutant plays out a lot of great ideas, it doesn’t give them the right depth and just lets you run around them. However, the game is nice to see if you put aside inaccurate animations and strange dimmers before the interviews, but it’s not something that should offend you. Overall, Biomutant is a very interesting and aesthetically untraditional affair, which after finishing will leave a strange and obscure impression in a positive sense. If it was an intention, only good, but as a side effect, it is also enough and the evaluation in the result only benefits.