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Biomutant


DisturbedSwan
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Started this last week, putting about 12 hours into it and it’s safe to say it’s been a bit of a mixed bag so far. 
 

At the very beginning of the game you’re free to create your character as you so choose, there’s about 7 different classes (one of which is locked away behind a pre-order bonus for some reason) - like a Psychic specialist, ranged weapon specialist, all rounder and melee specialist - about 8 different animal-like races you can pick which have various strengths and weaknesses. Along with a way of picking various elements - like Heat, Cold, Radioactivity and Biohazard - you’re strong or weak to and the degree in which you’re resistant or vulnerable to said elements. The classes you pick, resistances you choose and breed of animal you pick seem more like starting points than a set class as you can put as many points into any stats you want to, deviating from your starting point drastically, sticking rigidly to it or ending up somewhere in between if you so wish.

 

You’re then introduced to your mysterious protagonist, who has seemingly come back to town for the first time in awhile but doesn’t remember too much about who he/she is and what happened to the place he/she grew up in. Along with your Protagonist you’re also introduced to the Narrator, his dulcet tones permeate through an awful lot of the game, particularly in the early going. He is reminiscent of Stephen Fry’s performance in Little Big Planet, explaining a lot of the games various systems to you along with acting like a translator to the many weird and wonderful anthropomorphic characters you’ll meet along your journey. 
 

It starts off super slow in lots of boring industrial, factory type areas that attempt to introduce you to some of the basic elements in its eclectic crazy mix of various systems. It ends up holding your hand too much though to an annoying degree where you’re stopping to watch a cutscene or some kind of dialogue after every fight or action, not letting you off the lead so to speak until you’re about 2-3 hours in and even then the game still wants to explain a lot of stuff to you. 
 

Once you’re out of the early factory area and let loose into the open world things get much better. The moment you step out of the dull factory and gaze upon this luscious, striking world filled with greenery and bathed in sunlight it is a real wow moment that immediately put a smile on my face, it is reminiscent of coming out of the Vault in Fallout 3. I don’t know how they’ve done it with a team of 20 people but the world is an absolute sight to behold, it quite frankly looks ridiculously good and with the added photo mode you can't help but stop and take a snapshot every few minutes.
 

There is a clear Eastern influence running throughout the game with the music, ‘Wung Fu’ combat and design of the characters and world, from the Buddhist shrine-like Tribe outposts to certain enemies wearing Samurai-like armour. The good/bad scale (represented by two light and dark sprites) is a clear nod to the Asian concept of Yin and Yang as well. 
 

Even once you’re outside the factory the game still loosely holds onto the reigns for awhile pushing you towards making your first big choice in the game, aligning yourself with a Tribe. On the face of it the choice is a clear cut good vs evil but there’s shades of grey in there with good parts of the seemingly ‘evil’ choice and bad parts to the seemingly ‘good’ choice. I really like this as the whole Renegade/Paramore good/bad swinging scale stuff has been done so many times before and rarely gives you pause for thought, some of the events so far feel a bit like New Vegas where you’re damned to some degree no matter what you choose.

 

The world itself is absolutely massive, as said above I’ve put 12 hours in and have barely made it out of the opening Southern zones you first get to as you get out of the factory. At the centre of the world is the Tree of Life with the different biomes located around it much like a Clock, I haven’t explored much of the world yet but it’s clear there is a lot of variety in its design from the mountainous greenery of the first area to the flooded plains of the next, with the latter being explorable by a makeshift jet ski. There are some biomes that are locked off due to being too hot, cold or radioactive which requires you to get a special suit to be able to venture there safely. 
 

The game throws so much stuff at you that it is hard not to be bewildered by it all. There’s about 4 different types of upgrade points you can put into things (character stat upgrades, Psi-points, Bio Points and combat move upgrade points), a loot system where you can find and equip better equipment depending on its rarity, a crafting system where you can make pretty much anything providing you have the right materials, numerous strange animals you can recruit as mounts, numerous machines you can pilot to make your job easier and a multitude of other bits and pieces. 
 

The combat is perhaps the most interesting part of the game as it is extremely customisable and it’s possible to play the game however you want once you master or unlock the right elements. On the surface of it, it’s a bit DMC mixed with Max Payne, you have a ranged weapon and a melee weapon (or two) you can use in combination with each other. It’s super fun to just mess about with an experiment, but can feel a little loose and imprecise at times, with hits not quite registering with the required oomph to make them truly satisfying and a somewhat delayed response to your button presses. 
 

The world design is possibly the least interesting part of the game. It is very much like a Ubisoft game of 4-5 years ago or perhaps a better comparison would be the Mad Max game of 2015 or Just Cause (as this is made by ex-Avalanche devs), filled with lots of meaningless shite you can do, pickup, explore and engage with. Me being me, I can’t leave these symbols sitting on the map untouched so go around looking for 6 billboards out in the world when my time would be better spent doing a story mission or some of the more interesting side quests. 
 

It is a truly fascinating, beguiling and bewildering game that has plenty of promise to it in these somewhat early stages but I’m not sure if all that promise will add up to something in the end or not. I will say again though how astounding it is a game this large was built by 20 developers, it is crazy how big this world is and how much detail, dialogue and character development it has going on in it. The story is genuinely intriguing too which I didn’t expect and I can’t wait to see where things go next. 

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Spoiler

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I’m now about 18 hours in, since my last post the game has gone from strength to strength. 
 

I just feel like I’ve got a better handle on the game and it’s mechanics really but I’ve also learnt to ignore the symbols on the map from time to time and just go off exploring and it’s just so damn satisfying. The game is at its best when you just go off the beaten path and discover some weird abandoned factory shrouded in fog. You want to find everything in this locale to tick everything off the list and ‘complete’ it, finding all the stuff in one of these locales is half the fun and so damn satisfying. 

 

The game does overwhelm you with things to find, side quests to do and various bits and pieces but it’s curiosity and the joy of discovery that steal the show. It’s almost like a pound shop Fallout at times with the amount of hidden vaults and other areas to explore along with the amount of detail there is in these underground dungeons. 

It helps that I’ve now got the Biohazard suit so I can explore some previously blocked off areas that were teaming with Biohazard materials. Likewise with the hypoxia areas now I’ve got a mech (or Mekton as it’s called) it’s much easier to explore, finding hidden trinkets and ‘completing’ areas along the way. 
 

Most of my last few hours with the game have been spent in a new zone called the ‘deadzone’ which is reminiscent of the radiated areas in a Fallout game. Largely devoid of colour and life, unable to be explored by foot, with decrepit towns largely devoid of life instead being perched on the cliffs above. Going through this area in the Mech using its powerful machine gun to mow down enemies, sucking up tar pits and shaking off nasty critters has been such a nice change of pace and completely different to the rest of the game so far.

 

Its the perfect podcast game, which isn’t meant as a criticism. You can freely explore its massive world without too much thought involved, having a lot of fun whilst watching a twitch stream or podcast in the background. It’s such an easy going, relaxing game. 
 

Spoiler

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  • 1 month later...

I finished this about a week or so ago. 

 

I left it for awhile whilst I worked my way through Ratchet, once that was finished I went back to this and unfortunately it just didn't resonate with me anywhere near as much as it had been before my self-imposed hiatus.

 

I had aspirations previously to 100% it and maybe try for the Platinum, was working away on each of the lands and finishing every quest I came across, but, after a few hours trying to do this post-hiatus I just got really bored so I started just doing the main quests and finishing it up. 

 

The main quests I had left were to takeover each of the remaining tribe outposts and then defeat the remaining two world eaters still alive, I shot myself in the foot with the outposts as if you takeover a certain amount it gives you the option to skip the rest but I didn't really read the prompt properly and selected not to skip this which meant I had to still go round to every Outpost and take out each tribe one by one. Luckily the two world eaters were much easier and quicker to put down and I was done and finished in no time. 

 

Overall I still very much enjoyed my time with this, the world is phenomenal to explore, incredibly vibrant and full of life, I also enjoyed the stylish combat throughout and never really got bored of it, but the monotonous fetch quests, boring characters and overbearing narrator really started to grate around the 30 hour mark and I found myself sprinting for the finish. I would still recommend it though but that recommendation comes with some caveats: for those that can't stomach the type of open world design like Mad Max 2015 or Ubisoft open world design before 2016 or so then this probably isn't for you.

 

For a small team of 20 people what they've achieved here is nothing less than extraordinary in terms of scope, art direction and design but as a whole the game doesn't quite come together perfectly.

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  • 1 year later...

Glad to read that it gets better, as I'm struggling a bit 2hrs or so in, with the handholding (and that narrative voiceover).

 

So I was wondering if to ditch it, but I'll give it a few more hours.

 

TBH currently probably feels more like a child friendly take on Elex than it does Fallout, but sounds like it's going to improve. 

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About 4 hrs in and there's some good bits but I really hate the narration voice over. It's there for every single conversation (i.e. the is no other voice dialogue - just the same narrator that says what the conversation covered).

 

I take onboard Blakey's comments about it being made by a small team, so I guess they chose that route to save VO costs, but I find it hugely irritating - esp. as noted,it's all done in that cheery LBP type delivery.

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Unsurprisingly Blakey was right, the more you play the better it gets - just a shame you have to wade through a few hours beforehand, as there were points where I felt like I wasn't going to bother.

 

It actually now feels more like the first Borderlands game, rather than Fallout, which isn't necessarily a bad thing though.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Wrapped it up after around 50hrs and finished the main quest, credits rolling. I took the dark path, as it's not usually the route I'd go, but wanted to see how it turned out here. Still a bunch of sidequests left open, predominantly the collectible type things/rotational puzzles, but there wasn't really much incentive to complete them all - I've been content with weapons & armour for a good whilst, so additional items/crafting became a bit nugatory - likewise I've a whole bunch of bio/psi points that I didn't spend on character upgrades either.

 

The only real nark is the number of occasions where it arbitrarily determines that your vehicles/transport can't be summoned, particularly near some water areas where you can't swim and therefore want your 'boat' - so you have to walk a long way around instead. Neither are the enemies/bosses particularly challenging - I predominantly died when exploring and falling into water or goop than in combat.

 

Overall, if you can overcome the poor first few hours, it's really great fun.

 

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Glad you enjoyed it @shinymcshine it's a lot of fun. Not amazing by all means but it's a cool fun way to spend quite a few hours, I loved being in that world, much like you there was a little too much of it and my exploration battery ran dry by around the same number of hours, but those hours spent with it were a lot of fun.

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  • 2 months later...

I went into Smyths yesterday to have a browse as you do and saw this for £12.99 on XSX so I picked it up. 
 

I recalled it being reviewed quite negatively but I often get more out of 6 and 7/10 games than is safe to do so.

 

Also to note there’s been a free upgrade for current gen consoles.

 

– Quality Mode: Native 4K (with Dynamic Resolution) @ stable 30 FPS

– Performance Mode: Native 1440p (with Dynamic Resolution) @ stable 60 FPS

– Quality Unleashed: Native 4K (with Dynamic Resolution) @ up to 60 FPS

 

Well I’ve played around an hour and it was pretty excruciating to say the least. The narrator never shuts up and is a real annoyance. The combat isn’t the best of times. I’ve been lead through a series of boring areas.

 

I can’t wait for it to open up and become the game they really spent the time making. I think they could have done without this slog of an introduction / tutorial.

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I thought I'd posted about this, but I played a little bit. I did start to enjoy it after an hour or so, it started to remind me a bit of a Fallout game in its structure. But for whatever reason, I just couldn't get myself to stick with it 

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The tutorial and early hours aren't great at all, much like a lot of games these days I find. Once you push through that I'm not going to promise the game ever becomes amazing or anything but it's a lot of fun and the game world is pretty crazy, varied and vibrant, especially for a game made by 20 people. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well I got to the open world and it couldn’t be more disappointing. This was made by a small team and it really shows in all areas. After about two hours of running around I couldn’t stand the flimsy combat, the constant boring narration or the sometimes beautiful but often chore to cross landscape. 9/10 if you have trouble sleeping. 4/10 if you’re looking for enjoyment.

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