Biomutant is a pure gem of a game and one that I wish I had been paying closer attention to leading up to E3. A recent trailer for the game made me say, “That looks awesome, I need to play it!”.
The game is all about customization, from how your character looks to how the story is explained to you. The developers wanted to build an experience that can be tailored to anyone’s personal tastes.
From what I played during my lengthy E3 hands-on demo, they have been successful in that regard. It is incredibly charming that such a small game aims to be something so large.
Biomutant is an open-world action RPG where the world is infested with mutated and humanoid animals. The beginning of the demo had me customize my character’s stats which also affected how they looked.
As I progressed through the demo, I was able to tweak weapons and abilities that I had, which further changed how my character looked and how I played the game.
That is the point of Biomutant, if you struggle with your current abilities and loadout, you can mutate or upgrade yourself with new robotic parts to continue attempt to overcome your obstacles.
This is an extremely ambitious upgrade system that they are developing that I have only been able to scratch the surface of with the time I had with the game.
The gameplay is one of the pieces of the game that I will need more time to fully digest. It is a fast-paced free flow combat style of game. You mix up melee attacks, shooting, and mutant abilities to bring down your foes.
While the combat looked beautiful and played out almost exactly how I wanted it to, I could not shake the feeling that it was either too easy or that I was succeeding by simply mashing buttons. I hope that when I play the final product that I can tweak the difficulty some so that I need to use more strategy to take out enemies.
However, the gameplay still felt nice, responsive, and the controls were air-tight. I was able to dodge, weave, stab, punch, and shoot enemies like I was a seasoned action movie star, just the way I like it.
Despite being an open world, the game is still mission based where you will be sent to accomplish tasks for NPC’s that you meet in the game. If you ever get lost, the game’s narrator will guide you in the proper direction which felt natural and never sank into the realm of “Hand-holding”.
If you do not want to hear the narrator speak (Why would you not, David Shaw Parker is a gem) you have the ability to tweak how often he will speak and inform you on what is going on.
In my demo, I was attempting to take down a large mutated badger-like creature. To do so I needed to make my way to an NPC who could help me craft a battle-mech suit.
I had to scale platforms, fight, and problem solve my way across a beautiful and diverse series of environments that both looked like a world of their own but also as if they were built out of the ruins of a human civilization.
The beautiful scenery took up a lot of my time as I spent most of my time looking around at everything around me. The game simply looks and runs beautifully.
When it came to the boss fight, it was a simple back and forth in which I had to dodge his attacks while dealing out damage with my rocket launchers on my mech. After I got his health down low enough, the boss attacked my mech and in a scripted event, ate me.
From within the boss, the fight became a platformer where I had to crawl out of his stomach and find his heart. Once I got to his heart, I cut it up with my large sword and killed the beast from the inside before it spat me out with its final death spasms.
Every moment I spent with Biomutant was more impressive than the last and I am kicking myself for not giving the game the attention I believe it deserves sooner. I am very much looking forward to picking this game up when it launches.
Biomutant is set for a release across Windows PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One sometime this summer.
