I am a graffiti hunter. No matter where I go, be it a large city, a small town, far away or very close, virtually or in person, I’m always looking for the stickers, the murals, the street art. This even applies to video games and in BIOMUTANT there is actually a great assortment of it. Cutesy illustrations in an American Kawaii style on dilapidated walls.
Of course this isn’t the other fun detour in BIOMUTANT. If you love matching outfits, playing with fur styles, colors, etc. you’re in for a joy. Although when it comes to outfits you better not care about armor functionality to see all the different hats, shirts, jeans, etc you can make.
If exploring every nook and cranny a world has to offer before finishing a story, you have that in oodles as well. There’s a big old world here of customization, a history of the world before it became what it was, and different types of places to explore with different enemy types as well.
I chose to wait till getting completely through this game to the end and a New Game + before properly praising and/or critiquing the game, hence the first three parts of this review were made early on. After a futher observation while I would still highly recommend BIOMUTANT it is a frustrating game. There are many flaws in the design, in the writing, in the what seem forced missions. The boss battles are five very different type of gameplays and the the entirety of the game does not prepare you for these boss battles in the least. To prepare for those boss battles one needs to level up and to level up it tends to involve fetch quests which turn into side quests which are not truly side quests as without finishing certain side quests you will not be able to finish the main quests. It becomes too much after awhile and the open world loses its charm.
The narrator also loses his charm and you get the option to have him speak less way too late for it to matter, at that point you’ve gotten used to him even when you scream “shut up already”.
The choices you make definitely have story potential, but unfortunately at least for me when you reach the point to make these very heavy choices they seem either easy or too daunting, and the desire to know what happens if you replay and made different choices based on the ending one did receive wasn’t high.
With all this though, mileage may vary. The game is beautiful, the combat is amazing (although in hard mode which I attempted after easy mode to just experience the game it is excruciatingly hard… which for some gamers is the experience they desire, for others, not at all), the weapon building is exciting (although scrounging for currency is a slag like in any RPG), the platforming is at times difficult and other times exhilarating, all the modes of transport are fun (although the fact that the water vehicle doesn’t seem to spawn in all water and therefore you drown is frustrating).
Should you play BIOMUTANT? Most definitely, but just be aware what you’re getting into.
(Disclaimer: This review is based off a free review copy.)