Biomutant Gameplay Preview - A Pretty Good Game Marred By an Underwhelming Start
2Developed by Experiment 101, published by THQ Nordic (Xbox 1, PS4, PC)
*MSRP: 59.99 - https://store.steampowered.com/app/597820/BIOMUTANT/
►Blog Coverage: https://duckyobrien.com/2021/05/27/biomutant-gameplay-preview-a-pretty-good-game-marred-by-an-underwhelming-start/
►Twitch Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1036737372
Biomutant is a pretty strange game. It combines a lot of mechanics from many different genres into a strange concoction that feels warmly familiar yet distinct.
The game is an open world rpg with an incredibly large map filled with small villages, dungeons, treasures, and collectables. You even have outposts to take over like in Assassin's Creed. The combat is an action heavy spam fest that is reminiscent of games like Devil May Cry. You literally have a gun and sword that you can switch back and forth from. The progression system is a stat based system like that found in a role playing game. Let's just say there are a lot of mechanics in this game.
This makes it sound like it should be the ultimate game, on paper at least, with so many appealing mechanics rolled into this one game but in reality the game falls short of the mark. Biomutant, by my opinion, is actually a very good game but the main issue is that there are some underwhelming aspects to the game that may mar your first impressions and prevent new players from giving the game a fair shot.
There are two main aspects of the game that are pretty underwhelming at first glance, the presentation of the narrative and the overall feel of the combat.
The way Biomutant presents the narrative is quite possibly one of the most infuriatingly annoying methods I've seen in a long while. The content of the narrative itself is not bad at all, it is simply the way the narrative is delivered. Every time you talk to any character, be it a random npc on the street or a major quest giver, the game does the same thing every time. The game takes away control from you, cuts to a cinematic angle (which looks fantastic by the way but that's besides the point here), the animal talks in the animal language, the narrator translates, and then you get to pick an answer to the dialogue and it continues on. Every, single, time.
This can be quite frustrating as it unnecessarily lengthens the time conversations take and there are many npcs you can talk to. A few of the npcs will start a side quest but you can't tell at first glance which will give a quest and which won't. You can skip the conversations but then you lack the development of any sort of connection to the characters in the game or the world around you. An easy solution would have been to have the narrator speak over the animal dialogue without taking away camera control from you and reserved this tedious method for important cut scenes.
Another issue with the presentation of the narrative is that there is actually no dialogue between yourself and other characters. It is all done through the narration. This wouldn't have present any problems had the script been better written but it is quite underwhelming in that the narrator's dialogue serves as an info dump to let the player know what to do and where to go or have surprisingly little substance in developing anything. This makes the narration feel a bit empty, even though the voice acting is superbly done.
The method of narrative delivery does grow on you as you play the game but still remains quite tedious to deal with. It creates a surreal feeling of having a fairy tale read to you by a benevolent being. I can understand and appreciate the craft of the presentation but it is still quite a slog to have to go through it for every conversation.
Moving on to the combat, it too feels quite underwhelming for two main reasons. The first and primary reason is that the audio mix for the combat is very low, almost to the point of being inaudible. Everything about the combat is oddly silent, from enemy attacks to your own, to enemies being hit. The lack of proper audio cues make the combat feel incredibly underwhelming and ineffective as well as making it more difficult since you can't hear incoming attacks. When I do a special move, it feels incredibly lackluster despite dealing massive damage because I can't hear anything. This extends to the cut scenes as well. The lack of proper audio cues greatly reduces the impact the scenes should have. A simple rebalance of the audio levels should fix this issue.
Aside from the silent combat audio...
continue reading on the blog, I reached the word limit lol
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