Biomutant (PS5) – Review

Our original review of Experiment 101’s Biomutant was published in May of last year, and now we have the PlayStation 5 port to check out. Yet now that everyone else has received the PS5 upgrade for free, we wish we had waited. The much-touted save import didn’t work initially because we had played the EU version initially (almost 48 hours sunk in) and were reviewing the US version.

Features such as adaptive triggers and standard haptic feedback are added to the PS5 version. We haven’t used our PS5’s support for activity cards despite having it for nearly two years. E101 have released the pretty alongside a locked 30fps at 4k quality mode or a performance mode of 60fps at 1440p. Having said that, Biomutant certainly had its attractive moments.

After a captivating cutscene in which a rodent-like creature encounters a mysterious mutagen, you are thrust into an expository storyline explaining how the current situation came to be. The end result is that the world as we know it has been eradicated, leaving only highly evolved rodents and other creatures in their place.

Anyway, after that minor hiccup with our save file, we gave the campaign restarting another shot. Even in a confined space like a bunker, the game’s world is vibrant, as evidenced by the opening section where you learn combat, which was not as taxing as we had remembered.

The rest of this is largely a rehash of our previous review, as Biomutant retains the same core gameplay.

Step one is selecting a breed from among six options that resemble both rodents and dogs of different types. We assume it’s meant to show how, after the collapse of human civilization, animals got busy reproducing despite the presence of various pollutants. This gave rise to chimaeras.

All of this is a pleasant way to arrive at some procedurally generated beastie that will serve as your permanent avatar. The next step is to pick one of five playable classes based on your preferred gameplay mechanics. We’re the type of players who prefer to use ranged weapons until they’re depleted, and only resort to melee when their other options have been exhausted, so we opted for the commando class. Dead-eye, Psi-freak, Saboteur, and Sentinel round out the remaining classes. You can probably figure out for yourself where they excel and where they fall short.

The beginning of the story seems to provide you with only two options: either to save the world or to condemn it, and this is established very early on. There’s also a consistent morality system that’s either good or evil depending on your choices, although it doesn’t have much of an impact outside of a select few abilities. Being obviously evil also alters the reactions of some NPCs.

Non-player characters. There are a lot of them. When you come across one, you’ll get a side quest almost immediately. In no time at all, the sheer volume of quests you receive while playing will overwhelm your quest log. You won’t feel as overwhelmed as in an open world game from Ubisoft, but you won’t feel very far from it, either.

Thankfully, only the current step is shown on the map when completing a multi-part side quest, typically a minigame involving an antiquated artefact like a microwave or record player. In most cases, it eliminates the need to waste time searching in vain, with elevation being the only real obstacle. Typically involving simple rotation puzzles, these little games are laughably unchallenging. However, making things too hard for them would be ridiculous.

We’ve been trying to avoid addressing the proverbial camel in the room up until now, but similarities to the critically acclaimed Switch game Breath of the Wild are unmistakable, right down to the bug that follows you everywhere. It’s called an automaton, and it’ll come in very handy in later boss fights after the first one. You also receive a glider very similar to Link’s.

It’s odd that David Shaw-Parker, a veteran voice actor for video games and occasional extra, is the one narrating your journey. He voiced a Mr. Men special in the ’90s, so the problem isn’t just that his voice sounds like it belongs on a children’s TV show. The developers listened to criticisms about his constant interruptions and added a setting to turn them down. As it turns out, we don’t mind them too much.

But what bothers us is the incongruity between the subtitles and the random gibberish spoken by the various non-player characters. A DSP-voiced robot is supposed to do the translating for you. While this may be a useful feature at the United Nations, it made for an odd and stilted gaming experience eighteen months ago and hasn’t changed much since then.

To be completely frank, fighting is still a little frustrating, especially when you’re squished in a tight space with a larger damage sponge. Usually we strafe around the larger enemies and attack them from a distance, but in the narrow, debris-filled corridor, we were quickly overrun. Autosave is a godsend in this case.

You will win in the end, and in some cases you may even go back for payback. A ridiculously powerful laser rifle was among the rewards from a miniboss, so that certainly helped. Regarding booty, there’s a lot of it. You can pick up anything you want, unlike in Fallout and Skyrim where you have a weight limit. Occasionally, though, you’ll find something truly unique among all the garbage.

As you gain experience, you’ll be able to spend upgrade points on a variety of things beyond just gear, including the first of four types: bioblobs found in the wild. These allow you to gain access to mutations, which are essentially combat bonuses. Upgrade points allow you to gain access to features like larger clip sizes. You can also earn psi-points through dialogue, which can be spent on additional mutations. Even if your general attitude is as positive as ours, it won’t hurt to throw in a few points in the dark categories once in a while, if only to activate your psi powers.

As you travel through different biomes, you’ll come across areas negatively impacted by pollution of varying types, such as depleted oxygen supplies, radiation, scorching temperatures, and toxic waste. You can use a mech to traverse the hypoxic zones, but you’ll need to track down the appropriate gear for the other areas. These can be located by using a nearby radar station, or “pingdish,” to locate the suit. You won’t need to worry about exposure limits because these offer full protection in the targeted environment. Useful presets let you quickly change from your everyday clothes to your protective gear whenever you need to.

Along with the standard MMO mounts, you’ll have access to tamable animals, one of which can be used to pull down obstructions. Similarly, you can use one of the vehicles to clear floating debris from water, allowing you to fish for… more loot!

Though there is a dramatic opening cutscene depicting the mutation, the truth is somewhat less exciting. That’s probably why a lot of other critics found fault with it as well. Though it takes a while to get going and occasionally feels aimless, Biomutant managed to keep this reviewer interested for much longer than we had anticipated last year.

Just like No Man’s Sky did with its PS5 port, we’d love it if our PS4 trophies would transfer over to the PC version when we finally import our save and continue the story. As it stands, we were awarded a trophy for killing twenty bandits and another for perfecting our melee skills. You don’t have any of the trophies for that skill tree yet.

Despite how much fun we had with Biomutant, we have no desire to go through the entire campaign again just to unlock the trophies we already have on PS5. The stability of Biomutant is one aspect that has vastly improved since its initial release. Before a few patches, this was unquestionably an issue with the original PS4 release. And yet, the PS5 version is completely reliable. The first forty hours reveal a great deal, to put it that way. It’s true that there are an absurd number of optional sidequests to complete. Not everything here is mind-blowingly original, but it plays well with the genre.

Biomutant is like the funny and engaging coworker you end up spending a lot of time with. Biomutant on PS5 is still worth your time if you can look past its minor issues.