18) Biomutant (2021)

In 2015, a group of employees from Avalanche Studios, having worked on the Just Cause franchise for a number of years, founded a new studio known as Experiment 101. The idea was to get back to the basics of video game design, wanting to create a game that was "fun in a good way," thus work began on what became Biomutant. By 2018, the studio had 18 employees with a flat organization. While the flat organizational model isn't unique among software companies, it is rather novel in the video game industry. The existence of the game was accidentally leaked in 2017, with a formal announcement made a week later.

I remember a lot of buzz around the game prior to release, owing in part to the size of the studio compared to the scope of the game. Upon release, it was plagued with bugs and performance issues that, by the time I played it, seem to have been resolved. Still, I went in with a healthy dose of trepidation, unsure of what entirely I was getting myself into. What I found was a game with high aspirations that, ultimately, falls a bit short. However, I have to say, if the goal was to make a game that was "fun in a good way," then Biomutant more than achieves this goal.

After a fairly in-depth character creation, we're dropped into a large, visually stunning open world. The setting is intentionally vague, though it's clear that it takes place in a world ravaged by pollution with no sign of human life. Think Earth from the beginning of Wall-E, only instead of a diligent working robot, the world is inhabited by animals that have evolved in the absence of humans. At the center of everything is the Tree of Life, a massive tree with roots extending to all corners of the map. These roots are under attack from large creatures, known as Puffs, who threaten to kill the tree before it can heal itself. There are also six distinct tribes that inhabit the land, with three wishing to save the tree, and three wishing to see it destroyed.

The player is free to choose which tribe to align themselves with, and doing so will see you become an enemy of another tribe. You can freely change which tribe you align with so long as you aren't actively at war with them. It's a fascinating, though frustratingly underdeveloped concept. Each tribe has their own motivations and goals, but they all boil down to either preserving or destroying the tree while conquering the other tribes. You do get some freedom in how you approach this, as can work to sabotage outposts, attack them directly, or even convince them to stand down peacefully. Somewhat hilariously, once you conquer two rival tribes, the other three tribes will offer to surrender, meaning that particular questline can end at the midway point. While I appreciate this option, it comes off as feeling rushed, almost like the game wants you to be done with it.

The same cannot be said of the Puffs, which you must defeat if you wish to save the tree. The path to these will require you to explore and meet various characters, aiding them so that you can gain traversal options that allow you to reach the elusive creatures. Once found, they serve as your traditional boss battles, each with some unique gimmick or mechanic. These encounters are generally fun tests of your abilities, though each of the massive beasts has a pretty glaring weakness and pattern for you to exploit.

Outside of the tribes and Puffs, the story, told primarily through flashbacks, is centered on our character's mother, who was a renowned martial artist who had, at one time, united the tribes. When she meets her end at the hands of the dastardly Lupa-Lupin, the only confirmed meat eater in this new world, the tribes splintered off. As we progress through the game, several characters will ask what we intend to do about Lupa-Lupin, whether we walk the path of revenge or forgiveness. This ties into the karma system that the game utilizes, which manifests as both an angel and a devil that appear to try and sway you. I feel like this is yet another area that could have been interesting if handled a bit better. As is, the moral choices you face are so obvious good vs obvious bad that any chance to comment on player morality is out of the question. Oh, you found a small food stand with people in line? You can choose the good option, serving them food for free, or you can burn the stand and the food to the ground before their eyes. Nuanced, this game is not.

Another interesting choice in the narrative is the decision to forego traditional voice acting for the majority of characters. Instead, everything is relayed to you by the delightfully British narrator, David Shaw Parker. While the narration is wonderfully done, there are numerous times where I felt the fun twist of having an unreliable narrator would have been perfect, potentially re-contextualizing choices and events. Alas, this never happens despite the obvious paraphrasing that the narrator does when conversing with other critters. While I have seen some valid complaints about the frequency with which the narrator will chime in during gameplay, I personally never found it to be too intrusive. The game does give you the option to have the narrator speak up less frequently, which is an interesting choice.

Where the game truly shines is in exploration and combat. The world is fun to run around in and explore, though your rewards for exploration are rather lacking. There are a host of old world items you can find that have a small, incredibly simple puzzle mechanic attached to them. While I initially enjoyed these, they became repetitive quickly, and all you get for completing them are items to use for crafting. The crafting is... Certainly there. I found myself with far too many crafting materials that I ultimately never used.

Combat, on the other hand, was always a treat. You can attack with melee or ranged weapons or a variety of spells. Normally, in games like this, I find my preferred method of combat and stick to that for the majority of the game. Here, the new abilities you unlock as you progress were fun to experiment with, and I found myself changing my fighting styles as I progressed. Due to this, combat never felt stale, and new traversal options changed things up even further.

Ultimately, despite my hesitation, I had a ton of fun with Biomutant. The world was fun to explore, the combat was engaging and ever changing, and it's an amazing experience crafted by a small, passionate team. The story is bare bones, and it feels as though your choices, while certainly having consequence, lack any real teeth. The game offers a New Game + option, but I can't see much reason to go back to it as the story isn't really compelling enough. I would love to see what the studio could do with a sequel given the lessons learned from their debut title. Whether a sequel is ever made remains to be seen, but I can't wait to see what the studio does next.