BIOMUTANT is a game that instantly got my attention. I love such stuff. Games about weird creatures. Impossible Creatures, Darkspore... Games, in which you take some living beings and alter them in order to achieve certain effects. And in this game? That creature is you. Long story short, a young team from Stockholm, Sweden decided to take somewhat old idea about biological alterations and bring it into our typical modern open world environment. Doesn't sound like a bad idea, right? Well, in devs' heads that was just the thing. Everything we have here? We already had in other games. One way or another. And the idea was to mix all sorts of good things in order to get even better one. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

You're... Well, mutant. And that's the first part of the game – character creation. No surprise here, of course, but again, you're a mutant and that's supposed to add lots of fun to our usual formula. Like it did to our usual Diablo-like thing in Darkspore. K, our ugly mo... *Ahem!* I mean, brutal war machine is finished. Time to start our adventure. What's next? Well, our next thing is... Gothic. Remember Gothic? That early open world game, in which we were supposed to find ourselves a camp to join? BIOMUTANT does exactly that. In this game we're supposed to choose between two groups in order to eventually win against others. And yes, there are more than two, but we'll return to that later. For now, let's just throw in some other random things. Let's add Horizon-like crafting with the collectible materials placed here and there, let's add Breath of the Wild bosses, let's add something that feels like a mix between our usual “Roach” and corebots from ReCore... Again, neither of that is bad per se. In their respective games, those things worked perfectly fine (well, most of them). The problem is – neither of that feels good in BIOMUTANT.

Let's start with character creation. It's time for us to remember Spore again, but not the one I've already mentioned. Remember the original Spore? And, most importantly, press releases before the actual product came out? Will Wright promised lots of stuff. Again and again he kept saying that Spore is gonna to be, like, Sim Everything. The result, as we all know today, was nothing like that. It was a pretty casual experience, in which all of those cool features that were promised to us, existed mostly for looks, while the actual gameplay was way dumber than in some counterparts. As sad as it is, that's exactly what happened in BIOMUTANT. I mean, big f*cking deal, our default appearance depends on what type of character we choose at the beginning, while in game we'll be able to modify looks GTA style. Somewhere out there, Kenshi is laughing really hard. Yes, there'll be some customizable equipment that'll also change our appearance, but come on. That's not what you expect from a game called BIOMUTANT. If something, I've played some old ARPGs from early 2000s that did a better job with all that. In other words, they've made a game about mutants and... they've screwed up the mutations. NOICE.

OK, OK, doesn't meant that it's a bad game, right? And you know what? After I've joined one of them tribes (serve as some sort of counterparts to what we had in Gothic), I actually got some hopes up. I mean, when you join one of the camps in Gothic, that's just it. Not like you're going to war against others, right? Well, you do in BIOMUTANT. And it's disappointing as F. It goes like this – you go to the quest marker, you do some (very) basic tasks there and / or fight a couple of enemies a-a-and that's it. That's the entire “war” thing. Finish a couple of tasks, then go talk to the enemy leader. And again, you can only choose between two tribes, while others can only be enemies. Why? Thankfully, persuasion is a thing. You can actually avoid battles and do good.

And you know what? Your actions actually matter. Except they don't. BIOMUTANT comes with some basic reputation system and you can be not only good, but also evil. Most of us instantly thought of Mass Effect and technically, that's it, but this game actually goes a bit deeper and imitates another game from that period – a Wii title called Opoona. Like in Opoona, there's that starship we're supposed to use to leave planet and some friends to make. But at this point? Things just starting to fall apart. It becomes obvious that all of those things? They just don't belong together. Opoona was more about the experience. About deep conversations with NPCs you cared about. Here? The game is just full of copy / pasted dialogues (no, seriously). In Mass Effect we had those amazing and unique characters. Here? Those are bloody nobodies and the most interesting dude you'll meet be some random beaver (insert that certain Polish meme here). As the result? You just don't care about how exactly your ending will be.

That's the Experiment 101's biggest mistake – they've expected all of those things to be cool and satisfying just because. And that's not how it works. Take that crafting, for example. In Horizon, things were really thought-through. Those crafting materials were perfectly placed to keep you busy while walking from A to B. Here? You're supposed to waste time and actually look for those. And guess what? The world in this game is, like, five times bigger than needed. Don't get me wrong, BIOMUTANT isn't too huge. It's just... Not everything needs to be big. Take the first Gothic for example. It wasn't a giant game, yet everything there was placed with purpose. Here? You guessed it. Lots of boring walks.

And it's not like we've got some advanced mechanics from modern Zelda to have fun on go, no. The best thing we've got is some vehicles. Which feel a bit like those corebots from ReCore, but honestly, don't expect much. Those are just that – transportation means for certain kinds of terrain. We've got walker robot to walk over oil spills (what is this anyway – Anapa?), we've got a boat (anyone else just thought of that old meme?)... You've got the idea. It's just you, some vehicles and some distance to cover. Sure, there are quick travels, but like I said, this game tries to imitate the Horizon. You'll need to collect crap. Good luck trying not to fall asleep. But maybe, just maybe bosses aren't that bad? Well, you know what? They aren't. But there are only four of them. That's right, four bosses. In a game with 15+ hours of main story alone. Again, it's not Zelda, where you can have fun just by fooling around. Aside from boredom, BIOMUTANT also comes with a cheep aftertaste and feels even more clunky than ReCore.

So... Yeah. That's BIOMUTANT for you. And there's a very important lesson to learn here. You can't make a good dish just by throwing some random tasty things into a pot. That's what kids will do. Bacon's tasty, cereal's tasty, ice cream's tasty... Naturally, if you'll put 'em together, it'll be even more tasty, right? Well, surprise! It'll not! While technically having all sorts of good stuff in it, BIOMUTANT feels like a chore. It'll do better without such a big world, it'll do better without the attempts to make reputation, even Spore Hero did the mutation thing better, etc. Do I hate this game? Not really. Devs tried. I can see that. They've made mistakes. But they tried. Can I recommend this game, though? Nope. If something, I'd say stay away from this. We live in times when every new big project is about open world. Means you can find countless better options. And there's literally no reason to waste time on a failed experiment. Dixi.

I remember playing this, and it feels bad it never got truly finished. Im surprised they just forgot about it after release. what a shame. don't buy.

This game feels like a project the developers had so many great ideas for, but eventually lost interest and motivation in, causing it to be rushed published without much thought. The weapon crafting feature is fun and interesting, but the combat where you use said weapons is rather boring and repetitive. The "World-Eater" boss fights are sometimes fun. The open world and its scenery is pretty, but running through it becomes boring over time as well. The character designs are always either pretty cool/cute or just ugly.
If you are searching for a fun, action-packed adventure, this may not be the game for you. If you are looking for a silly game to do silly things in, I might recommend picking this one up on sale.