While there is a fun charm to this mid-2000's shooter, I found myself getting more irritated by the game as it wore on. The number of enemies increases of course, and with that, the problems of the game are more noticeable. Examples of getting shot through doors before they are fully open, enemies with incredibly precise aim even on the easier difficulties and blind spots where enemies can hardly be seen with minimal cover to utilize provide lots of opportunities for the player to take unavoidable damage that can be immensely frustrating. The worst example of this was the second to last level as you scale the Eiffel Tower, a neat concept that sadly gets deflated by numerous instances of blind corners and moments that can't be avoided, making the level frustrating when health packs are minimal and the number of enemies feels endless. When enemies aren't assaulting you all at once, they sometimes go right into the open and make it incredibly easy for you to pick them off with a headshot, making for moments of weirdly uneven difficulty throughout certain levels.

Despite the gameplay being frustrating at times, the game generally runs smoothly aside from some glitches involving climbing up stairs that can mess you up if you're in combat. The sound is perhaps the best all-around element, with it roaring and providing a strong atmosphere, especially since it's THX certified. The cutscenes throughout are also gloriously cheesy, making for lots of unintentional humor throughout the game. The plot is barebones to say the least. As far as mission structure, several levels will make up a single mission. However, without any explanation most of the time, your loadout and the teammates you're with just randomly change between levels on the same mission. It makes for very odd and frustrating moments when you're expecting a certain gun and you no longer have it.

It's easy to have fun with this game at first, but the issues seem to compound more as the game goes on and one only desires to finish it for the sake of finishing it. There are some interesting levels and settings to go through, but the game just doesn't come together all around. I highly doubt I will ever play this one again.

In some ways, Biomutant is on the cusp of truly being great. Elements and mechanics that help define many of the classic RPGs are featured in Biomutant. The customization for weapons and gear is extensive and makes the process of loot hunting worthwhile as the upgrades and the appearances are worth seeking out. The world looks tremendous and is extensive, offering lots of variety in its environments. Best of all, the combat is addicting. The variety of options in what you can do with the combat is incredibly enjoyable. With the ability to quickly bounce from psi powers, guns and melee attacks, you can be creative in your approach and go all out with a variety of different combos to customize how you like to fight. There are also plenty of opportunities to upgrade your character in a number of different areas, from character resistances to new psi powers to perks to help you out in the future. These elements helped brighten the game and make it playable for as long as I ended up playing it (30+ hours).

I usually like doing as many of the side quests as possible in games like this, especially if I really enjoy the game and feel motivated to do so. For a time, I was pretty committed to going through them. The more I did them, however, the more I noticed the general monotony of it all. While some side quests were rewarding in their gifts of experience, weapon add-ons and gear, they had a horrible habit of not standing out. The activities weren't varied and the rewards or adventure didn't justify the heavy time commitment. And this all boiled down to the core problem of Biomutant.

Biomutant feels both vast and hollow at one time. While the game presents a large world to explore, the story framework around the world feels flimsy at best. Nothing about any of the characters or story help make the world the least bit interesting. Every character's dialogue is in a squeaky, gibberish sound, with everything they say being translated by the game's narrator, the automaton that accompanies and assists you. The narrator's voice becomes incredibly irritating after a while, always hearing it and never anyone else's dialogue, especially when he just randomly starts saying random prophetic nonsense ("There are things out there, waiting for you") that offers nothing (There is thankfully an option to limit how much he talks, so I turned him down from 25% frequency to 10%, but the frequency didn't feel like it changed much). The irritation mostly comes from the inability to properly capture a character's feelings since you are hearing a translation from the same voice you've heard over and over again in the same tone. And most of the dialogue the characters have is mostly prophetic gobbledygook that makes every character feel exactly the same. You never feel like you're having meaningful interactions and the game feels like its repeating itself over and over with its dialogue. It becomes incredibly frustrating to continue doing any of the main story since every character's dialogue sequence plays out exactly the same as all the others. The dialogue selection option feels massively underutilized and almost worthless as a result. The concept of dark and light auras also feels underutilized, with it minimally impacting dialogue decisions and determining a couple different psi powers.

The main story boils down to saving the world through ending the war between the different tribes, defeating four monsters that are destroying the world and defeating the monster that killed your mother. The main story missions don't really offer much uniqueness between them. The tribe war missions mostly boil down to similar retreads of fort raid missions. Depending on the way the tribe war levels go, you can even end the tribe war early, but nothing comes of it really if you do. There's no benefit or meaningful impact in the story that comes from it, except expediting the game's story. Perhaps the best levels are the boss battles with the five major world ending monsters. The missions leading up to fighting each of them are nothing special, usually getting stuff for a character you don't care about to prepare for the battle. The early battles are definitely more challenging, and as a result, more engaging. However, if you do lots of the side missions before doing the story missions, the later main quest fights are quite easy from getting better gear and experience and offer a change of pace, but little change in challenge. The combat does feel different here as you have to use different vehicles to fight off each different monster, also blending the typical style of combat to make for some engaging sequences. There doesn't feel like a great sense of accomplishment any time you kill one. There's no particularly great build up and there's no interesting payoff for doing it. Nothing changes. You just feel like you're one step closer to the end. The game hinges on these fights for its story but when they feel like they lack emotional or story impact, then it undermines everything that the game is attempting to do.

Even Biomutant's lore and underlying background feels so underwhelming. Just a corporation that polluted the world and caused biomutation as a result of their waste. It's a simple concept that offers lots of opportunities to dive in deep and explore it, but the offerings of background information are randomly stumbled upon. All the lore is delivered by the narrator anyways, so you'll probably want to skip it.

Biomutant feels like it has potential to be such a neat, endlessly playable game. On its surface, it really is and it was able to hook me for hours on end. However, the game will eventually wear out its welcome if you're a completionist seeking out all of the side quests and collectibles. The quests feel the same or offer nothing special to them, and there's not much in the way of personality in its characters or story. Biomutant is so terribly unremarkable in its worldbuilding that it eliminates any chance of me ever wanting to play it again. That being said, I can't say I didn't get roped into the absorbing gameplay of Biomutant. It really helped overcome the depressing shortcomings of its writing. As a result, Biomutant comes out as a solid, enjoyable, but unremarkable RPG. It offers some good stuff to pass the time, but