THE SUBLIME LONELINESS OF TOXIC FARTING
I find myself once again reviewing a game born from ambitions far grander than its creators could reasonably sustain. Had I known beforehand that Biomutant was developed by a fledgling studio of roughly 25 people—Experiment 101—I might have tempered my expectations. Or perhaps I would simply have stayed away from their kung-fu-inflected open-world fable altogether.
Over the years, I have seen countless developers bite off more than they can chew. A recent and well-known example is Cyberpunk 2077, released in a state that barely qualified as finished. Biomutant suffers from a different, but related, problem: a desire to please everyone by including a little bit of everything. The result is a game where nearly every system feels skin-deep. I genuinely enjoy its playful tone, and the imaginative art direction makes the trailers look wonderful—but actually playing the game rarely lives up to that promise.
To populate its vast open world, the developers rely heavily on copy-pasted content, thinly spread across an enormous map. You repeat the same handful of activities over and over. Narratively, the game attempts to juggle three incompatible storylines at once. It gestures toward something meaningful, yet drowns itself in platitudes, leaving nothing to resonate.
There are simply too many ingredients in this stew: a revenge plot, an environmental fable, a moral parable, endless enemies, and hundreds of quest markers. The tone veers wildly. One moment you defeat an enemy who attacks with toxic farts; the next, you are treated to a sweeping orchestral score as you gaze across a sunlit landscape. Biomutant has no clear narrative compass—it pulls you in all directions simultaneously.
By the time the end credits roll, you have spent roughly 30–40 hours grinding the same mechanics into dust, often without knowing why. The most consistent pleasure comes from scavenging weapon parts and assembling something marginally more efficient. How this ties into the story is unclear. I did eventually fall into a rhythm, but that rhythm was, at best, passable.
You play as a mutated, anthropomorphic animal on a biocontaminated Earth where humanity is long gone. Their legacy survives only as ruins and debris—Fallout, filtered through bright colors and childish whimsy. The setting is voiced entirely by a single narrator, David Shaw Parker, who “translates” animal speech rather than voicing it directly. His performance is solid, but the decision strips the world of personality. NPCs become interchangeable, and emotional connection evaporates.
Your character—a ferret-like martial artist—wields blades, guns, and optional PSI powers depending on class. The overlong tutorial bombards you with combat mechanics and progression systems while outlining a revenge story: your parents were murdered by a creature named Lupa-Lupin, whom you confront early and retreat from, promising a future reckoning.
Alongside this personal vendetta, you must save the World Tree from four giant world-eaters and resolve a tribal war between two factions. Side quests abound, most of them uninspired fetch errands. The morality system divides choices cleanly into light and dark, with all the subtlety of a traffic signal. Alignment rewards you with PSI abilities that are easily ignored.
Visually, the exterior world is striking. The Tree of Life anchors a colorful landscape filled with varied biomes and environmental hazards clearly signposted by color. Nature reclaims everything. Human-made interiors, however, look lifeless and dated—like leftovers from a middling PS3 title—and suffer badly from copy-paste design. Character models sit awkwardly between cartoon and realism, resembling violent plush toys.
The sound design is the game’s weakest element. Combat audio is muffled and lacking impact, sometimes supplemented by comic-book onomatopoeia (“Bang!”, “Ka-blam!”) that feel like an admission of failure. Certain cutscenes are nearly silent, creating jarring tonal gaps. The soundtrack is pleasant in isolation but often mismatched with the action. Altogether, the audio gives the impression of a story filtered through a child’s imagination, lacking grounded sensory weight.
Combat itself can be enjoyable in bursts. The combo system is accessible, and chaining attacks unlocks a temporary “Wung-Fu” mode with flashy finishers. It is streamlined and vaguely reminiscent of the Yakuza series. The four world-eater bosses are highlights, forcing minor tactical adjustments during extended fights.
Loot and crafting are central. Weapons and armor are modular, encouraging constant tinkering. Nearly every container holds crafting parts, making exploration feel mandatory rather than rewarding. The level-up system feels bolted on: shallow skill trees, limited quick-access slots, and little incentive to engage deeply.
Technically, the game feels precarious. Framerate drops, brief freezes, collision issues, broken subtitles, and persistent audio problems are common. Yet it never crashed. Instead, it slowly wore me down until acceptance set in. Investing heavily in movement speed turned traversal into a joy, briefly elevating exploration to something approaching Spider-Man or AER: Memories of Old—though largely in service of crossing empty space.
Humor occasionally salvages moments: oversized enemies dodgerolling under gunfire, rocket rides to breach sealed doors, or the absurdity of wearing children’s clothes as armor. Accepting the game on its own terms made it tolerable—but not enjoyable.
Biomutant is an odd, uneven package. Its cult following makes sense if you enjoy open-ended sandbox tinkering and mechanical experimentation. For players like me—story-driven, lore-hungry, and short on time—it stands as a cautionary tale about ambition without focus, and about games that mistake breadth for depth.
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