Mark C

I've played many Final Fantasy games, often for hundreds of hours apiece. After 35 hours of playing FF16, I found myself more interested in reading in the hammock than playing the game. It has great graphics and some interesting mechanics and character dynamics, but it is just boring to play around in this world. I'm bored of the combat, combat doesn't feel like it ever changes or evolves, even after unlocking new abilities, and side quests are anemic and unvarying. I wish I hadn't bought it

Good effort Experiment 101! I give them props for coming up with an original-ish concept and game plan. The game looks pretty nice and isn't a glitch-fest like some recent AAA titles. I know this was made by a small team that really worked hard to make a unique and interesting title without just cloning something already out there. However, I have to say that I feel like that's about the end of what's strong and positive about the game. I feel the gameplay gets very stagnant very quickly, with little difference among weapon types and fighting styles. The "Good/Evil" alignment gimmick feels robbed straight from Black & White. While pretty and interesting on the surface, the world feels empty and sterile, like a greenhouse filled with fake plants. There are only a handful of different enemies, and the same buildings show up over and over. NPC interactions are all almost identical and meaningless: pointless to the gameplay or story. There is little reason to explore thoroughly, and quest objectives are auto-tagged as you explore, so there's not even any real challenge in hunting down quests. Puzzles (unlock the microwaves, toilets, telephone booths, and TVs!) are really repetitive and basic (line up white and yellow tabs, or mash some buttons for a second or two). The mutant speech and "Old British Guy" narrator are amusing at first, but get annoying before long. What's worst (IMO) is that we've been fed hype about this title since 2017; this was supposed to be something huge and game-changing, but compared to other recent open-world exploration titles that have been around before and 2017 (GTA, Fallout, BOTW, RDR2, GOW4, and even Cyberpunk 2077, for all its flaws), Biomutant just doesn't have much going for it; these all have what I feel to be more compelling characters, stories, goals, and things to do to keep the games interesting and engaging. While those titles do have the benefit of long-established content coming from publishers with almost limitless capital resources, it's hard to play Biomutant and NOT wish to be playing any of the others after a few hours. I recommend waiting for the price to drop in a while. Maybe in a year, they'll have patched the game into something a bit more solid. It'll be interesting to see what comes out after this, though. A sequel or two later might turn it into something more solid.