Biomutant, an open-world RPG from developers Experiment 101, released this week, May 25. Pre-release reviews were not a glowing recommendation of the game, as it got 6/10s almost universally. TheGamer gave it three out of five stars, praising its characters and world, but criticizing the clunky combat and repetitive boss battles.
Now that fans have got their hands on Biomutant and had a few days to play it, it seems like most people’s views on the game actually align. At the time of writing, Biomutant has a mixed reception on Steam, with 65% of reviews being positive.
It’s the same story wherever you look. On Metacritic, the new title has a user score of 6.4. PlayStation fans seem a bit more impressed, however, as that version sits at a fan score of 7.1. The review aggregator with the lowest score is IMDb, with its users granting an average of 5.9.
Yet for those of you getting on with Biomutant just fine, it’s good news. The dev team announced yesterday that it is listening to player feedback from these reviews, and is already working on a patch to amend complaints. Explaining the update in a tweet, the team revealed, "We are working on the pacing of dialogues, narrator settings, difficulty settings, video settings like depth of field and motion blur, loot, and enemy tuning, as well as sound and combat." Players were not given a timeframe as to when they can expect the update, other than it will be available “soon”, and will go live on PC before console.
In spite of a poor critical performance the game certainly has its fans, as it exceeded 55,000 Steam players on its launch day. This was the best performance for publisher THQ Nordic yet, as it smashed its previous record of 23,000 players with Piranha Bytes’s Elex in 2017.
Biomutant released May 25, 2021. It is available on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.