Biomutant

The game is super enjoyable and there's a lot to admire. Sure it's not groundbreaking, but that shouldn't detract from how fun it is and how much passion and effort was clearly put into it.

I may be biased as a person who loves quote unquote "BOTW clones", games set in ancient China/feudal Japan, and games staring animals.

But a 6/10? I think the game is worthy of a bit more than that. Especially as a game made by a small Swedish team and not a triple A studio.

The art direction and music is beautiful. The graphics are nice and colorful and detailed. It feels like I'm playing through an animated movie. The world is massive, strange and very unique.

The game certainly isn't without its faults though. For example I found the UI to be very buggy at times - when I go to craft a weapon, sometimes the add ons would flat out not show up until I closed it and reopened it. The load times are very long and sometimes the graphics tend to "flicker", IE the textures wouldn't fully load at first but pop in. These can probably be explained by me playing on a vanilla PS4 slim. What can't be explained by that is one of the game's biggest detractors - the narrator. The NPCs speak in a gibberish similar to the characters in Hollow Knight or Ori and the Will of the Wisps. There is a translation of what they're saying written out, but even so, the narrator feels the need to read it out every time. Thankfully you can turn this off in the options menu.

Don't go in expecting something revolutionary. If you know what you're getting into you'll probably have a good time. If you're a fan of mascot platformers, games with an ancient Eastern tinge, and/or games similar to Zelda BOTW and Horizon, I'd definitely recommend it. Just don't expect something as polished as Horizon or BOTW. I can definitely understand someone disliking the game whose interests don't align with the game as it does with mine. But even so I still think there's a lot to appreciate.