Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden - Fan Edition

*Heavy on tactics, light on role-play. *Fans of X-Com and Fallout Tactics might enjoy this. +Very Tactical +Stealth, Scouting, and Planning. +Neat setting +Nice music that adapts seamlessly to the action - Linear, short, with low replay value. - Clearly a game made for console first, and PC second. - Occasional crashes and a few other bugs - Thin story and only minimal RPG-elements The setting is post-apocalyptic 80's retro-futurism. It might remind you of Fallout, but the original source material actually predates the first Fallout game by 13 years or so. Tactics is where the game shines. Stealth and planning is mandatory. Very low RNG-factor means you can predict the outcome of you moves. You have the ability to scout each area to spot the enemies, kill off stragglers, analyze your chance of success, and pick the best way to approach the larger groups. This scouting and planning element is excellent, and is better than most other tactical games. The areas and enemy levels are static, there are no random encounters or re-spawning. This enhances the tactical elements, but it also pretty much kills the replay value. Technically free explore any area, and you can sometimes even sneak off with some nice loot behind the back of an overpowered enemy. But in practice, you have little real choice to follow the linear path set by the game. The characters are fairly balanced, and have some overlap. All characters level up together, so all remain viable until the end. You can choose based on personality, or abilities, as you prefer. The voice acting is mostly good, especially from the main characters. But a few combat taunts get repeated way to often. The story and writing is decent, but shallow. The game crashes occasionally. There are other more minor bugs, mostly involving ladders and exploding terrain. Frequent manual saving is advised. Those who know Swedish will get a few chuckles from the signs and other background details, but nothing important is hidden.

As a kid I read a ton of the old Eastman & Laird Ninja Turtle comics (they were significantly more serious and occasionally straight-up gory in comparison to the cartoon or the live action movies). I also probably watched Howard the Duck way more than it warranted. I generally avoid most anything with anthropomorphic animals as protagonists these days, but something about MYZ sparked some serious nostalgia for me. I'm also a huge turn based tactical fan with thousands of hours in games ranging from Jagged Alliance 2 to XCOM 2, so this seemed right up my alley. I played through twice on xbone, once before Seed of Evil, the second time with it. I don't own it through GOG, but I noticed there weren't many comments, and if anything, MYZ deserves some attention, or at least some discussion here, because I'd be interested in a sequel that improves on what they established here. I'd say the game deserves decent marks in most metrics people might use to grade a game, with art direction being a high point, but it falls short of being something I felt I could really get into. The main gameplay loop left me systematically jumping between maps for easy kills, running the simple math of how many points of damage I could deal per turn rather than feeling involved or invested. I guess what I mean to say is that I uncharacteristically ended up playing the metagame for optimal kills to refresh cooldown timers (most skills require a certain number of enemy kills between uses, and the number of enemies in the game is finite), and I generally never play games like that, minmaxing and taking advantage of metas. Something about MYZ brought that out of me though, and I feel like it's due to a very, very narrow scope in terms of what you're able to do as a player. I'm torn - if I had been involved in making it, I'd be very proud, but as a customer, it left me mostly unsatisfied. But again, a sequel that expands on this would be great to see though.

Mutant : Year Zero is a tactical turn based game based upon a tactical pen and paper RPG. It possesses roughly the feature you've come to expect from games like the current incarnation of X-Com but significantly more streamlined and, for lack of a better word, deterministic. Every resources in Year Zero is finite. From the number of health packs to the total number of encounters and thus EXP to get stronger. I find this to be very nice anti-grind feature. And thought it limits re-playability, it allows the game to provide a tidy little curated adventure that never left me feeling 'stuck' for long. Likewise, damage is much more deterministic than in games like X-COM. The RNG is much more likley to reward than punish you and distance from an enemy plays a greater role in determining damage than it does on whether or not you're going to hit. And a good thing too as stealth takes are an essential part of winnowing down challenging numbers of enemies. The ability to move about in real time when out of combat or when sneaking is also a much appreciated anti frustration features which makes exploring the post apocalyptic zone for collectibles and cliche, but cute, party dialogue far more enjoyable. Overall, a fun little game that doesn't overstay its welcome.

A really special twist on the classic genre.