It's rare I have a game meet my expectations. Even when games do so, I tend to have only middling positive feelings about it. It's even rarer to have a good space game. Everspace 2 takes what worked in various other space games and wrapped it up in a beautiful, fantastic package, while recognizing the failures of every other space game. Instead of focusing on being a mediocre 'sim,' it perfects the space formulae of entertaining gameplay without trying to stick to some old dogma. Combat is robust, the world is well designed, and there's a HUGE variety of set pieces and environments/novelty which is extremely rare for an indie title. Let's just say this is like the devs saw Elite: Dangerous and said, "what if we ignored the stupid literal game-breaking gimmicks and focused on making a fun video game in space and take what worked in Elite instead?" The visuals are stunningly beautiful at times, with gorgeous landscapes. This isn't just 'oh the graphics are good.' Graphical fidelity doesn't mean anything. STYLE does, and some of the space views are just some of the most beautiful scenes I have ever seen in a modern video game. It has taken its engine and made use of modern graphics Puzzles are simple, require a little thought, but aren't overwhelming, and lean heavily into using visual environmental cues. It makes you pay attention to the gorgeous crafted details of the game and it's an excuse to actually FLY your ship around with some style. How fast you do a puzzle is determined by how agile you are with your ship and your ability to solve them. Normal difficulty is perfect for a relaxed but not mindless experience. Adjust as desired. Some ship classes could use a couple more modules (lego parts for lack of a better term) but overall cosmetics are robust and well designed. Overall, the game is a legitimate 5/5. It has a few flaws, but almost none worth mentioning.
The game's great looking, and runs great on most older/mediocre systems. It's got a great visual style but that's where the good ends. The gameplay simply doesn't flow or work and this is what I believe to be the result of not good core mechanical design. The cars handle extremely poorly and frequently have a mind of their own - attempting to steer some results in them "snapping back" the opposite direction you turn. You don't actually GRIP the ground, as even a minor bump sends you coasting through the air making it difficult to actually maneuver finely, sometimes even causing the least grippy cars to just spin out with these minor bumps. Where this is most apparent is deathmatch where you may stop to turn if you hit a rare wall - you won't actually "turn" (and said turning is ludicrously slow) until you gain some momentum, which just shows how badly designed the driving system actually is. Some tracks are great, but some just have objects or leaps or aformentioned bumps that can send you out of control for a portion before a turn, because you literally aren't gripping the ground. Turning is also pretty much impossible without them killing your sense of speed and momentum,because you accelerate at the same rate from 200-300MPH as you do from 0-200 MPH - making it feel ludicrously sluggish for any sharp corners that some maps throw at you out of the blue (literally a random U turn out of a high speed tunnel with no barriers/track to "grip" onto - you're expected to handbrake to a near standstill before slowly piddling forward again. It just doesn't FEEL good and kills the feel of the game. You can be 30mph and have the turning radius worse than a schoolbus. All that being said they make the game work to be rather fun, but there's a very good reason this game isn't blisteringly popular - it's just because the gameplay isn't great. It's a mediocre framework with a pretty shell.
It doesn't matter whether you're running a modern high end GPU with a high end CPU, or a laptop half a decade old with a middling GPU and CPU at the time. Both are as likely as the other to achieve equally poor framerates on equally poor resolution with equivalent playability. My laptop legitimately runs it better than my SSD desktop because for some reason the game doesn't play nicely on SSDs but on my old, crappier 5400 RPM 1tb HDD. The SSD causes massive and unplayable stutter that seems entirely a lottery draw on whether or not your configuration works with this game. For a game that has "redeemed" itself, the core gameplay of exploration is no different from launch, with only static "building" components of the game tacked on. On top of the utterly atrocious performance, this is unacceptable for a game five years post release.
I saw this game a few years ago and after a few minutes of research knew exactly what I was going to get. I bought this a few weeks after release without hearing about reviews, or at least never reading them only getting wind it was apparently bad. Honestly, they could not be more wrong. First off: Experiment 101 is made of the same core people who developed Just Cause 2 which we all know is innovative in mechanics and still has a strong pallete to this day. A LOT of the design nuances are reflected in Biomutant. 1: The game looks gorgeous, and runs beautifully even on hardware below minimum requirements. It actually makes use of the engine to its fullest and stylizes it in the process. 2: The gameplay is solid and uses actual action mechanics and isn't some crappy hitstate "hit or no hit" action game - there's some hitbox play at work here and they have good gamefeel, which is something western games lack entirely often. 3: Beautiful animations and crafting that scales well into NG+ with entertaining combinations. This game is like playing Fallout 4 or Borderlands for the story - you're doing it wrong if you're doing so. The world is its atmosphere and the huge swathes of unique environments you will enter upon doing so. Furthermore it's received numerous patches and updates that are only continuing to mount up in increasing its longevity and overall gameplay. The devs care and this isn't some disaster like some other games that people seem to make it out to be. For every dollar most generic AAA titles spend on token voice actors and overdone cutscenes, Biomutant spends five times as much on making an actual game.
Solid throwback to NES titles with some good quality design thrown in. Satisfying with tons of content and an NG+ mode that actually changes the dialogue and experience depending on what things you unlock and use. I like the art in general and I think the story is solid. It provides a solid premise with a decent setting and great characters. The mechanics get more insane as you progress to the point they become absolutely ludicrous. There's techniques you can easily integrate and learn to truly maximize your ability to evade and do damage and its satisfying. Though not perfectly analagous, it gives the same feeling something like Hyper Light Drifter does when you chain together a perfect sequence of attacks, skills, and evades. While I share similar reservations about the shooting mechanics (ON A CONTROLLER - I would argue the game controls better with mouse and keyboard) they're more than functional whatever control scheme you use. Some puzzles require some precision and aiming that can be frustrating on a controller but fine on KB&M, but those are rare. However, there is a slider that lets you slow down the speed of puzzles in the game allowing you much more freedom of timing. Heck, there's even sliders that can make the game significantly less damaging or enemies even less aggressive if you dislike their mechanics. It's a completely accessable game that never punishes you for not playing it. I do have issues with depth perception in this game because there's little that often distinguishes from one height block to another. If there were an objective criticism, this would be it. However it's rare and never impedes progress, only makes getting a few item chests annoying to discern at first. As someone who is playing this at the suggestion of another friend, I've played enough to state that this is a game worth ANYBODY's time and effort. It's charming, well designed, and slick. The deserves deserve every ounce of success.
