Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden review

Reviewed on: PC

Introduction

The year 2018 had several releases, both AAA games and games with less “glamour” that are no worse for it. In 2018 we saw the reinvention of the God of War series, we also saw the release of the long-awaited Red Dead Redemption 2, acclaimed indies like Celeste, anticipated exclusives like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Forza Horizon 4 and so on. In short, the market “gifted” us with diverse games, to please all tastes.

Normally, even the most avid in the gaming world end up letting a game or two slip by, whether for lack of time, money or not even knowing a certain game exists. Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden is one of those games (which fits the last option I mentioned above), since I didn’t even know the game existed until I received the pleasant mission of playing it. The game is a combination of turn-based combat, similar to the game XCOM, exploration, stealth and strategy.

In Mutant Year Zero our world suffered a mass extinction event and succumbed; we begin the game controlling a team of mutant explorers (a duck and a boar with “humanoid” traits) who have unique combat abilities. Reading about the start of the game gives the impression of something clichéd, after all there are already some games with a similar premise. Fortunately the charisma of the characters, the setting and the dialogue pull us away from that initial impression, leaving only the impression of being in a “familiar” setting. At the beginning, the game doesn’t show what actually happened to our civilization; what we know is that at some point in human history there was an apocalyptic event that took humanity to the brink of extinction and caused mutation in some beings. During the game, through exploration, dialogue, documents and notes found, we learn more about what happened to humanity and the story is put together.

Combat

Our combat team can be made up of up to three members at a time, but we start the game with access to only two characters (Dux “the duck” and Bormin “the boar”) and then we get other members during the journey. I never thought I’d have so much fun again in turn-based combat as I did playing Mutant Year Zero: the game is quite punishing of the player’s strategy mistakes, but similar to Dark Souls you almost never feel treated unfairly, since most of the times you see the “game over” screen it will be your fault and not the game being unbalanced… another noteworthy detail is that the checkpoints are also well balanced, that is, they don’t force you to go back a long way or look for shortcuts, but they also don’t help you excessively.

Still on combat: it is quite strategic, with the game divided into areas where there is exploration and combat. Each of them also has various elements that can be used in your strategies. For example: you can split your team by positioning each character at a different point of the scenery to gain an advantage in combat or in the stealth approach – in Mutant Year Zero, you have the option of eliminating enemy after enemy stealthily, just by approaching the enemy when he’s alone, before he notices your presence, using silenced weapons or ones that don’t make noise, so the other enemies won’t be alerted to your presence – among these environmental advantages, I highlight the high points of the scenery and the “cover”, which lets you position characters behind some obstacle that can be used as protection, which makes enemy attacks less effective and in some cases ineffective.

Your team gets 2 moves per turn, such as reloading a weapon, using a medkit to heal a character, moving, shooting, throwing grenades and using special abilities. But there are some actions that end the character’s turn immediately, such as shooting. Some special abilities allow characters to go beyond the two moves under specific conditions, which vary from ability to ability, and these abilities cannot be used at all times, since to be activated they require a specific number of enemies to be eliminated. It’s a pity the game has no enemy respawn (after you defeat the enemies in an area, it is literally empty), which makes it impossible to fight until reaching a better level or to greatly improve your abilities. I understand the developers did this intentionally in order to maintain the challenge of the areas, forcing the player to calculate each step and move before going into combat, but this ends up (at times) making it impossible for you to reach levels corresponding to areas you need to complete to advance, making those areas much more complicated than they should be and breaking the game’s stealth system a little (even if you attack the enemy stealthily, at the end of your turn he will still be standing, because he has a level far above yours, and will call reinforcements).

Exploration

As already mentioned above, the game is divided into areas and each has items to collect, enemies to defeat and some documents that talk about how the apocalypse happened. During exploration the player has the option of walking with the flashlight on, moving faster, and walking with the flashlight off, moving stealthily, this movement being ideal for starting combat with enemies that aren’t in a group. Unfortunately the characters’ movement, even with the flashlight on, is slow and this is a bit annoying, especially when you have to search the scenery for items; it becomes tiring.

Graphics/Setting

Imagine a very old house: the wood is rotten, the windows are shattered and eaten away; now imagine your neighborhood made up of houses like the one described, where nature blends with what used to be concrete; well, that’s the game’s setting, a typical post-apocalyptic scenario. Where there used to be civilization, now lies the eternal ruin of what once was our society. The game’s developers successfully managed to create a convincing atmosphere of a world in ruins.

Sound

The game’s voice acting is great, helping immersion even more. The ambient sounds are also well made, although they don’t impress. In this department, the game stays neutral, not standing out, but not being badly made either.

Conclusion

Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden is a pleasant surprise, a game that almost perfectly blends the strategy of turn-based games with a modern structure, even adding stealth elements (which integrate perfectly into the gameplay), something several AAA productions find very hard to do. The game falls short in the slow movement during exploration and in the enemies that die permanently, but that doesn’t dim the game’s shine. Mutant Year Zero is a game that must be played!