I am a huge fan of observational comedy, and one observation in particular is becoming increasingly popular: we as a culture have it too easy. This is a huge factor in why post-apocalyptic games are so popular – we feed off of the fantasy of everything we know and love going to crap. You could put every major game title on a sticky note and put it on the wall, throw a dart, and nine out of ten times hit one where the world has gone down the toilet thanks to… hold on let me throw a dart… zombies. Let’s try another one… nuclear war. Let’s try again… zombies… one more for good measure… a plague. This is the one that Mutant Year Zero – Road to Eden provides as a backdrop to its narrative.

The story follows a team of Mutants, the limited amount of survivors of the Red Plague that were not turned into vicious zombie-esque creatures, but were left somewhat human; in the case of most of our protagonists, half human-half animal creatures. The primary protagonists are Dux, a duck with a penchant for awkward, poorly written slang, and Bormin, a hog who likes to use shotguns in a long range game. You will acquire a third companion in the early hours, whom I have already forgotten the name of and found her to be just a token throwaway character added for the sake of inclusion. Together they explore the dilapidated lands, with remnants of our cushy culture that surround the Ark, the last bastion of civilized society – in reality the Ark is the hub area found in any other RPG. The game is sold with the tagline XCOM meets Fallout (why the duck you would you compare your game to one of the worst reviewed games of the year is beyond me), which kind of holds true, but the game lacks what made these great in their own right.

My biggest issue with the game is the writing. I don’t care how educated or articulate you are, if you’re old enough to send a text message, you’ve done it. Someone pissed you off to the point that you’re swearing left and right, and all of the sudden you’ve sent your friend, colleague, or mother “My boss is a ducking jerk” thanks to auto-correct. This takes it a step further in an effort to either maintain a T rating or to come across as clever due to the fact one of the characters has at least half duck DNA. The word duck is used in place of that other word every chance the game gets. I found this somewhere between a ducking dad joke and juvenile teen humor, and as a result, was unable to take the game seriously after the first 15 minutes or so. I’m not saying I need to hear the ducking word to feel content, but all you’re doing by going this route is making me take the liberty to edit it within my brain to make sense, kind of like a reverse auto-correct if you will.

If you can make it through the god awful writing, the combat will likely send you on a downward spiral. Much like XCOM, this features turn-based combat, which includes some stealth elements. Upon the start of your turn, each character is able to perform up to two actions, be it running forward into cover, moving twice, reloading, shooting, throwing a grenade, or using one of the unique character abilities, some of which will end your turn or require both of your moves be unused to perform. The issue lies in the fact that most of the encounters will require you to pull off the first attack, and hopefully take out the enemy prior to being alerted, or face the wrath of reinforcements, or being ducking one-shotted. Even when playing on casual, the enemy forces rarely miss and are always deadly, requiring the player to often replay the same encounter time and time again, and only prevailing with a sliver of health. While it offers some fun abilities here and there, overall the combat is more frustrating than anything else, often requiring you to explore the semi-open world for additional scrap or items in order to finally push forward.

If you find yourself downed, you’re best option will be to reload the game as it borrows heavily from the bleed out option found in other tactical shooters, such as Rainbow Six or Gears of War. You’ll be left with a limited number of turns (which can be upgraded) to reach the downed character to revive them using a medkit, if available. The inherent problem with this is that if you spread your party out to, I don’t know, flank the enemy since this tactics based, you’ll never make it back to the other character. If you’re not stopped due to the limited space you can traverse, the enemy gun fire with its high damage output and pinpoint accuracy will surely leave you screaming duck at the top of your lungs.

The open world areas fare better as you control any of the characters within your party, ordering them as you see fit, allowing you to set up tactical attacks prior to engaging the enemy, or simply keeping out of harm’s way while you search for precious materials. The areas will slowly open up as you explore, removing dark shaded areas and replacing them with beautiful, highly detailed environments that hide relics from the old world (i.e. our current time), with grass and foliage that moves naturally. The only minor area of opportunity here would have been including a mini map showing the areas you have yet to explore, akin to those found on pretty much any dungeon crawler since the days of Diablo, with the major issue being the lack of random encounters you’ll find within them. Having spent around 20 hours playing as of this writing, I’ve only run into maybe five encounters which were not part of the narrative, making grinding out levels or gear to be a bit more taxing than it should be.

The RPG elements are enough to make a seasoned fan go what the duck, as the progression tree relies more on pushing forward just to unlock the next ability in line than truly creating a character that is your own. There are a few areas that offer choices, but most are locked behind the staggering number of systems and currencies that would make even a Destiny player flinch. The only thing this does successfully is rival Fallout 76 in terms of requiring the player to scavenge more than it should.

The one area the game excels in is the ability to provide astounding levels of detail while utilizing the panned out 3/4 view, even more so than bigger AAA titles such as Diablo 3. As I mentioned before, the areas are so detailed you can make out individual stems of grass or flowers, or see the scars that adorn Bormin’s rough exterior, or the realistic feather patterns on Dux. The game looks so good it’s almost depressing; this could have been a game of the year contender on visuals alone, if only the writing and combat were reworked. I may be in the minority, but I feel like if the developers had opted for a third person cover based shooter opposed to turn-based combat, this would’ve been a worthy rival for the upcoming Gears 5.

If you have the patience, this may be a turn-based game you can adapt too and even excel at; however, it is nowhere near as polished as the games it takes inspiration from. If you have a membership to Xbox Game Pass, this is included, and following suit with most of the games that have been offered day one through the service, is extremely lacking. I would recommend building your own wall of sticky notes and throwing a dart to find another game in place of Mutant Year Zero – Road to Eden. Unless you land on Agony or Fallout 76, it’ll likely be a better experience.

5 out of 10

Pros

• Breathtaking Visuals
• Unique Stealth Meets Turn-Based Approach

Cons

• Brutal AI
• Poor Turn-Based Systems
• Ducking Awful Writing

Mutant Year Zero – Road to Eden was developed by The Bearded Ladies Consulting and published by Funcom. It is currently available on PC, PS4, and X1 for $34.99. The game was provided to us for review on PS4. If you’d like to see more of Mutant Year Zero – Road to Eden, check out the official site.

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

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