Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden | PC/PS4 Review

Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden is created by a team including former Hitman leads and the designer of Payday: The Heist. That team is called The Bearded Ladies, and Funcom is the game’s distributor. Mutant Year Zero is based on the tabletop roleplaying game that was first published in 1984, and for which Modiphius Entertainment and Free League Publishing have released a special 30th anniversary edition in 2014. I was aware of this RPG back in the 90’s, and even though I never got to play it back then, the title (and especially the accompanying trailer) immediately grabbed my attention.

Enter The Zone

Mutant Year Zero is described as “a tactical adventure game combining the turn-based combat of XCOM with story, exploration, stealth, and strategy. Take control of a team of Mutants navigating a post-human Earth.” It read like a cross between X-Com and Fallout, and that was music to my ears. The team of Mutants here is a duck called Dux and a boar named Bormin. They are Stalkers for the Ark, which is one of the few safe settlements in the Zone aka post-apocalyptic Sweden. The leader of the Ark is the Elder, and he’s also the one who raised the Mutants. The Ark houses other folks that can help you upgrade your weapons, get special skills or buy the latest hardware.

Silence Is Golden

Stalkers go into the Zone to find food, fuel, artifacts and scrap for the Ark. The Zone is filled with danger, and this is where the tactical combat comes in. When you are spotted by an enemy, or when you initiate combat yourself, the game goes into tactical mode. Your Mutants have different weapons and abilities and you have to use those to get the best result and survive the encounter. But you can also choose to use stealth instead of brute force. There are many situations where this is preferable, especially because you can take out opponents without warning the rest, and thus create better odds for your team. Silence will save your life, especially in the first half of the game. And the game warns you if the opponents you’re facing are above your level, so you can avoid them for the time being.

Iron Mutant

Gameplay is very straightforward and easy to learn. There are different difficulties you can choose in Mutant Year Zero, varying from Normal (story mode) to Iron Mutant that has perma-death and no manual save. I found the normal mode already pretty challenging in some areas, so I can imagine tactical fans getting a real kick out of this. They might find the controls a bit too simple, though. With every area cleared, the story progresses and your mutants evolve. You can add new Mutants to your party after encountering them, but you always head out with three, so for later missions you have to decide which three Mutants you feel are best equipped for the task. They tend to bicker amongst themselves, which can be pretty funny.

Mutants On A Mission

The soundtrack is highly atmospheric and the graphics are great. It could’ve easily become cartoony, but the game manages to stay on the right side of that. The story is captivating and drives all the missions. These Mutants really want to know who they are and where they come from. Not all missions have something to do with the central plot; you can go on several side missions as well to get more experience. The game overall has a great tabletop roleplaying game feel, which makes sense considering the source material. It actually made me want to check out the original RPG.

Minor Irks

The AI sometimes behaved a bit weird, like sending a Mutant right through an enemy’s circle of alertness, just so he could reach the lead character again. I also found the chance calculation acting strange at times. For instance, I had a 75% chance to hit an enemy with my silencer and kill him before he could give me away. I tried 6 times in a row (by saving and loading), and my character kept missing. When I changed the order of my characters, he all of a sudden managed to hit the enemy. This felt improbable. However, this didn’t have a negative impact on the game, besides a very temporary frustration.

Quality Time

I really enjoyed Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden. I spent around 30 hours on the normal difficulty, I reckon it will be a bit longer on the higher difficulties. The game left me wanting more, so I hope The Bearded Ladies give us DLC in the future. It’s a fun game, with a great story and smooth gameplay. Fans of turn-based combat and/or stealth games will find plenty to love here. And who has ever walked across post-apocalyptic Sweden before?

This review is based on a PS4 copy of Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden provided by Evolve PR for coverage purchases and is also available on Xbox One and PC.