Mutant Review: My Kingdom for a Light Gun

Mutant: Action Gun Shooting is a first-person shooter experience with a horizontal screen interface where the player assumes the role of a cyberpunk-ninja-type that would make Hideo Kojima blush with envy.

The player controls said cyberpunk-ninja-dude, who is also some sort of expensive biological weapon named CODE-K. Assisted by an intel-providing AI unite called AI-R, CODE K’s task is to fight and rescue a special unit named “Charios'' from the secret RS-3 laboratory. That laboratory was previously under the control of the U.S. Department of Defense, and they’ve sent CODE-K to figure out just what in the holy hell is going on at this secret facility, because it is now overrun with mutated creatures.

The gameplay mechanics found in Mutant are quite simple, and it must be stated right out of that gate that the action here would be much more elegantly handled (and much more fun) with a light gun controller. But as it stands, players just need to touch (or swipe) the enemy on the screen to shoot at it. The image of the enemy initially appears small, then gradually grows larger as it gets “closer” to the character’s first-person viewpoint. You would be wise to kill these baddies when they are further away rather than let them get anywhere close enough to inflict damage.

Mutant has five types of weapons that can be utilized (pistol, shotgun, laser sword, rockets, and grenades), with each weapon having three upgrade slots such as damage, attack range, or critical rate/energy use. Players can draw a circle (shotgun), tap (pistol, rockets, and grenades) or swipe (laser sword) to slay the monster hordes as they attack in wave after wave.

At first blush, this is a title that seems like it will shape up to be something fun and compelling, but once I dug into the game I found that it’s rather boring and repetitive...which is also the main failing of most light gun shooter games. There is zero character customization to speak of, and the majority of the background images of the lab itself are drab and static. The music, art, and sound effects are all serviceable at best—really nothing to write home about, which truly could just as well be the subtitle of this whole review.

What Mutant truly reminds of in many ways is a reskinned Fruit Ninja clone. And as anyone who has played Fruit Ninja for an extended period of time will tell you, all that ridiculous fruit chopping gets real old, real quick. The main thing that Mutant truly lacks is any kind of gameplay diversity. I mean, even if you could see your cyber-ninja-badass traversing to the next level, that may alleviate the fact that a good portion of the game’s art is just motionless images that you tap, swipe, and draw circles over as all the beasties are hurtling towards you.

On top of that, after every mission you accrue points/credits which can be used to upgrade your weapon, but that’s it. It seems those points could also be well-spent to upgrade the almost unseen protagonist, but there’s no RPG-ish system implemented in Mutant to accomplish this rather basic gameplay staple. Seems like a no-brainer to me as this would have most certainly  put more meat on this title’s bones while also alleviating the overall monotony of the core gameplay loop.

There’s not a ton more to say about Mutant other than that it definitely would’ve benefitted from some more development time. Maybe the developers at Studio Bong could have taken time to build in those previously mentioned RPG elements to increase the game’s depth, or maybe they could have flipped the script and added side-scrolling action levels akin to 2009’s Shadow Complex (or any Metroidvania-style game for that matter) to break up the monotony of the overall experience. As it is, I’ve stepped in puddles that are deeper than Mutant.

SCORE: 2 STARS OUT OF 5

PLAY IF YOU LIKE:

· The House of the Dead series or the Virtua Cop series (or any first person shooting/ light gun game, really). Give Mutant a shot (pun intended) if those classics are to your liking.

· Legend of Grimrock. Mutant may not be set in medieval times (and be nowhere near as good as Grimrock), but it has a great deal in common with a traditional, first person dungeon crawler for sure.