Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden Review - Turn Based Combat Evolved

[#Drennn.]

Let’s get it out of the way. Yes, that’s an anthropomorphic pig and a duck, and yes, you can play as a fox, too. Ha! But you’ll forget their inherent ridiculousness as you start to explore Mutant Year Zero’s skeleton-strewn Sweden and face its stern tactics challenge. Very quickly Bormin was simply my gruff stalwart tank, Dux my sharp-eyed, crit-dealing sniper, and Farrow my sneaking shotgunner. God, I love that gang.

Mutant Year Zero has a great blend of sardonic humour, grim detail and cartoon excess, a balance inherited from its venerable pen-and-paper RPG source, Mutant. Or, more specifically, its 2014 update, in which players take the role of mutant Stalkers wandering The Zone years after an environmental catastrophe, plague and a nuclear war has hit.
So yes, let’s get the other thing out of the way: the setting is third-hand STALKER. But again I forgot it as I got to grips with Mutant Year Zero’s meeting of realtime exploration and turn-based strategy. Here’s the idea: the world is divided into lots of discrete but connected areas as you set out to find a member of your settlement, The Ark, who’s gone missing. You’ll encounter enemy encampments, weapon chests, and caches of scrap and weapon parts, which act as currency to buy gear and upgrade your weapons back at the Ark, to which you can quick-travel.