Eight months after the original release, Mutant Year Zero arrives on Nintendo Switch, complete with DLC and physical edition
It is true that Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden turned out to be an important surprise at its release last November. However, it is equally true that if you had had the pleasure of putting your hands in advance, or simply had taken the trouble to go deeper into what was already known about the game before its release, you would have all realized its great potential. What we found ourselves on the plate at the launch turned out to be even more interesting than we could have expected. After eight months a physical version arrives on the market, distributed in the major territories, and the full-bodied DLC Seed of Evil, which adds new zones, a further story and a new mutant. All of this, of course, is also evident in Nintendo's hybrid flagship, which tries to show its muscles, but unfortunately it fails where the group's time and knowledge of the car make all the difference in the world.
The search for Eden on a grid
Mutant Year Zero is none other than the adaptation of a Scandinavian board game, well known in cold European countries and far less known elsewhere. Set in the neighboring areas of Sweden, it tells of a devastated Earth and a post-apocalyptic setting with some highly imaginative grafts. The protagonists of the game are initially a large tusked pig (so we could also say that it is more of a boar, but on this it is played a lot) and a brainy duck. Both are represented with human traits, consciences, positive aspects and as many negatives. Three more mutants will also join the happy gang over time. The goal will soon prove to be to reach Eden, unexplored place and considered as a mirage, but which is said to be the only real earthly paradise still existing. From here unfolds a campaign made of clashes and exploration, as well as many gameplay elements that have made this Mutant Year Zero not a great commercial success (unfortunately) but a cult title for all fans of the genre.
What sets Mutant Year Zero apart from most of the strategists is its ability to incorporate some contaminating elements together, such as the free exploration of the areas (with relative loot), a main hub in which to spend resources to buy or craft tools and weapons and, more importantly, a system of approach to the stealth enemy, which can really make a difference. This is especially true of high difficulties and with active permadeath, which can only be chosen at the beginning of the game, unlike a difficulty level that is easily modified even during the work. The stealth system is the simplest and most intuitive one can think of. If normally in a strategic you are called to deploy your troops and, turn after turn, you need to take down your opponents, Mutant Year Zero allows you to take advantage of a silent walk that reduces the enemy's attention circle and allows you to anticipate the move. Particularly functional is also the possibility of killing enemies furtively in these phases: by doing so you will greatly reduce the enemy guns, helping you a lot. All these elements blend together at best, leaving some doubts only on the real utility of so many of the accumulated things. The discourse of mutations is different, skills that we will be able to enhance by spending specific points and adding actions to be taken or features to be enhanced.
The switch version ...
As long as you continue to strive, trying to always give the right space to the Nintendo Switch versions, it is still the larger teams that manage to give the Nintendo hybrid an important conversion. Often, in fact, the scarcity of resources and personnel pushes many smaller developers to port raw and poorly finished. This is precisely the case with Mutant Year Zero which, despite what I can hope for, arrives on Switch with a technically poor version, full of aliasing and from the details that calling low is rewarding with a big compliment. Although the PC version of the game was visually appealing and embellished with effects and quality models, the Switch is unfortunately a pain for the eyes, but at least it is free of frame drops and indeed plays with a discreet fluidity. Difficult to think of a game with a less agitated pace than that of Mutant Year Zero, but the fact remains that the fluidity makes people smile always in positive. These very bad technical performances are visible almost on a par both in docked and portable mode, with the latter having manages to be probably even worse, with a resolution at the limit of acceptable and a quantity of artifacts that are difficult to digest. Even the patch one day, which has nevertheless updated a build incorrectly distributed in digital with the resolution of many problems, has nevertheless succeeded in giving the game the right yield, or at least the one it deserves.
