Biomutant is an unusual action RPG with a fluffy creature as the main character. ComputerBase earned a first for a developer Experiment 101 in a technology test. It reveals a neat look, but requires a lot of computing power. Two particularly eye-catching graphic options.

Biomutant makes you sit back and take notice

ComputerBase usually tests classic AAA games. Simply because due to the high development budget, the technology is also advanced. Titles usually look good quality and require a fast computer – perfect for standards. Every now and then, for various reasons, small projects also attract the attention of the editorial team. One of these works is Biomutant.

Biomutant is a very crazy-looking RPG by developer Experiment 101. The first action looks very new with form and script and is definitely one of the most interesting games, as it is the most unusual new release in recent times. Since the game simply looks good, technical testing on ComputerBase, including several graphics card benchmarks, follows at this point.

With Unreal Engine 4 and a new look

Biomutant is based on the Unreal Engine 4, but it still looks refreshingly different. The game uses very bright colors with a comic style, but without actually looking comical. The combination of successful artistic design, exaggerated effects and – literally – subtle characters creates high-quality graphics. This has a charm, but if you’re looking for a realistic look, you’d definitely be wrong Biomutant.

Despite the neat graphics, you can also see that Biomutant isn’t backed by a huge development team with tens of millions of dollars in the back. It starts with the fact that only the old DirectX 11 API is used. Plus, animation, lighting, and shadows are not at the top level, even if that definitely complains about a high level. Even anti-aliasing doesn’t work perfectly in game and shadows tend to flicker. It doesn’t really bother anything, but it’s noticeable.

Biomutant offers a simple PC options menu, but it doesn’t do so completely without any convenience. In addition to the classic graphics presets and single options, there is also an in-game shorthand, while the downsampling option has been dispensed with. In addition, there is a freely configurable FPS selector and dynamic resolution. The latter cannot be configured, however, there is simply “On” or “Off”.

On the one hand, the list itself remains as simple as possible. There are no typical screenshots and no helpful explanations. If you explicitly want to lighten up a specific component of your PC, then you should try the various options.

Graphics options with very violent effects

Biomutant offers four different graphics presets with “Low”, “Medium”, “High” and “Maximum”, where “Maximum” does not represent the maximum amount of drawing detail possible. Because aside from the presets, there are two other options that the presets do not affect. The items ‘Fur Detail’ and ‘World Vision’ can be set separately on ‘Maximum’.

If you switch from the Maximum Graphic Detail to the high preset, you lose objects, especially at a distance, because visibility is greatly reduced. In addition, the vegetation is less dense, albeit still at a high level. The middle preset reduces visibility and vegetation points further, with the latter afterward showing a noticeable number of bare areas. In addition, distant details lose detail regardless of visibility, anisotropic filtering is reduced and shadows begin to flicker slightly in places when moving. Then the lower preset turns better. The two options Far from Presets essentially reduce the visibility of distant objects. There is no difference according to the sequence. On the other hand, if you can see from a long distance, then there are greater differences at a distance.

For visual reasons, it is advisable not to go below the high preset, otherwise Biomutant drawings will suffer greatly. In addition, independently adjustable options for visibility and fur details should be maximized. The latter costs 3 percent in performance on the Radeon RX 6800 XT, on the GeForce RTX 3080 it is 4 percent.

If you want to activate more FPS compared to “Maximum” using the high preset, you will be disappointed, because performance is only 11 percent higher on AMD GPU and 10 percent over Nvidia counterpart. What does not work well with the maximum preset is still an issue on “high”. The middle preset suddenly brings a big boost. The setup accelerates the Radeon RX 6800 XT by a whopping 68 percent compared to the high setting, and increases the GeForce RTX 3080 by 59 percent. The low preset brings 27 and another 30 percent. Additionally, testing has shown that the ‘High’ and ‘Maximum’ presets don’t just put too much stress on the hardware. It’s clear that the options in both AMD and Nvidia are causing very strange limitations in the display pipeline. Because after that, the lower resolution leads to a slower-than-normal performance boost. Something about the options seemed to overwhelm the graphics card accordingly.

“Maximum” and “High” create strange restrictions

Since “High” hardly brings additional performance and “Medium” looks much worse, the reason is in the individual options – and it can be found. There are actually two options that are largely responsible for boosting performance.

The solution is individual options

The menu items “Shadow Quality” and “Leaf Density” are the answer. The editorial team only recommends modifying these two options in the event of performance problems; All other options should be kept at the maximum. Even if the visual effects are much less than the presets, it should be clear that the graphics suffer a little. Since the High setting changes very little, the word “Medium” should be for both options. Hence the main drawbacks are the shimmer of some shades and the visibly bare vegetation. It is advisable to tie first on the shade, and then on the vegetation, since the latter is more visible.

If you turn Shadows High, you won’t get more performance regardless of the graphics card. This alone denotes that something is stuck with options. The Medium setting accelerates the Radeon RX 6800 XT by 37 percent and the GeForce RTX 3080 by 33 percent. If foliage density is set to “high”, this results in 9 and 6 percent better performance, while “medium” increases frame rate by 44 and 40 percent compared to full quality. And if you group the increases in the two options together, you can quickly see that they are actually single-handedly responsible for optimizing FPS in presets.

On the next page: Criteria (FHD, WQHD, UHD), frame times and deduction