Retro Review - Mutation Nation

Is it possible that the beat'em up were the battle royale of some years ago? The number of games in this genre is crazy, there are many games in this genre that are excellent, but there are many more that are lousy and others that are simply good, but have been overshadowed by others of greater popularity.

That's why today's Retro Review is about: Mutation Nation.

Mutation Nation is a game with a very simple and direct story, as is typical in the games of the beat'em up genre. This story focuses on a virus that has been created and spread in the city by a scientist, which has turned the inhabitants into deformed mutants that are controlled by this scientist. Because of this, the city has succumbed before to chaos and destruction in each of its corners, however, two people have been able to avoid mutating by the virus and now they two, Ricky Jones and Johnny Hart, are going to be in charge of freeing the city from the mutants and defeating the villain in order to avoid a worldwide spread. As you see the typical story in which we must save the world or a city, a simple story, but one that is effective enough to justify the violence that we are going to exert on our enemies.

Mutation Nation has a very marked retro aspect and that can be noticed in each of its pixels, although it doesn't innovate much in the graphic aspect, it is due to its argument, the basically we will have to fight with grotesque and deformed creatures, it is what Mutation Nation stands out, but I will talk about that later. As the action is focused on a city, during much of the game we will see scenarios emulating places such as, alleys, boat ports, parking lots, interiors of buildings and in the street, as is already classic in games of this genre, and you can notice a great job in the decoration of the vast majority of the scenarios, with a variety of colors, but with a shade not so bright or flashy, as other beat'em up which manage to capture more attention by using a color palette a little more striking.

As for character design, the main ones: Ricky Jones and Johnny Hart, present relatively simple designs, very typical and common, the truth is that they do not stand out much nor I think they are memorable compared to other characters from other games. Even so, they are solid designs and they work within this game. On the other hand, the enemies present better worked designs, being, as I mentioned before, creatures of grotesque aspects, since they are mutants, they managed to create enemies, mostly very original and many of them have quite big sprites in comparison with the main characters, however, the design of the enemies are repeated a lot during the game, and this is something quite common in beat'em up, but in Mutation Nation, I think it's much more evident the lack of variety of common enemies, many of them only have small physical or color variations, although it's not something to complain a lot about, because as I said, this is something very common in games of this genre. Another aspect that I didn't like so much, is that the animations are not very fluid, they are a little rigid and that aspect, in a game of this style in which we are in constant movement, is quite bad.

Quite typical melodies of a beat'em up, with many guitars rif, drums, in general, a lot of rock music and melodies that serve as accompaniment for moments of pure action and violence. Very action-oriented music which, in general terms, are fine, were made for a simple purpose, but do not stand out at all. Same with the sound effects, simple, but effective, nothing to highlight.