Personality goes a long way with games. Just an ounce of it can elevate a game from the crowd. And Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden has heaps of it.
This post-apocalyptic adventure is X-Com with a dash of stealth and exploration. It's based on a decades old tabletop game simply called Mutant which was itself rebooted into Mutant Year Zero a few years ago. It's very popular in Sweden, where the game's creators Bearded Ladies, hail from. While it provided the world Road to Eden would live in, this adaptation leans on one particularly potent characteristic of the tabletop game. One thing that just stands out immediately. The X-Com trappings are as solid a foundation as you can get but it's the world and the characters that held my attention. Because there's no getting round it, the first thing you're going to notice, the first thing everybody is gonna want to talk about with this game is the badass duck man.
These mutants are rightfully the star of the show but as eye catching as they are they're more than just a pretty(?) face for Mutant Year Zero, they're the beating heart of the whole game and the reason I stuck with it for a dozen hours to the credits. Called Stalkers, they're tasked with venturing out into the zone and scavenging supplies to keep humanity's last refuge going. A thankless task if the grumpy residents of the "Ark" are anything to go by.