Exaggerated character models are back and looking smoother than ever. There are a lot of cool little bad ass touches, like scraping the massive butcher blade across the ground during a roadie run, and the weapon-specific executions are brutally satisfying. Explosions have visual impact, and as always there’s a ton of blood and gore to be found. It’s just a very impressive looking game.

This is old-school button-mashing brawler combat where you unleash combinations of light (X) and heavy (Y) attacks to lay waste to your foes. You can also utilize your mutant abilities by holding down the right trigger and pressing one of three face buttons. Your mutant power meter shows how much each attack type will use, which makes it easy to keep track of.

You’ll also need to use the shoulder buttons to prepare your attacks (left draws your blade, right takes aim with your firearm) and a face button to unleash them. It’s on the clunky side, but it’s not enough to detract from your enjoyment of the game.

When setting traps you just highlight what you want to deploy and aim at a surface. If you’re able to place it there it’ll appear green and give you a red beam that shows its effective range. Each weapon also has an alternative fire mode that is executed by pressing the left trigger — these usually employ area effects but also drain your mana meter. Face buttons handle tasks like jumping and sprinting as well as selling unwanted traps.