Is it worth diving into a post-apocalyptic world where aliens cause mutation of living beings and inanimate objects?
The multiplayer survival game with elements of the looter shooter Once Human is a good example of a typical Chinese game of recent years. Teams and specialists who previously did the grunt work are now making unique games for Chinese megacorporations. The definition of “unique”, however, needs to be deciphered correctly: absolutely none of the Western publishers would give money for this, since even in words this vinaigrette of genres, settings and ideas is difficult to comprehend.
But China wants to surprise and impress – not necessarily both, one or the other is enough. This is how games like Once Human are born: relatively high-quality, exciting, sometimes overloaded with combinations of the uncombinable, ideologically fresh, and in appearance indistinguishable from expensive Western hits. But there is a nuance, and more than one.
If you quickly look through the art of Once Human, you might get the impression that we are talking about some kind of parody of Ghostwire: Tokyo (monster design), Alan Wake and Control (general atmosphere, setting), in some places even Death Stranding (design of mechanical devices, capsules for back and other minor details).
All this is reflected in the game, but very superficially. In an effort to create a unique world, the developers borrowed, it seems, everything that seemed at least somewhat intriguing to them, and then carefully crossed the finds with each other. Again, purely from a design point of view – it turned out very interesting, bold and even impressive in some places. But the game hiding behind all this quickly brings it down to earth. Undoubtedly, everything is visually attractive, but it lacks polish, polish and depth. Because Once Human is first and foremost a free-to-play game, and it sets its priorities accordingly.
After a little explaining, but cheerful and memorable introduction, Once Human introduces the player to the basic rules of survival, temporarily relegating the medley of borrowings to the background. After you select a server – and there are many left even after the first merge – and enjoy the opening battle scene, your character is literally thrown into the open. First of all, you need to build your own base, but it doesn’t look quite the same as in other “survival” games.
There, an equipped overnight stay performs several functions at once, including protection from a hostile world in the form of monsters and other players. Here, once on the ground, the player finds himself as if in a new holiday village at a late stage of settlement. Along the road there are unfinished houses without walls and roofs, some robotic workers are extracting resources right here, nearby, and on a high pedestal are displayed all the owner’s wealth – machines, stoves, workbenches, etc. Players do not linger in place: they complete the tasks required by the plot, receive at their disposal everything necessary for cooking food, purifying water, making weapons, ammunition and armor, and move on towards the alluring beacons on the map. Only the most disciplined and diligent achieve beauty.
The open world of Once Human is the least reminiscent of the survivalist games you’ve spent hundreds of hours in before. All resources are presented in abundance and within walking distance, and are quickly restored. The tools extract a lot of firewood, stones and minerals at once; the character does not sweat much when carrying rocks on his shoulders. At the same time, what is happening does not seem completely unnecessary.
Yes, it artificially stretches the time to complete, but for some reason it’s still exciting to search for resources in order to then make a thousand rounds of ammunition and two hundred bandages, as well as collect new weapons or improve old ones. The game tries to maintain a fairly fast pace so that the user constantly switches the focus of activity and manages to achieve success in all endeavors. In an hour, you can start production, fill your backpack with everything useful for the expedition, make several forays, complete a couple of quests, and maybe even defeat the boss together with random partners.
Once Human has a very basic quest system. And NPCs. And side quests with sometimes very strange, often paranormal-based stories. All this is very cleverly integrated into the flow of events. When the player is given a motorcycle to cover long distances to the music, there is simply no time left to be properly surprised by what happened – you immediately rush to the next beacon.
There is also plenty of entertainment here for a mindless pastime. At first, no one forces you to make forays into destroyed settlements, military bases and shopping centers – you’re just curious to see how far you can go. At the same time, you can complete several side tasks and gain experience to increase your character’s level, unlock some rare or simply new weapons, equipment, and also receive a piece of plot information (in the format of notes from survivors) about the end of the world.
However, over time, these outings will turn into a shameful, hopeless routine. This is all due to the shaky balance of progression in Once Human, which will repeatedly return single players a couple of steps back and clearly hint at the need to grind. The game offers a large set of main, secondary, weekly tasks, as well as game events for one participant or a group of survivors.
There are small puzzles with platforming, whales flying in the sky dropping resources, base defense, miner protection, encounters with bosses in the open world, and foggy anomalies. Wherever you go, you are sure to find an activity that has some benefit. But if you want to leave all this behind the scenes and run strictly according to the plot – and there are reasons for this – then you will have to grind the levels in the most primitive way, and this will take a very long time. And moving to new locations on the map will become a real nightmare – sometimes you can even fly off with two pokes if you don’t take the time to explore the environment.
What is Once Human’s main obstacle to success? Yes, in places there are some rough edges in it: some dialogues were suddenly left without voice acting, some animations obviously didn’t have time to be done and were replaced with what was there, there are bugs here and there, and the game is surprisingly demanding on the system. But this is not what scares players away. All the pain is hidden in the seasonal system. One scenario – a season – lasts six weeks here.
The world that players see when they log into Once Human now will be reset after six weeks – and everything will be taken away from them except their house (which will still need to be put back in another place) and blueprints for weapons. In addition, these same six weeks are divided into specific chapters. That is, the player will not be able to sit down and complete the season in a week.
To reach the end, he will have to enter the game regularly and then simply let go of more than half of it with a light heart – they say, it’s empty. Perhaps this is even interesting for a person with a lot of free time (although the promise of releasing a new season with a new map every six weeks sounds very unrealistic), but if you start the game at the end of the season and find out that in a week all your progress will go down the drain, you’ll agree , there will be little motivation left to continue.
Once Human is an interesting game, stuffed with popular ideas, in which there was sometimes room for the most unexpected borrowings. Surprisingly, they were all able to get along together, but something completely different let the developers down – and at the moment it is unclear whether the game will survive the first major update. Still, Once Human is worthy of attention. At least for now, while there are other players in it.
Rating: 7/10