Once Human : Reviews

Once Human is a survivalistic game that immerses the participants in dystopia inhabited by creative and quite often ominous monsters. For this PC and mobile game, Starry Studio is credited as the developer, while NetEase Games is presented as the publisher, and its release was on July 9, 2024.

Arguably the most telling conceptual image that ever came from Once Human is one of the oversize city bus mutated into insect-like features. What it has instead are six gigantic fleshy limbs that scoops the car and carries it rolling on the street as if it were a giant beetle raising the car as high as 15 feet off the street. Looking at this monster, which has a scaly skin that was damaged and shows dark crimson flesh beneath this layer, and a reality-warping halo, one can fully appreciate the gross atmosphere of the game.

The first time I laid my eyes on one of these buses moving on the road, I reversed my motorcycle hoping the imbalanced looking bus will follow me and I sat on the seat laughing at it. A murderous mutant on two very human legs and the realisation that the stage, the screens, the speakers and even the floor is made of human arms, was the kind of insane experience I expected from Once Human. But the jubilance was cut short when I realized there was no key fitted to the two empty spots. The second meeting showed the bus as a mobile chest carrier, which circulates throughout the strip of the highway in anticipation of the players’ robbery. This moment captures the entire film, Once Human – attractive to the viewer but shallow all the same.

Taking place in a world where the population got infected by an interdimensional occurrence referred to as Starfall, Once Human familiarizes players with cosmic abominations termed as deviants and a virus-like substance referred to as stardust. These deviants are organic pacifiers shaped like Biomechanics; they are half insect with a lightbulb in their thorax and people with theater spotlights on their head. Some deviants are endearing, like a head made of a television that gives out bounty for justice and a soda machine that believes the bottles in its body are its offspring.

There is an unbelievable selection of these beasts that range from horrifying to just plain adorable, and this definitely sets the mood for Once Human. It can be singled out from other survival games that usually belong to Mad Max or Dawn of the Dead genre. Despite borrowing elements from Control, Ghostwire: Such is the case with Tokyo, Redfall, and The Evil Within 2, Once Human is able to reinvent itself as distinctive.

However, this makes it special only on the peripheral part and not on the essence of the game. There are no surprises in the third-person shooter combat that is dull and boring most of the times. As for weapons, they are well-implemented and feel powerful when fired, which applies to encountered foes, be them monsters or human raiders equipped with guns. That is why even bosses, which are large and clearly in some way visually designed to pose a certain threat, do not pose any harm.

Partially, they provide more scope for the decisions, but mostly, they look completely forced and as if they were borrowed from another game. That, together with the fact that crafting can be upgraded, is promising; however, it still consists of a widely formulaic approach. It is the same with the story; while there is a massive overarching plot of a corporation using deviants as lab rats, it feels stilted and unfleshed out. Some of the side quests present fascinating plotlines, while most of them are unoriginal and monotonous, and sometimes they can be reduced to such tasks as running errands.

Of course, there are some drawbacks In general, Once Human provides subscribers with a huge amount of various locations and – overall – a tremendous amount of content for a F2P game. The real-life element brings new cooperative activities and rewards into the world more frequently, thus maintaining that it is constantly evolving. Moreover, the game means of generating revenue is optional, ad never forcing the users to spend actual money.

Altogether, Once Human is a band that has a lot of cool elements in the cosmic horror style but not much in terms of contents. It is accompanied by decent imagery in the world and the creature, yet it has slushed combat, repetitive gameplay, and the uneven narrative. However, we have great vices of horror, as a mutated bus, and a variety of deviants, which can’t weaken the impact of a game’s deeper problems.