Review for Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey. Game for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 27/08/2019 The version for PlayStation 4 came out on 06/12/2019 The version for Xbox One came out on 06/12/2019
There are games that focus on visual astonishment and games that focus on a complex plot. But also titles that focus on pushing the gamer to the limit of "daydreaming": a sort of conscious trance, a "I see I do not see", a continuous plunge from the real to the unreal. In these cases, we speak of a meta-game because imprisoning these pearls in the simple statement “Hey, this is a game” is simply an offense.
Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, is exactly this: a production that is not perfect from a simple playful point of view, but which still has the strength to "break through" the wall that separates fiction from reality.
Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is a third-person action game, with strong survival and pseudo-role elements: making us interpret different types of primates, it will allow us to walk through the raw and rough evolutionary history of man who - at the beginning - is nothing more than a "monkey a little more intelligent than the norm" who will have to carve out his own role in the terrible and cruel primeval ecosystem. From these handful of words it is easy to understand the profound meta-playful ambition of the game: the goal is not only to let us play, but also to make us understand the difficulty and the "magic" that surrounds us, the result of the sweat of the brow and of the ingenuity of those who came before us.
The game, at the beginning, will have us play a hominid dating back 10 million years ago: in short, anything will try to kill us. Taking advantage of mechanics not too dissimilar from the standards imposed by Assassin's Creed (on the other hand, the creator is Patrice Désilets, creator of the aforementioned saga, Ed) in terms of explorability on a double x / y axis, our furry alter-ego will have to explore and to test the nature that surrounds him firsthand, to understand if that fruit or that plant can help or not.
Our alter-ego, in addition to being able to climb and move with the comfortable pressure of a button, will therefore be able to explore and above all learn from what surrounds him: every action will make us progress in a particular field and will make us "level up", even if the game has cleverly disguised and modified the role standards. During the exploration we will obtain "Neuronal Energy" which will allow us to gradually unlock new skills: from communication to movement, to the ability to build weapons and tools. But, the acquisition of this energy will be directly related to the number of "infants" that we will have in our tribe: in fact, in the vast majority of the time, we will be able to choose to carry on our shoulders a little one of our tribe, which will serve as our own catalyst of this energy.
The clan can then evolve based on some "milestones" and specific events achieved: the evolution will depend on our actions and will allow us to advance quickly in history, which will allow us to experience the evolution of man in other places and ways.
For this reason, death in Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is final: when someone dies they are lost. and as it is reasonable to imagine if the clan dies, the game ends. The feature - although not innovative - will put us in a constant state of alert and therefore the little ones of the clan will be fundamental as well as it will be fundamental to defend them from the harshness of primitive life. In the game we will also have the ability to access basic crafting that will exploit the ability of our alter ego to "connect the dots", essentially trying to "alter" different components based on logic: in this way, for example, we could produce from a tree branch, deprived of the twigs, of the pseudo spears with which to face some dangerous predators, which can be eliminated by exploiting the “quick time” events.
The thing, however fun, clashes with the tendentially action soul of the game that seems to "scream" just something similar to Assassin's Creed. Not to mention that the combat system itself will not be free from problems (especially at the beginning when everything will be reduced to a continuous "dodge event"). Of course, the survival component of the game will also develop into a continuous search for food and water, or in sheltering from the elements rather than sleeping to recover energy and constantly defending ourselves from tough predators. Fortunately, we will be able to harness our innate and superior animal abilities by concentrating on listening, sharpening our eyes or relying on our higher animal senses.
We will also have the ability to be followed by members of our clan even if, given an artificial intelligence that is not particularly awake, the option could soon become a sort of intentional suicide. In principle, Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey it is not a simple game and the developers have certainly not helped us. We will be able to develop and explore the territory for as long as we want but fortunately a sense of total disorientation will happen rather rarely despite a gameplay structure that is not immediately intuitive or a meandering feeling of being making wrong choices.
The added value of the game - beyond the future support it will have and the hypothetical content expansions and which will be fundamental to expand the overall gameplay of the game that can become mechanically repetitive after a short time - is a remarkable base for creating a community and exchange their own discoveries and strategies.
Technically speaking, the game will offer an aesthetic sector of fine workmanship, albeit far from the triple A productions. In general Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey will present us with environments that are rather rich in detail and that simulate the variety of the primitive ecosystem in an excellent way. In terms of performance, the title was tested with a medium / high-end PC, with which it was possible to play fairly smoothly at all major resolutions, without excessive frame drops. There is still, as one might expect, a technical optimization work to be done and which, in the future, could improve a sector that is already more than valid.
The only sore point, with a mainly “scenic” weight, is a simulation of primitive life that is not particularly convincing: all living beings we will meet will give the impression of being "there for us" and not of "living" independently.
Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is a sui generis survival action, which will try not only to entertain us, but also to understand and in some ways think. A game structure that is a little too open and confusing, together with some technical problems, however, do not allow him to reach the full mark, but to reach a definitely high score.
► Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is an Adventure-indie-RPG game developed by Panache Digital Games and published by Private Division for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 27/08/2019 The version for PlayStation 4 came out on 06/12/2019 The version for Xbox One came out on 06/12/2019
