‘Once Human’ review: a moreish sci-fi survival game that lacks depth

Stepping out of Once Human’s brief tutorial and into the perils of its massively multiplayer shared world, players are instantly thrown into the deep end. Before they’ve had a time to properly take in the vast expanse they now call home, they’ll have to find a rocky perch somewhere between the property of other players to set up base camp in order to survive what’s about to unfold.

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You can’t stay in the safety of your base forever, and eventually, the call of the wild will come for you. Thanks to a scientific experiment gone wrong, the once peaceful glades and beaches that made up the world of Once Human have become overrun with warped, abstract creatures called Deviations. Through a combination of base building and monster hunting, players are tasked with tilling the infested landscape, helping out rogue survivors and investigating the sinister plot points underpinning Once Human’s jargon-heavy story.

The opening hours are a blur of excitement, as players get to grips with the survival gameplay of Once Human which is made up of a moreish medley of interconnected systems that will constantly spur players on against mutated hordes with bursts of resources and XP. As you get deeper into the story though, the game’s overly familiar aesthetics and disorienting narrative may dampen the buzz around this free-to-play game.

Thankfully, ignoring the hammier aspects of Once Human’s science fiction context is easily done when the symbiotic nature of the gameplay systems start to settle in. Following the framework of other survival games like Rust and Valheim, players will fight the odds to gather resources and fortify their character, with weapons and armour upgrades taking place back at your customisable home base. Alongside gear management, players will balance hunger, thirst, strength and mental fortitude, as the eerie wilderness starts to take a toll on their stomach and their sanity. It’s a lot to manage at first glance, but Once Human eases survivors in carefully, spoonfeeding progression through a series of tutorialised tasks called ‘Journeys’. These invite players to engage with its systems one by one, with lessons in smelting ore, upgrading weapons and cooking on offer.

Completing ‘Journeys’ demystifies the more finicky survival systems while rewarding players with ample experience and resources. A guided approach is a clever antidote to the fatiguing choice paralysis that can often arrive in open-world survival games, and the meaningful ‘Memetics’ skill tree allows for specialised builds. Players can invest heavily in construction to benefit their fledgling fortress, but they can also choose to focus on crafting, weapons or resource harvesting. How you spend your points helps shape the game in your vision, ensuring you feel in control of your own uncertain fate.

The MMO aspect of Once Human means the server you land on is shared with others, and players can pick between player vs player or player vs enemy worlds. Watching another player saunter around the landscape with powerful weapons, a truck, or a killer compound compels you to keep playing and grind for the loot to make your set-up competitive. The only downside is that finding a personal oasis isn’t simple, especially if you want to shack up with friends on a busy server. Thankfully, players can easily relocate their base camp to the sleepier districts as they reach the levels necessary to survive in Once Human’s more formidable territory.

Once Human’s ‘Deviations’ are admirably varied, ranging in size, shape and ferocity. Early expeditions will see players take on briefcase-headed beasts, an array of hazmat-shrouded crawlers, and a satellite tower behemoth. That is just the tip of the beastly iceberg as well.

Not all the Deviations in Once Human are bad news either, with some capable of aiding survival, instead of trying to end it. Companion and Combat ‘Deviations’ trade danger for function, adding control schemes and passive resource mining to a player’s arsenal of tools. Sure, much of the combat in Once Human comes down to bullets and fists, but players can also take hold of the mythical power corrupting the land, making them the hero of this freak-filled fable.

Swatting down curious beasts and venturing deeper into the heart of the game’s biomes is a reliable thrill. However, the game’s art style leans too heavily on its references, taking cues from other paranormal adventures, such as Control and Death Stranding. This is paired with a somewhat incoherent story that is consistently hard to care about, while the game’s dialogue-heavy cutscenes feel like dull stopgaps in a player’s bid for survival. Once Human has some cool ideas of its own and deserves credit for adapting its influences and taking them in a new direction, but the result of all this kit-bashing is a striking but skin-deep visual canvas.

Once Human’s saving grace is the ability for players to ignore all this, team up with a friend and peel through the levels together, slowly crafting a fortress to be proud of. The cooperative chaos of battling and building with your crew goes a long way to make up for the plot’s shortcomings, with players able to move away from the prebuilt story and create their own curated lore alongside a pocket community set against Once Human’s ominous backdrop.

Once Human is entirely free-to-play, but does feature optional paid content in the form of a premium battle pass and various currencies. While the battle pass can result in extra resource, it’s not a necessity right now but players will have to see if that continues in the long term, as the game advances through its seasonal content updates and the gulf between players grows.

‘Once Human is’ out now for PC