Recenze Humankind » Vortex

The story is nice and captivating. Random clusters of cells mutate to form a fish. Millions of years pass. The fish puts down its fins and gills and finds that it’s quite nice on land. Time is running out and life is following the winding path of evolution. Gigantosaurs experience a moment of glory and become extinct, the happier ones mutate into chickens. And in one important, though barely perceptible moment, a couple of hairy and pampering creatures descend from a tree, hit two pointed stones on each other, and set something like a trunk over a fading flame. And we have them here – humanity. They will straighten up. They will grow. Hunt, collect, breed, grow, war, build, talk and shoot, write and travel, print and surf. They will stand on the moon, and in the meantime they will go under the atomic mushroom on Earth. He founded the United Nations and shared the money for the last gram of ivory. He will build the Taj Mahal and also the housing estate South City. Who wouldn’t love them?

The ambitious studio Amplitude continues the tradition of alternative 4X strategies with its Humankind title. Both Endless Space and Endless Legend are among the games that do not break sales records, but can steal hundreds of hours of life, as well as the more well-known and best-selling Sid Meier’s Civilization. The current, sixth part of Civilization is Humankind’s biggest rival and, in a way, the bar that the game of French creators is trying to jump over. The final version of the epic story of adventures, ups and downs, contracts and wars, and deeds of the human race in general, is now here for everyone to compare. And it won’t be easy – Civilization is an age-old classic. Its players are used to a certain way of playing, the functioning of specific mechanisms, and in a way also to mistakes and shortcomings. At the same time, Humankind addresses the same audience and would like to entice them to mix the familiar (“make your nation with history and ensure its greatness”) and new (these are the elements that bring Humankind closer to successful boards and in the case of diplomacy even give Civilization such a polite box). ; and in truth, a little eccentric.

You are not Vlasta, you are Vlasta?

History in Humankind begins to be written from a primitive communal society. The tribe of hunters and gatherers that the player gets his hands on at the beginning of history must be carried out in a total of seven eras from prehistoric to the present. All he walks is fame and a record in history. At all times, the player takes the best steps to dazzle the world with his actions – growth and building cities, warfare, economics, science or culture. As in Civilization, research plays a key role in Humankind. Thanks to him, the tribe gradually grows and learns, establishes its first settlements and camps, and over time develops into a culture. And that’s when the key differentiating mechanism that Humankind bets on, which is – in truth – the love or hate matters. Unlike Civilization, you do not play for one nation all the time like the Romans, Babylonians, Americans, etc., but for every historical era you choose a new nation (not obligatory, but typically yes). This brings a slightly more realistic historical setting (eg Austria-Hungary really has nothing to do in antiquity, on the contrary, the Assyrians in the modern era), but also of course special moments when the Frankish Empire turns into an Oriental power and begins to send trained against the enemy instead of knights. elephants.

It is certainly up to each player’s personal taste how these changes will annoy and upset him. Without discussion, it’s not always clear even with AI opponents, when you wage a fierce war with the Hungarians for a while and suddenly negotiate an armistice with Genghis Khan. classics of Small World – while in Civilization the choice of nation largely determines the game style and unique bonuses and focus used by the player throughout history, in Humankind he has several extremely interesting decisions. And of course: if it’s time to expand to a new continent, the Spaniards will be a great choice. It is not above Korean or Japanese for scientific development. Brazil or Mexico will provide food and urban development. And so it could be continued. While playing each game, it happens that one switches to the slot machine. He finds familiar principles, clicks, works in a way to get further. And then comes the moment that pulls him out of his lethargy – an important duel, an interesting decision, an unexpected challenge. In Humankind, the moment is literally always the choice of a nation for a new era, and just for the feeling of tingling, whether the change to “Insidious Zulusáky” was the right one, I have to give this decision to the authors for good.

The whole region is growing

Many common and small, funny differences – this is how the individual components of the game could be characterized. Humankind, like Civilization, involves building and improving cities, but it is different. From the beginning, the map is cut into regions that players occupy and associate with each other. In a province, there can be either a city or just a settlement. The bigger the city and the more interconnected areas, the more economic benefits – but also the worse the control and the rebel population. When founding and building cities and their districts for more efficient production, research, farming, etc. then the player must also take into account a number of statistics, characteristics of individual types of terrain, interconnection of buildings and neighborhoods – finished alchemy, which players will more than enjoy with 4X strategy. I can subjectively evaluate the building part and everything that concerns cities, even better than in the sixth part of Civilization. The disadvantage of Humankind is the situation where the player only clicks on one achievable improvement building in one move, of which there are unnecessarily many and they look interchangeable. But everything else goes to the plus – synergies of neighborhoods, sensitive work with the loyalty of the population, which each special neighborhood reduces, clear interface with information about residents and their specialization, options for targeting cities and areas… Humankind is more open and full of possibilities, while not losing clarity, and that’s just great!

Conquering a city surrounded by watercourses and on a high rock is in fact much more difficult than a village on a plain between fields

A fundamental difference from the still mentioned standard of historical strategies is the handling of armies and combat. First, four, then up to eight units can stand on one square. But that’s not the only difference – the battles in Humankind take place on a special screen, have a time frame and also use terrain that the player can see directly on the global map. So conquering a city that is surrounded by watercourses and on a high rock is in fact much harder than a village on a plain between fields. The units are in control, can be maneuvered, summoned reinforcements and use altitude superiors… a beautiful connection with global gameplay is the fact that in one turn only three rounds of combat can take place and further warfare is transferred to a new game move – so the army can come to help, the player manages to settle other matters and Humankind still supports his immersion that the complicated siege of Baghdad simply lasts and does not and does not end…

All the glory of field grass?

Unlike Civilization, Humankind is quite clear in its focus on fame. The player obtains it through common game activities (occupying provinces, building districts, killing units a) as well as inventing or building wonders of the world. There is no form of diplomatic, scientific or cultural victory – in short, all efforts are aimed at gaining sufficient progress and the number of stars that symbolize the inscription in history. In this purity, the game from Amplitude is very strong, and therefore it is a bit surprising that other mechanisms known from Civilization – that is, religion and culture – do not work similarly easily and clearly. Religion remains a cryptic entity for most moves, unlike the wars of the apostles and missionaries, which in Civilization VI were able to decide the entire game, these are symbolic bonuses and the player often does not even have to visit the screen of faith. Cultural gains affect life in the empire more directly, and make interesting decisions. With every invention of civilization, a decision is made that moves the empire, for example, on the axis of liberalism. Will the Mayan Empire insist on child labor or send children to schools? Thanks to the situation in the game and the bonuses and penalties associated with the possibilities, the seemingly easy decision can easily turn against the “common sense” of the civilized man of the 21st century. And that’s good: it’s a game! Despite the praise spoken, however, the cultural screen also seems a bit confusing and it is difficult to follow the logic with which the individual branches of development open up.

The system of diplomacy must then clearly receive great praise. In contrast to the civilized sweaty Civilization, Humankind is clear – with each nation, the player knows what he is up to, clearly sees the contracts concluded, the will to war on both sides and also possible or desired agreements. The authors did a lot of work to ensure that the seconds spent on the diplomatic screen are not wasted time, but you can read the nature of the opponent’s AI and his interests, the game quite realistically resolves war conflicts, works with the affinity of the population to one side surprise, so many known from Civilization. In short, for diplomacy, Humankind must get an underlined number one!

In a few years…

Like Sid Meier’s Civilization, Humankind will grow. Ready size for multiplayer battles, modifications and adjustments, special scenarios – all this awaits enthusiastic buyers. So far, there are a number of basic choices of procedurally generated content. Size and appearance of maps, AI enemies or the ability to join for multiplayer, setting the difficulty thanks to additions and content from creators and fans. In a good way, it can go through a beautiful evolution in the coming months and surprise you even more than when homo erectus came up with the idea of ​​going for two…

By definition, amplitude is the maximum value of a variable. The wave jumps up and down around the axis even when comparing gaming experiences. And the reviewer tries not to be dazzled when the wave is up, and depressed in the valley. soundtrack, which does not take off from the pedestal of Baba Yeta (Civilization IV), but maybe takes everything off the chair, and taking into account the criticisms of the fifth part of the game with which Humankind was, is and will be compared, whether he wants to or not, also a completely effective gameplay without any references to future DLCs. Humankind symbolizes the logo – a handprint. That’s what Amplitude Studios would like to leave in gaming history – and they have to admit that they’ve done a lot for it. Their game is varied, complex, interesting, familiar and somehow different in French… and carries the potential of hundreds of hours of the best entertainment.

Yeah. When it is meant that if the human species no longer invented anything better than the computer game Humankind (and perhaps some ecological version of vanilla ice cream), history would be forgiving…

…

… We did well!