It’s good if they look pretty but what matters is that the game must be fun. ![]() There’s a short moment of eureka that’s proceeded by a very depressing sense of “Okay, what now?” Prehistoric PresentationĪs I mentioned earlier, I don’t care too much about graphics in video games. Most of the game’s discoveries feel like this. They just sit there scratching their prehistoric behinds. I even asked them to follow me and watch me do it, and… nothing. My fellow clans-ape don’t even attempt to mimic me by harvesting the honey themselves. The game tells me that my apes now have developed a new level of metabolism thanks to eating honey but that’s it. ![]() I then came back with a wooden stick and voila, honey-on-a-stick! I honestly felt a bit smart being able to teach my ancestors how to properly harvest honey from a beehive. In my attempt to get honey using only my hands, I was stung multiple times and given no prompt to harvest any honey. I then discovered that there was actually a beehive located above the rock formation that my clan used as shelter from the rain. Beginning my second playthrough, I took time to fully scan my settlement’s surroundings using my perception and smelling sense. After all my hominids in my first playthrough died, I decided to approach the game more systematically. Sometimes Ancestors gives me a glimpse of how brilliant it can be. In a way, the game structures itself similar to other freeform games like The Sims and Kenshi where there’s no real objective aside from doing what’s needed to survive and creating your own storyline. Throughout my 15+ hours with the game, there has ever only been one objective given to me and that is to evolve faster than what science has recorded, to see if I could create an alternative history where our ancestors biologically progress faster than usual. However, you are not rewarded with anything substantial for your efforts. To be fair, it succeeds in really making you experience what it felt like for our ape-ancestors to grow brain cells. It feels tedious and I’m tempted to quit the game every time I evolve. This includes useful skills like being able to perceive objects and creatures at a further distance and being able to drop objects while you’re moving (if you don’t learn this skill, you can only drop them while staying still). There’s a limited amount of skills that you can pass down to your babies so everything else has to be relearned. It also doesn’t help that the game makes you grind for EXP (called neurotic points or something in this game) for an hour or so every time you fast forward to the next generation of your clan. Evolving your species, the game’s main objective, took me two playthroughs to figure out. In fact, most basic mechanics took me around an hour or two to figure out. It took me at least 3 hours just to completely understand how the stamina and health bars work in this game. Almost nothing is explained to the players (a good thing) but whenever there is an explanation, it doesn’t tell much. It’s one thing to give players the freedom to learn things themselves and it’s another to give poor instructions that waste the players time trying to figure out core mechanics. From the get-go, you’re introduced to the game’s purposely vague tutorials which constantly feels like a way for the developers to boast “Look how little hand-holding our game has!” You start the game as a baby hominid (prehistoric human being) who has to find his way to your clan’s settlement after your mother is killed by a gigantic prehistoric bird. The main premise of Ancestors can be summed in one line: Evolve beyond dumb monkeys. You’re given the freedom to do and discover whatever you want but none of it feels all that rewarding. ![]() Unfortunately, Ancestors feels like it’s trying to be more of an educational simulator rather than an enjoyable video game. Ever since it was unveiled at E3 2018, I’ve been excited to see if Ancestors could pull off what Spore couldn’t. ![]() I’ve always been a gameplay-over-graphics kind of guy. Genre: 3D Evolution Action-Adventure Titleīeing greeted by the PS3-era textures and effects of Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey didn’t put me off one bit.
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