HUMANKIND REVIEW PC
HUMANKIND REVIEW SERIES

There are a lot of small buttons and text in the game that become even smaller on a phone's screen. The touch controls while playing on a Samsung Galaxy S20 FE worked well, but not enough to warrant long play sessions.

HUMANKIND REVIEW SERIES

You can control the game with a series of tapping, holding, and swiping gestures rather than a touch gamepad overlay. The other Stadia exclusive feature is direct touch controls for mobile players. Unless you have highly competitive friends also playing on Stadia, I highly doubt anyone would be seeking out random clips to play against. The game supports State Share, known here as 'Leave Your Mark,' where other players can play in a recorded key event from your game world through a screenshot or video clip and compete against your challenges.

HUMANKIND REVIEW PC

The Stadia version of Humankind offers two exclusive features not available on other PC platforms, though it comes with a few caveats. Humankind: Stadia performance and features Once I got the hang of it, the turns started ending faster and the hours were melting away. Also, there is a permanent button in the corner that offers an encyclopedia website that can be accessed at any time via QR code. The popup menus were extremely helpful when forgetting certain actions, and there are a dozen tutorial options that can be toggled on and off in the settings.

I was greeted by several videos explaining the goals and mechanics of the game upon setting up my first game, which was a nice surprise, and the tutorial menus would periodically reappear even after the beginning phase. I can easily skip it with the escape key, but it was odd nonetheless.īlandness aside, Humankind is a great start to try out the historical-based strategy genre, as someone who has not significantly touched a Civilization since the pared-down Civilization Revolution made specifically for consoles. Also, I ran into what I assume is a bug where the first intro cutscene plays every time I continue my save after launching the game. There is no real story other than its hook of remixing society.

Since Humankind is about recreating an alternative evolution chain, the cutscenes that precede each era simply acknowledge that progress is happening. I stopped paying attention to the names of the other factions and only knew them by their color and how much of the map they had seized. There are a few historical figureheads like Edgar Allen Poe, but there is not enough feeling in these characters to resonate since everyone's society is also a mashup of various civilizations. The game is sound mechanically, allowing you to control the whims of your districts through narrative events, various meters, and increasing all the numbers. Some of the end conditions include eliminating all the factions or sending a mission to Mars, and you can still lose by not having enough Fame. It is possible to end the game and still not win. Humankind isn't about 'winning,' but what you do to get there. You do have to be careful when transcending eras with the same culture because you can miss out on combining perks for a bonus to Fame, which is necessary to win the game. The one downside is that it all becomes sort of background noise, so you might be caught by surprise when the game announces that it's time for a new era.

I played passively and tried to avoid all confict, so it is nice that I did not have to start wars to defeat 10, 15, and then 20 units just to progress. Interestingly, there is no way to be stuck with an objective that doesn't fit with your society and can prevent transcending. The categories never change though, so you will be progressing the same from turn 20 to turn 200. The Era Star categories range from defeating a certain number of military units, increasing the population, earning money, or consistently adding new territories. Progressing through an era also changes upon entering the Ancient Era and instead requires earning seven Era Stars from seven different categories that each offer three consecutive stars. Source: Sega (Image credit: Source: Sega)

Humankind review