Review: Humanity
Humanity is brought to us by Enhance, who have challenged the norm of VR games in the past by bringing Rez and Tetris to medium – and successfully at that. For this reasons it peaked my interest immediately and I was interested in seeing how the Quest 3 handled it.
Release Date: March 14th 2024
Developer: tha ltd / Enhance
Publisher: Enhance
Price: £19.99
Reviewed On: Meta Quest 3
* Access Provided For Review *
It's A Society
To my surprise the game does come with a story, and an educational one at that. The game basically tells you a story while teaching you about a society. Explaining if we work together we can progress and how as humans we are all connected more than we think.
Tiny Happy People
Humanity basically plays out like a modern day Lemmings, but feels that much more special with the current hardware available. In the game you are a Shiba Inu and you will use your bark to lay commands for the scores of humans to follow – with the aim of getting them to the light at the end of the level.
Over the seven sequences in the game, you get a large range of trials, which start simple. But, as you progress you will unlock more commands meaning they can get a lot more creative with the solutions. Over the trails you will be giving the humans turn, jump, float, split-up, follow and pause commands to make their way through the stages.
After completing a couple of sequences you will be faced with a boss fight, where the idea is to destroy the core. Outside of the boss fights you will also start to encounter ‘The Others’, which are enemies you have work around and fight in the trials. You can take these on by arming your humans with either lightsaber like weapons or guns. In some trails you will need to place commands to avoid them or take them on and overpower them, until you can reach their gate and destroy it.
As well as these challenges each level includes ‘Goldies’ which are taller gold humans. These are the games collectibles and offer 150 in total to collect, collecting them will unlock new looks and colours for the humans you are commanding. Of course collecting these can come with their own challenges, as in come cases you will need to lead a set amount of humans to a pressure plate – if you have The Others to contend with they might kill too many of your humans to activate these or even steal your Goldies. I decided I was going to collect all the Goldies before moving onto the next trial, and doing this took me around sixteen hours in total – which I think is a great length for the game.
Minimalistic But Striking
My main concern for this version of the game, was how the standalone device would handle so many people at once moving about the stage. However, given the games minimal design it handles it perfectly, and although minimal it is very striking. Mixing the minimal design to the levels which float above the clouds and the colourfully dressed humans, it gives a really nice contrast of colours. Then when other humans enter the trials and you get weapons to fight them, the bright sparks from the combat just add to the already fantastic visual design of the game.
As the game is collaboration between Tha Ltd and Enhance, the game comes with an outstanding soundtrack. This keeps you entertained as you figure out the placements to complete each trial. With the Shiba’s bark being the only other sound you hear, and this audio design is perfect for the game.
Comfort
The Verdict
Enhance have done it again and brought something completely different and unique to VR with Humanity. Which brings a modern take on Lemmings, and the experimental titles we used to get on the likes of the PlayStation 2 – which is great to see as not many risks are taken in this modern day. With this they have managed to make fun and challenging trials, with great visuals that work perfectly on the standalone device and of course an outstanding soundtrack. With a sixteen-hour campaign, a level creator, 150 Goldies to collect and styles to unlock – you get loads of entertainment for the price of £19.99.