HumanitZ – Review
Survival and base-building games have seen an increase in popularity with titles such as Palworld and Enshrouded, but it’s not like the genre didn’t have a huge fanbase already. We think back fondly of older titles, such as State of Decay, which still has a fairly large active community slaying zombies while trying to survive in a decaying world. In comes a similar title, HumanitZ, which tries to perhaps up the scale a bit more, creating a more expansive survival experience. With the 1.0 release only a few days ago, we were lucky enough to start playing the game a bit earlier.
Story
Even though there are scenarios to play through and objectives to clear in survival mode, there is no real story to speak of in HumanitZ. You’ll just do what you want, be it scavenging for goods while blowing up as many zombies as you can, or building a base you can call home in the zombie apocalypse. Then your experience will further depend on whether you are playing solo or online with friends or strangers. We didn’t mind the absence of a traditional storyline here, as the game is clearly catered towards survival enthusiasts first and foremost.
Graphics
Graphically, HumanitZ is a good-looking game. The world has a lot of clutter in it, making it feel ‘alive’ and lived in, even if most of the population is now into eating brains. There is a lot of asset variety, different functional vehicles, wildlife, survivors, and of course, monsters lurking around each corner. There is maybe not that much variety when it comes to base zombie models, but a lot of them have different outfits, creating some diversity in the process.
That being said, there are quite a few clipping issues, floating items, and some framerate issues from time to time. While these didn’t take away from the overall pleasant experience, they were noticeable enough to mention. The same goes for awkward camera angles, especially in tall buildings where the walls don’t always disappear when you enter them, making it impossible to see what you are doing or if you are being attacked.
Sound
All in all, the sound design of HumanitZ isn’t bad. The music might be a bit dramatic at times, but it does help set the mood, especially when you find yourself without supplies in a snowstorm while zombies are creeping closer. The sound effects provide decent audio feedback for bashing and shooting zombies, crafting items, and even stalling engines on the few vehicles you find around the world. Your character also makes some grunts and noises, but there isn’t any real voiced dialogue present in the game.
Gameplay
HumanitZ is a survival game in which you’ll have to survive a zombie apocalypse, be it solo, with friends, or strangers online. The offset is really simple: you’ll just have to survive, scavenge for food, water, weapons, and clothes, build a base, explore your surroundings, and kill zombies. If you play on your own or host your own server, you can tweak different settings, making the experience easier or harder. HumanitZ is a fairly time-consuming game, as it does take a while to make progress, but once you get into the groove, hours will tick by before you even know it.
The general gameplay loop is what you’d expect from a title such as this, as you start with nothing but the clothes on your back, and you’ll have to find or craft many of the starting items you need. You can, of course, scavenge for materials and other goods, such as food, water, weapons, and machine and vehicle parts. Some items will take some time to find, while others are plentiful. If you’re struggling too much with food and water, you can turn the spawn rate of these up, as well as turn down the speed at which you grow hungry or thirsty. The crafting is straightforward, and so is the building menu. We did find it annoying that we always had to equip a hammer to use the building menu. Just having a hammer in inventory should have sufficed here. Even so, as you progress, you’ll be able to build more impressive structures, and when you have a vehicle or two that you were able to patch up, you’ll be able to more easily explore your surroundings. Vehicle parts break down, however, so you’ll also have to maintain your items. The same counts for your gear, as insulating clothes wear down or weapons eventually break, forcing you to equip new ones.
We actually waited until the full release to post our review, as our early build did have quite a few bugs present. That being said, many of these bugs were still present in the release version, where controller support is abysmal from time to time when doing inventory management or when selecting different options from our skill dial. On top of that, we encountered instances where our character was locked into an action, forcing us to reboot the game, or even instances where we were locked out of our own storage with the message that this didn’t belong to us. Other issues included that additional players during our hosted sessions would lose progress, items would disappear, and mouse and keyboard controls would just stop working. While most of the bugs didn’t cause too many huge issues, frustration did build up after longer sessions due to the frequency of all the aforementioned glitches.
Conclusion
Even though HumanitZ is still rough around the edges in some departments, we really enjoyed what it had to offer. While our exploration trips often took us off the beaten path, we discovered quite a few interesting things, and it’s that freedom that truly made us feel like survivors in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. The cool visuals and the decent sound design further enhanced this sense of freedom. While already having spent quite a few hours with the game, we will certainly be revisiting this one in the future to explore every nook and cranny. If you’re into survival games and are looking for a cool multiplayer-oriented one, this one is certainly worth checking out.
Related Items
1 Comment
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
[…] •Isometric open-world zombie survival sandbox HumanitZ launched 1.0 version today•HumanitZ – Review•MY HERO ACADEMIA: All’s Justice – Review•Delta Grading – […]