wfmag.cc \ 57ReviewRated
Fear of the unknown is a
prominent oƹstƃcȢe ǹor
Ancestors’ hominids.
Venture too far from
home and you get this
creepʰ ƃssƃuȢt oǹ
ʥiȢǁ-eʰeǁ preǁƃtorsӝReviewRated
and potential purpose. Initially, this taps into an
inherent sense of discovery as you spend time
uncovering the numerous food sources and
tools within close proximity and figure out how
to combine them, but it doesn’t take long before
this turns into another repetitive task to tick off
on a checklist of increasingly repetitive tasks.
There’s a lot of tedious stopping and moving,
and the slow process of uncovering everything
is only exacerbated when you’re inMured and
in desperate need of a particular plant to
heal yourself.
And believe me when I say you’ll be inMured
a lot in Ancestors. Almost every surface is
climbable, whether you’re scaling a sheer cliff
face or scurrying up a towering tree. '«silets’
background designing Assassin’s Creed is evident
in the way you climb and move through the
trees, yet traversal isn’t as intuitive as I had
hoped. &limbing is fine, but navigating amongst
the branches is overly cumbersome, and
there’s no easy way to climb
down beyond Mumping to
other surfaces. Think back
to Assassin’s Creed 3 and the
way the position of trees was
contrived so you could Tuickly
move from one to the next without missing
a beat. In Ancestors, the formation of trees is
much more natural, but this means the distance
between them isn’t always conducive to free-
flowing platforming. I can’t count the number
of times I had to take a leap of faith only to fall
feet and break a bone for the umpteenth
time. 0ovement is already lethargic without a
leg inMury slowing you down to a crawl.
Despite the perils of falling, trees do provide a
measure of safety compared to what’s prowling
on ground level. *iant snakes, crocodiles, and
big cats are Must a few of the animals with hunger
pangs for a slice of ape flesh. There’s a tangible
sense of peril and vulnerability when you’re on
the ground, especially when you’re helpless to
fight back against all the things trying to eat you.
(ventually, you might learn how to craft a spear,
but this is another part of the Ancestors learning
process. The game tells you absolutely nothing
beyond the basic controls. 6ome of the Ȇshoulds’
and Ȇshould nots’ are common knowledge, like
don’t drink from a standing water source, and
probably don’t stuff those mushrooms down
your gullet. 2thers, like figuring out how to
sharpen a stick or open a coconut, aren’t as
obvious as they maybe should be, but there’s
a definite thrill that comes from learning how
to use and combine the various tools.
Ancestors has some great moments like this
in isolation, such as the first time you pierce a
spear through one of your predators’ skulls, or
clamber up the maMestic world tree – but they’re
fleeting and punctuated by sheer tedium. The
8I and skill tree are at odds with the primitive
game wrapped around them, focusing on
evolution like you’re sat in a science lesson as
opposed to inhabiting an ape. New skills range
from learning how to pass items from one hand
to the other and increasing the range of your
senses. 8nlock enough of
these and you can advance
time by a single generation
or leap forwards hundreds
of thousands of years. When
you do this, you can only
take a couple of your learned skills with you,
and if your whole clan dies, you lose everything,
which forces you to go back and relearn every
skill you had on top of discovering each plant,
rock, and predator all over again. Whether you
progress through time or lose everything, the
game doubles down on being a maMor drag that
could’ve really used some kind of persistence.
As it is, Ancestors’ novel premise isn’t enough
to stave off the repetitive, dull, and unstructured
game wrapped around it.“Believe me when I
say you’ll be injured
a lot in Ancestors” nʰ neuronƃȢ energʰ ʰou eƃrn is
used to make new connections in
your hominid brain. There are four
sȟiȢȢ pƃthsӖ motricitʰӗ ȟinesicsӗ
perception, and memory.VERDICT
Ancestors’ fascinating
premise gets bogged
down by a repetitive
game of tedious survival.40 %