Human Within

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Human Within review
Jordan Helsley

Review

An FMV Game From A New Perspective

We're about nine years into the VR lifecycle, so it is a bit strange to run into a game that feels "retro." While it has largely formed a very similar identity across the board, there's also a tendency to appreciate something that's not the same type of shooting gallery we've become accustomed to. Human Within tries to do something a little different in going for a branching storyline, a focus on interactive elements, and a recreation of, and this is the only appropriate term, "cyberspace" to create an immersive experience that goes beyond reloading firearms realistically. The promises are lofty, but the technology has come far enough that it’s not out of the question.

A New Kind Of Movie


At roughly 80 minutes, a complete playthrough of Human Within acts as a stand-in for a standard feature film with a serviceable-but-easily-digestible story, but with a choose-your-own-adventure twist. In an effort to increase the immersion, a 360° camera films the scenes so you get dropped right into the drama. You're given several points in the story to make an either/or choice on what your character did in that moment, and the videos and story will continue off from that choice. If a lot of that sounds familiar, it's because the concept has been developed, improved, solved, abandoned, revived, and abandoned again over the last forty years.



I have no problem with utilizing the format overall, and enjoy my fair share of FMV games, too, but it feels tired when the primary feature that's meant to be innovative in the space only holds it back. Because they recorded these scenes with stationary 360° cameras, you don't get to explore these spaces that are often finely crafted for the films and seem to have interesting details. What you also get is a view that is simultaneously too high and too low, because the perspective skews when you look around, and also results in awkward proportions on the actors as they near the camera. I've never gotten motion sick in VR, but a few of these moments tested me.

Affecting The Story


Throughout the story, you inhabit the "headspace" of one character therein. The FMV sequences are moments recalled from memory, and make choices in a "did you do this or this" way. Between those, you inhabit more conventional VR game spaces. Occasionally you'll enter recreations of spaces you've seen in the videos that would probably be the preferable way to see the story moments if not for the low poly, pixelated aesthetic (see: Cyberpunk's braindance sequences). It's a neat mechanic in the universe, but is not without its faults. In one section, it left me to wander around the space, waving my hands all about, looking for a key thing in the scene to light up when I hovered over it, only to discover it didn't because I wasn't close enough in the physical space.

The other main interaction you have to engage with in Human Within is a series of puzzles centered on cubes that require you to match patterns on their sides. As the game goes along, these get more demanding, but they never really rise above being busywork, and sometimes end up being frustrating. Because you're manipulating these in an ethereal 3D space, there's a tendency to think that you could "drop" it in the air to adjust your grip and get a better look at the back side, but doing so allows the cube to snap back into place where it was. Eventually, these puzzles have patterns that are just complex enough for the process to be tedious, and that's without considering they're required to complete on subsequent play-throughs, should you want to see how the story changes.

Why VR?


In more involved moments, your cyberspace is littered with video feeds and other bits of information that you can pick up and inspect as the story goes forward. They represent a computer system that is all seeing, and some of these give fun insights into the workings of the world, or increase moments of tension, but mostly they're filler. Because the 360° video falls apart, and the scene recreations (what they're calling Point Cloud interactions) are little more than a novelty, it seems like a lot of the elements exist only as excuses to make a VR game, when the alternative would have served the experience better. Not for nothing, because the 360 videos are a much lower resolution than the floating videos, it constantly feels like there are two different actors playing each of these characters.

One thing is for sure, this is a fairly unique setup for a VR game, so it's a shame it doesn't work better, conceptually or actually. I ran into glitches that ranged from the mildly annoying to the game breaking, including a time where the tutorial button it was telling me to press did not function until I reloaded the scene.

Reviewing The Tape


It may be a predictable and familiar tale, but it's fairly impressive how different my two play-throughs were in terms of what information I saw, and even the final resolution. Without spoiling too much, it's a good old sci-fi tale about a revolutionary technology and a villainous figure who wants to use it for personal gain at the expense of just about everyone. The reason to see it through lies underneath the overarching story. For better or worse, no matter which paths you're taking, getting more nuance of the story requires a second viewing, particularly regarding how our characters got here at the start, but a few questions remained unanswered even still. But if this were just a movie made from the videos stitched together, with one chosen path, it would be serviceable. The acting is believable, and the writing gets the job done. It just works, outside of a few moments that are the product of “recording a video for a video game” that require the timing to slow down just a bit.

There's a level of creativity and care that went into so many aspects of Human Within. The story, as boilerplate as it is, has its own spin. The production behind the real-world settings suits the story well. There are even moments where you can see attempts at innovating the VR space that could influence games going forward. It just never comes together as a package that fully justifies being a VR game instead of an outright interactive movie.


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5.0

fun score

Pros

Some unique ideas, a truly branching story, and a runtime that doesn't overstay its welcome.

Cons

The 360° videos are locked in place and warp the perspective a bit too much, the interactions outside of the videos feel like busywork, some tedious puzzles.