Today, the free-to-play survival game "Once Human" is available on Steam, and after an hour or so of playing the NetEase-produced title, my impression is that the original sense of anxiety and discovery that the survival genre was originally meant to provide has recently been replaced by tutorial screens and boring explanations! The only thing I can say is that the anxiety and discovery inherent in the survival genre has recently been replaced by tutorial screens and boring explanations! Once you get past the lesson on making copper ingots, the world of Once Human can expand. Some of them are homemade.

The character creator is a wild card: While story-driven RPGs may have preset hairstyles that make characters unattractive, games like "Once Human" allow you to customize the "middle of the lower lip thickness". This is an absurdly detailed setting, and there are zero safeguards to prevent players from populating the server with space demons.

"Once Human" does not aim for the quirky tone of "Saints Row," but rather for "Control," but it fails to do so. Nevertheless, it seems as if it has to do so because it does so. What sick person would stick with the default good-looking when so many ways to screw them up are available?

Slide the "fitness" slider all the way to the right and the character becomes a brick. There is also a slider for head size, so you can turn him into a brick with a small head. There is also a "long leg" slider that lengthens the legs. You can make the mouth bigger, make the face bloody, or close half the eyelids to hide the pupils. There are so many choices, but in contrast there are conservative options: for example, you can only choose a natural hair color.

Once Human was not intended to be released with support for multiple characters, but the developers quickly changed course after receiving feedback.

The game following my 10 minutes of character creation has been disappointing so far, but those 10 minutes were fun. And what was impressive about Once Human was that I managed to get into the server today and start playing. That may change as more players try it out, but most free-to-play online games break instantly after launch, so it deserves at least a cursory evaluation.

"Once Human" is available on Steam. However, if your character doesn't resemble the high-speed camera photo of a boxer being beaten up, I'd be shaking my head.