Humanity Review

If developer Enhance and its creative head Tetsuya Mizuguchi are known for one thing, it's consistently delivering unique experiences that defy easy genre pigeonholing. Rez blew minds on the Dreamcast upon its 2001 release, with its psychedelic journey of synaesthesia unlike anything seen on a console at the time (the less said about the weird vibrating peripheral released alongside the PS2 port, that you could put anywhere you like, the better). Tetris Effect took an old classic and brought it kicking and screaming into the 21st century in inimitable Enhance style, its sights and sounds breathing vivid, vibrant life into hoary old Tetris. And so it goes with Humanity, another utterly unique puzzler that's a treat for the eyes and ears, as well as the grey matter.

Playing as a wee shiba inu dog silhouetted in pure white light, your sole quest in Humanity is to guide an unending swarm of people to a goal. It's a simple enough concept that rightly brings to mind 1991 puzzler classic Lemmings, but is brimming with myriad complexities. Each map is a monolithic 3D diorama, which your enigmatic glowing canine avatar is able to freely traverse with athletic leaps, or by transferring his being into any of the thousands of teeming humans all jostling in a single mindless line, more often than not towards a sheer drop into the abyss lying at the edge of each stage.

Initially, you're given a simple 'Turn' command, used to direct the streams of marching folk to their destination, before you need to place 'Jump' and 'Long Jump' commands, or imbue followers with certain properties, like the ability to 'Float' by making them lighter. Later on, you can gather people to activate pressure plate floor panels, push blocks, have them split off into two diverging groups, and so forth. You can place as many commands as you like during Humanity's earlier levels, but soon you'll be challenged to complete stages using a finite number of commands, or by manipulating big conveyor belts that can either shoot the flock off the edge or guide them towards safety. You might have fans to contend with, or stages that have you placing your commands before locking them in place and hitting a switch to start time and watch your handiwork unfold. There's no shortage of variety.

Layers of complexity are gradually added to Humanity with each passing Sequence and its various trials, and collecting statue-like 'Goldy' characters that tower above the marching throng, and successfully escorting them to the goal, unlocks various helpful features. These include being able to pause each trial (although you can't move – it's just a way of taking a breath when things inevitably get a little too manic), retry a stage with any commands previously placed left intact, or fast forward time to get your crowds moving along quickly. These might seem like little cheats and shortcuts, but some later puzzles can be so mind-meltingly convoluted, comprising so many moving parts, that you'll need all the help you can get.

Keeping your stream of humans together as a procession on a path towards the goal can be a tall order, but there's something inherently gratifying about seeing the jostling parade snaking its way towards your target, following the commands you've meticulously laid out. Then there are the smartly executed boss battles, and the levels that demand specific actions, like opening the goal using certain characters. Enhance knows exactly when to mix things up and introduce a new wrinkle to Humanity's people-shepherding conundrums, ensuring you're constantly kept on your toes and your problem-solving nous is always put to the test.

A powerful Stage Creator, meanwhile, enables you to build and edit your own levels, using a comprehensive set of easy-to-use tools, before then unleashing them upon the community. Naturally, you can play levels created by others, so, in essence, Humanity is endlessly replayable – until the servers go dark, you could conceivably be playing user-made trials until your thumbs turn bloody. Then there's the small matter of collecting every single Goldy in each of the main campaign levels, unlocking everything there is to see, be it helpful gameplay aids, bonus models and skins for your followers (hats, anyone? Big heads, perhaps? How about a '70s look?), or a stats page. Yes, you have to unlock the stats menu, for some reason.

Humanity deserves all of the plaudits its release on PlayStation and PC garnered, if only for its delightful and godly canine protagonist – thank goodness it's finally come to Xbox. It's an irrefutable fact that sticking a frog, monkey, or dog in your game automatically improves it tenfold, so well done to Enhance for that. But well done most of all for making Humanity a wonderfully brain-bending, often infuriatingly tricky, but always magnificent puzzle game that's so much more than three-dimensional Lemmings. Humanity is an enigmatic, bravura puzzler that does just about everything right. It's fantastic.