Alright, let’s talk about this whole Once Human crossplay thing. I’d been hearing the buzz, you know? Everyone hyping it up, “play with anyone, anywhere!” Sounded great on paper, like most things these days. So, naturally, I decided to dive in and see what the fuss was all about, get my hands dirty.
My Great Cross-Platform Expedition
First things first, I got the game installed on my PC. Smooth sailing, mostly. Then I messaged my friend, Dave, who’s stubbornly sticking to his console. “Get Once Human,” I said, “we’re gonna conquer the wasteland together, cross-platform style!” He was game. That was the easy part, the talking.
The actual process? Well, that’s where my “practical record” really begins.
We both fired up the game. The initial hurdle was figuring out the whole account linking mess. You’d think it’d be straightforward, but nope.
Here’s a little rundown of our first evening:
- Spent a good 20 minutes just trying to find where to add each other. The UI felt like it was designed by someone who’d never actually tried to invite a friend on a different system.
- I sent an invite. Dave didn’t get it. He sent one. I saw nothing. We restarted our games. We restarted our systems. The classic tech support dance.
- Eventually, somehow, an invite appeared. Success? Not quite. Getting into the same actual game world, the same server instance, that was the next boss battle.
I remember thinking, “Is this the future of gaming, or am I just stuck in some beta test I didn’t sign up for?” It felt like a lot of the backend stuff wasn’t quite talking to each other properly. You’d get vague error messages, or just… nothing would happen. Very reassuring.
The Nitty-Gritty of Making it (Sort of) Work
So, after that first frustrating night, I was determined. I’m not one to give up easily, especially when I’ve set aside perfectly good gaming time. I started digging around online, seeing if others were hitting the same walls. Turns out, I wasn’t alone. Shocking, I know.
What I pieced together, mostly through trial and error and reading desperate forum posts, was a kind of ritual we had to perform:
- One person (usually me, because I’m stubborn) would log in first.
- Wait a specific, unspecified amount of time. Like letting dough rise.
- The other person would then log in.
- Send invites through the game’s system, then maybe also through the platform’s own friend system as a backup.
- If it didn’t work, both log out completely, maybe make a cup of tea, then try again.
It wasn’t scientific, but it seemed to improve our chances from “impossible” to “merely improbable.” Voice chat was another adventure. Sometimes it worked through the game, sometimes we just gave up and used Discord like everyone else. It felt like the crossplay feature was bolted on as an afterthought, not baked in from the start. You could feel the seams.
There was this one session where Dave could hear me, but I couldn’t hear him. His character was emoting wildly, and I was just guessing what he was trying to say. Made for some… interesting tactical decisions, let me tell you. “Are you dying, or did you find a cool hat?” That sort of thing.
So, What’s the Verdict?
Look, when it did work, when we were finally in the same game, running around, doing our thing, it was pretty cool. The promise of crossplay is definitely appealing. Teaming up with buddies regardless of their plastic box of choice is what we all want, right?
But getting there with Once Human, at least in my experience, was a bit more of a trek than I anticipated. It wasn’t the seamless, “it just works” experience some of the marketing might have you believe. It took patience. It took persistence. And it took a willingness to fiddle with things that, frankly, should have been smoother.
I guess my main takeaway from this whole endeavor is that “crossplay” is a great buzzword, but the actual implementation is where the rubber meets the road. And sometimes, that road is pretty bumpy. So, if you’re jumping into Once Human hoping for flawless cross-platform action from minute one, just, you know, manage your expectations. Pack some snacks for the troubleshooting sessions. You might need ’em.
