Too Human

When you work as a game reviewer, you come across certain games that make you feel glad to be part of this industry. They’re perfect in every way – gameplay, graphics, plot, level design – and playing them is a highly rewarding experience. Too Human is not such a game.

In development for nearly ten years now, Silikon Knights’ (SK) so called Magnum Opus has been through a pretty horrendous journey. Initially conceptualized for the PlayStation in 1999, the game went on to be delayed considerably, eventually switching platforms after SK joined forces with Nintendo in 2000. That partnership really didn’t do much for them (or the game) and pretty soon SK and Nintendo parted ways with no sign of Too Human on the Gamecube or on the PS2.

In 2005 SK was back in the news after teaming up with Microsoft to develop a Too Human trilogy exclusively for the Xbox360 using the Unreal 3 engine. But as luck would have it the game got embroiled in a bitter lawsuit (against Epic games – the makers of the Unreal 3 engine) and SK had to make the game from scratch using their in-house engine. Was this tedious never-ending cycle worth all the trouble? The answer sadly is a big fat emphatic NO! Here’s why…

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In Too Human you play as Baldur, a Cybernetic Norse God who’s tasked with protecting us petty mortals against unfriendly mechanical creatures hell-bent on the eradication of the human race. The game’s plot is deeply rooted in Norse mythology, only it takes place in the significant future and the Aesir Gods have been enhanced cybernetically for optimum performance. People interested in Norse mythology will definitely lap up everything the game throws at them but for the rest of us simple folk it’s a predictable story about revenge, deceit, and redemption.

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Predictable or not, watching cut scenes that look good and have been choreographed well can be a treat to the eyes, but as it stands Too Human isn’t a good-looking game. Sure, there are certain set pieces that will impress players from time to time, but after stuff like BioShock and Crysis it’s tough to be bowled over by something this mediocre. To make matters worse, a lot of the game’s environments look dull, drab, and repetitive.

What’s that you say? Graphics aren’t everything? I agree 100% but in Too Human the gameplay is nearly as bad as the visuals. Unlike most hack-and-slash games, this one decided to go in for a unique control scheme that falls flat on its face. Instead of allowing players to control Baldur’s melee attacks with the face buttons, players are left struggling with the right analog stick for attacks (move it in any of the four directions to attack in that direction). This may work in a game like Fight Night where you’re up against just one opponent at a time, but in a game that seems to draw inspiration from Serious Sam it’s tragic when you keep dying repeatedly because you never quite felt in control of your character’s moves.

As if dying constantly wasn’t bad enough, Too Human has a nasty habit of shoving its character revival animation down your throat that involves a Valkryie descending from the sky… slowly… retracting her wings… slowly… lifting you up in her arms… slowly… and then rising up to the skies… you guessed it, slowly. As pointed out by someone on the gamingindian forums, this could be SK’s way of disguising load times, but watching this animation play out a zillion times during one play through is beyond frustrating.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention the game’s terrible frame rate that often dips to a mere 5-10FPS, making you die a lot more after which – you guessed it – you’re treated to that horrible unskippable revival animation once again. Le sigh!

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Making combat even more of a chore are the monotonous and repetitive enemy models that you’ll face. Most of the time you’ll mainly come across minions in the form of robotic dogs and goblins, and mini bosses in the form of mechanical spiders and trolls. Also, there are times when you’ll come up against multiple mini bosses at the same time – and what could have been a challenging moment soon becomes an exercise in frustration, thanks to the game’s control scheme and the boss’ ranged attacks.

The game’s obviously been inspired by Devil May Cry but unlike Capcom’s stylish hack-and-slash, Too Human just about allows you to lob your enemies up in the air with your melee weapon and perforate them with bullets before they touch the ground. It’s amusing the first couple of times but after the first level or so it gets stale pretty fast. Another aspect of the game that pissed me off from time to time was the crappy camera that cannot be controlled since the right analog stick controls attacks. God of War did it just fine, but Too Human fails in that respect – just like Ninja Gaiden.

Too Human has been billed as an RPG, and like any other self-respecting RPG on the block it gives you a good amount of options to tinker with. For starters you can choose from one of five classes, which aren’t radically different from each other, but they definitely have distinctive strengths and weaknesses. You have your skill tree that slowly but surely turns your character into a force to reckon with, and most importantly you have the game’s loot system that in all honesty is pretty badass. Every opponent killed drops some sort of armor/weapon that Baldur can use, and the game literally throws thousands of customization options at you.

Too Human performs really well as an RPG but is broken in so many pieces that it’s tough to actually sit and enjoy the game. Throughout my time with the game I’ve gone from feeling angry to nearly breaking my controller to actually enjoying the game to being sad. The sadness was brought on by the fact that somewhere deep down (I mean really deep down) there is a decent game in there. Unfortunately it’s overshadowed by a crappy control scheme, haphazard visuals, monotony, and boredom.

If you can work past all that (props to ya) you MAY enjoy the game; but if you like deriving entertainment from a game as soon as you shove it in your console, stay as far away from this one as possible. Either way there’s a demo of the game floating about on Xbox Live that should give you a fair indication.