Too Human (Xbox 360) Review
Too Human is the first game in a planned trilogy for Xbox 360 by Canadian developers Silicon Knights, (whose previous developments include some notable titles such as Blood Omen:Legacy of Kain, Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem and Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes.) Too Human is a 3rd person RPG where you play Baldur, a cybernetically enhanced warrior set in a world based on what can only be described as a sort of “Alternate earth” where Norse mythology is the only present religion, and the human race is in an epic battle with machines to restore what once was.
Review after the break.
The storyline in Too Human so far goes like this, the player takes on the role of Baldur, one of a group of people called the Aesir. In Too Human, the Aesir take the roles of the Norse Gods, cybernetically enhanced by ODIN, (The Organically Distributed Intelligence Network) these humans were created to save mankind from the machine presence. As Baldur, one of the “sons” of ODIN, it is your duty to protect the human race from an onslaught of the advancing machine presence that is determined to eradicate all human life. Also in the story is the worlds of “Cyberspace” and your actions in this world have various effects on the electrical and machine mechanisms in the real world.
The environments in Too Human really do vary in quality; the game world in some areas really is a beautiful sight, with 1080P graphics some of the environments really are a credit to the console, and the video sequences are a credit to the world that the developers have created…BUT, I did say vary in places and I have to admit some of the sequences were terrible, a good example was when some of the Gods are eating around a table, and the facial hair of one of the character models seemed to float a few millimeters off his face. Animation is also an issue with character models too, with models moving through each other, and when in “Cyberspace” some of the “Gifts” you acquire involve moving objects, and the animation that accompanies Baldur interacting really is bad. On more than one occasion the character barely leans back to mimic a pushing motion and a boulder launches itself at greatly unrealistic speeds into objects, but this is just me picking at faults. It doesn’t really make the game any less enjoyable, it’s just something that I feel could have been paid more attention.
Game play for any game is (arguably) the most important ingredient in the unwritten formula to making a “Good game” and opinions are always something to take into account when discussing it. But before I get into the mechanics though, the games camera deserves a mention… for being one of the most useless cameras I have ever been forced to endure. The camera works separately from the rest of the game in the sense it seems to be looking at something more interesting than you for the majority of the time you’re moving, and at any given point in a fight it may decide to bugger off and go admire the beautiful invisible butterflies that only it can see, but back to the point. The primary style for Too Human is a role-playing system, where experience is used to level up, gain new abilities, use new equipment and so on and so forth. But this where Too Human is differs is that Too Human uses this RPG base, and uses a dynasty warriors style hack and slash method to actually gain exp, and players gain equipment by hording (unreasonably large) amounts of loot, and a huge problem with this game is the amount of time spent exploring the menu systems trying to find the best equipment you can have, with literally every fight resulting in a new item of some description and item names which hold no relevance to the equipment you may have just received. By hour 10 I realized that anything that wasn’t a blueprint, and had a name like “fantastic shock boots of giant erection with +10% blunt resistance and +3% bedsheet stains” was probably useless, and didn’t warrant my attention until 3 fights later when the inventory is full…
This game’s sound quite surprised me to be honest, I use Dolby 5.1, and although it does always add that extra something into games Too Human took sound and made it a real and unexpected treat to hear. The weapons types all have their own unique sounds, and dialogue between characters was not often repeated, Explosions have a reassuring bass too them, and when a large fight kicks off I found the huge variations in sound to be how I would imagine being surrounded by a crowd of mechanical creatures to really be.
Too Human will has no real half way point for lasting appeal. Anyone who was a fan of the Phantasy Star (Offline) games will find a familiar feel, and understand the love or hate relationship it held, I can’t stress enough how misunderstood this game actually was and I really do understand the mixed reviews, but back to the point. Anyone else who’s a fan of the One Vs All style where you can take on hordes of enemies and smile as you, single handed, annihilate an entire army and find increasingly better equipment to use against enemies who (to a certain degree) change and adapt to your character and his decisions in the game will also enjoy this game for a while. Too be honest though, anyone who finds the game repetitive the first time around will not really find much to enjoy the second time through either. The game can be fairly repetitive and the storyline is only new once, which brings me to the multiplayer. The two player story (4 was originally intended, but didn’t work for whatever reason and never made the final cut.) Anyone who ventures into the two player story will be soon realize they have been deprived of the entire storyline, with all video sequences removed and anything to explain the plot left blank. The two player mode is really just for the enjoyment of being with a friend, and gives you extra enemies to fight to compensate for the added help while being generally more fun than the single.
To bring this review to an end, a few things have to be said. The game is far from bug free, and on more than one occasion with the two players mode my-self and Viatrophy had to quit out mid-mission. Other bugs included Viatrophy getting stuck in the pause menu and having to save the game to get out, enemy Trolls randomly disappearing mid animation, frame rate issues were frequent in large fights and on two occasions our screens went completely black until we found a door to walk through. This game then, is far from buggy and definitely not to anyone’s taste. And literally half the reviews from other websites it received were poor. But I think that this game isn’t necessarily bad, just miss-understood. In fact, when discussing this game the best description me and Viatrophy could come up with was “Marmite” And any gamer who enjoys these Marmite games such as (Earth defense force 2017, Tetris, Shadowrun) should defiantly give this a try.
Story– 8.5
Graphics – 7
Gameplay – 7
Sound – 8.4
Lasting appeal – 7
Overall score – 7.6
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