[Game Review] Too Human

Some people say there's no such thing as bad publicity. Of course, people say lots of things, and not all of them are right. If Too Human by Silicon Knights is any indication, they're wrong about this bad publicity thing too.

Too Human had been floating around as a concept for a good while now. Originally planned as a game for the original Playstation, one can only guess what that game would have been like. In my idealistic dreams, I like to think of it as a traditional isometric action-RPG, with the atmosphere of Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain and the addictive gameplay of the Diablo series.

Regardless of what might have been, the Too Human we got is still an action-RPG, only it emphasizes more on the action part, with the ability of pulling off huge combos. The analogy I like is that Too Human feels like a (clumsy) combination of Devil May Cry and Phantasy Star Online. The emphasis on gathering more and better loot is also here, similar to the Diablo games, although the various categories of loot are shamelessly ripped from World of Warcraft, with the colors white, green, blue, purple, orange and red* denoting progressively better loot, exactly as in Blizzard's game.

I mentioned bad publicity earlier, and that's what this game was getting long before its release. Not from professional gaming journalists originally, but rather from gaming enthusiasts in forums such as NeoGAF. This in turn opened up a whole different can of worms, recall the 1UP Yours podcast with Silicon Knight's Dennis Dyack if you will, but that's not something I'd like to get into right now. At any rate, this early yet very negative word of mouth was what made the release of a demo a necessity, though it's hard to tell if the demo worked for better or worse, given the game's scope and ambition.

You can't fault Too Human for being ambitious, Hell, it claims to be the first part in an "epic trilogy"** that's to be finished by 20XX, where XX stands for "God only knows". Sadly, though ambition can sometimes be a fantastic driving force, it's also a main ingredient in any good recipe for destruction. It feels like Silicon Knights got themselves into something bigger than they could handle, since even aspects where they usually excel at (voice acting and storytelling) are surprisingly mediocre this time around.

That's not to say it's an awful game that has no redeeming features, so without further ado...

Things Too Human does right:

- Loot-based gameplay is always addictive, and quite fun. The game successfully teases you with pretty items from the first fifteen minutes, and it never stops on giving.

- Online two-player co-op is fun with a friend, if you get two classes that complement each other well. Sadly, playing the game cooperatively means that you don't get to see a single cutscene throughout the game.

- Once you get the hang of it, the gameplay is pretty smooth and fun, and once you get in a rhythm, you'll be dispatching foes left and right with ease. Sadly, it takes a while before that happens, and that is rather disappointing. Which leads us to...

Things about Too Human that suck:

- The control system. It's been discussed back and forth since the release of the demo, and some people argue that a dungeon-crawler such as Too Human just wouldn't work if you just had to mash the A button over and over.

I agree with this statement, though I fail to see how tying a bunch of moves to the right analog stick works better. It's clumsy, unintuitive and takes far too long getting used to. And this is coming from someone who played 2D fighters on the Dreamcast D-pad without problems.

- The graphics are really, really bland. Not only from a technical point of view, though the rather low number of polygons doesn't help, but mainly from a design point of view. Stages are composed of huge empty corridors, with uninspiring architecture, while the characters and enemies themselves are at best completely unspectacular, while others look utterly ridiculous. My favorite would be Fenrir, which looks more like an angry chicken than a cybernetic wolf***.

- The second stage of the game, Ice Forest, is atrocious. It's far too long, in fact it's longer than the rest of the game combined. Seriously, the game took me 10 hours to complete and 6 of those hours were spent on Ice Forest alone. To make matters worse, it's badly designed, with either huge breaks in the action, or huge segments where you don't get a second to breathe between enemy waves.

- The story likes to think it's much smarter than it really is. I can't get into many details since the game is still pretty new and I'd like to avoid spoilers, so I'll be brief. First of all, the whole idea of the Norse gods portrayed as technologically advanced individuals is not as original as it believes, and it's also presented in a very superficial manner (Odin has a secretary? Really?)

Moreover, nothing really happens story-wise until the very end of the game, where things simply get messy. Solliloquies filled with self-righteousness, enough angst to rival Kratos, an ending that leaves too many questions unanswered... You get the idea. If the rest of the game was top-notch, these would be mere footnotes, but as it stands, it makes the game feel pretentious.

- While you get fancy and shiny items from the get-go, if you want to get the absolute best item sets in the game, you'll have to grind yourself retarded. And while some people enjoy grinding, given the game's short length, I'm not sure if anyone will be willing to visit the same four areas over and over again.

Things I just don't get:

- Seriously, whose idea was it to cut all cutscenes from the multiplayer campaign? I know the game is supposed to be a loot-based dungeon crawler, but that's way too fucking cynical.

- For a game that's copying so many games which are played (either predominantly or exclusively) online, the fact that Too Human's multiplayer is limited to two players is mind-boggling. Dyack claimed this was the only way to keep the game balanced, but I'm not buying it.

Hell, balance, shmalance. If you could play this game with two more people, it would have been much more fun thanks to cooperation/communication, even if you just breezed through the entire thing.

- I also don't get what happened with the voice acting. Silicon Knights consistently provided with some of the best voice acting in the field, yet this time around, it varies from underwhelming to "just okay". I guess it's a side-effect of the silly storyline.

- Don't even get me started on the Valkyrie/Death sequence.

The above signify that on George's Intention-Meter, Too Human receives of the title of:

Superfluous Monkey

TL;DR version:

Yes, in all fairness I had already declared my opinion of this game in my review manifesto, but Too Human is an interesting case that demands further investigation. It is, in a few words, a decent game which would like to think of itself the equivalent of sliced bread.

This is painfully obvious during its groan-inducing cutscenes, which feel more like punishment and less like reward after fighting yet another wave of identical looking baddies.

*Although we never actually got artifacts ("red" items) in WoW, they existed as a concept originally.

**I dream that one day we'll never get an "epic trilogy of whatever" ever again.

***Seriously, a cybernetic wolf. How can anyone fuck that one up?