Too Human Review:- Norse mythology, Sc-Fi & Fantasy

Too Human is an odd concoction of Norse mythology, Sci-fi, and just a teaspoon of fantasy

By Sith Lord Jim

©2008 Jim McIntyre:

I was at no point prior to playing Too Human at all optimistic about it in any way shape or form. It wasn’t like I was looking at it with a “glass half empty” sort of view either. It was more of a “the glass is completely empty and there’s a clown trying to stab me in the neck” with it sort of thing.

So I guess it is reasonable to say that I had managed to not get caught up in all the positive hype that this title had generated during it’s massive development time. After playing the demo I had so many negative things I wanted to say about this game, but after spending time with the final product I have got to say I’m pleasantly surprised.

Too Human is an odd concoction of Norse mythology, Sci-fi, and just a teaspoon of fantasy. Yet even more odd is that it’s a concoction that seems to work well for it. You play as a Norse god Baldur who, along with the other gods, has to protect humanity from the machines that are attempting to destroy them. The storyline is quite complex, but at the same time really fascinating. It is not up there with something like Bioshock, but the world of Too Human has been crafted in such a way that you will be craving to know more about it.

You have the choice of one of the five classes which are Champion, Bioengineer, Commando, Beserker, and the Defender. If you are familiar with any online RPGs you will surely be familiar with the type of characters available.

The Champion is the air combat specialist, and I felt he was probably the most boring of the lot to actually play as. Bioengineer is the healer, and unless your playing co-op he seemed to be fairly bad at doing anything, but dying. Commando is the ranged class, and is the worst character of the lot because of the horrible aiming system makes shooting anything a rather frustrating experience.

The Beserker seems to be the favourite of most people, it is your DPS (Damage per second) class and deals stacks of damage, moves very fast, and looses health just as fast. The Defender is of course the tank that soaks up all the damage and draws the aggression of the enemies, and he is my personal favourite.

While on the surface Too Human is a hack and slash it also carries a surprising amount of depth. There are a hell of a lot of armour and weapons for you to experiment with and all of them carry different stats and less than a quarter of it is sure to make you look like a fool.

Then if that isn’t enough you can also select runes to insert into them to add more stats. And for the fashion conscience among us you can also insert runes that will change the colour of the armour or weapon. There are also skill trees for each class (think talent trees) and different skill trees depending on whether you go for the human alignment or the cybernetics alignment.

The graphics vary in a quite massive way. There are times where the graphics look extremely dated, but at other times they look quite good. The music is repetitive, annoying, and seems jumbled in a few sections. There was one particular boss fight that I remember not because it was fun or anything, but because the music kept starting over in a very odd and jumbled sort of way.

The combat is done with the right analog stick and tapping it or holding it will give different approaches. It is a tactic that feels very clumsy when you first start to play. 10 hours in and I have found myself finally getting used to it. You also have a few special attacks that will differ depending on what you do in your skill tree.

The camera seems to be the biggest issue in this game and any other problem either stems from this or is compounded by this. It tends to have a mind of its own. And while its obvious that Silicon Knights wanted to make you have to see certain things from certain view points, but its really, really, really frustrating when your in the middle of fighting something and suddenly the viewpoint snaps around and you can’t even see what is killing you. It would be alright if this was not an often occurrence, but it seems nearly every other stair case they want to make you look up, or down it, or wherever your enemy isn’t.

Someone you would love to take home and meet mum . . ? Maybe not . . !

Next complaint would have to be the aiming. By using the right and left triggers you can fire your guns and by using the right stick you can change where your aiming. Well that is the theory, in practise you can aim at things you have already killed and that is about it.

That may be a slight over-exaggeration, but really the aim tends to never want to let go of something it has locked onto and when it does release its lock it often refuses to lock on to any of the enemies that are attempting to bring about your death.

Speaking of death Too Human follows what seems to be an increasing trend in gaming these days, by having a very strong lack of reasons not to die. You have to sit through a scene of your body getting carried away and then you spawn back into the level.

The only repercussions, aside from having to sit through the short death scene, are a small amount of armour damage and a short walk back to the battle. As a bioengineer I found myself simply dying my way through a level. I would spawn, kill a few, die, spawn, and kill a few, and so on till the level was done with.

Play the game and you be the judge . . it is the only REAL way to find out for yourself.

The co-op experience alone makes this a must-buy for anyone who enjoys co-op games. Of course the only thing more fun than looking amazingly cool as you hack up robots is to have a friend there also looking amazingly cool. Although if you do play it co-op it is best to make sure you are both the same level as the enemies scale to the highest levelled player. It does seem that with the classes the way they are, having tanks, dps, healers, and the like, that the game would work better with more than two people.

So I would not say that this is the best game of the year or anything outrageous like that and come November I don’t expect to see many people still playing it, unless they release some DLC. For the type of game that it is there is no alternative on the 360.

It is also the closest we are going to get to a World of Warcraft type experience on Microsoft’s box of doom any time soon. Faults aside I found this to be a very enjoyable game, and I definitely am looking forward to the sequel as long as they fix up the damn camera. Definately not a game that will appeal to everyone, but at the same time a title that should be a crime to not at least give a chance.

“7.9/10

©2008 Jim McIntyre:

Share us