Before I start this review, let me give you a little back story how I got this game. It was late November, I had just gotten cable and the G4 network OnDemand. For those of you who don't know what this is, it lets you play shows whenever you want from your TV. So you could watch South Park whenever you want without having to go to YouTube or Veoh. But, anyway, I tended to look at the game reviews G4 put out, and one of them was for the game called Too Human. This game had been in creation for 10 years, and according to the G4 staff, it was an excellent hack-n-slash title, giving it a 4 out of 5. Needless to say, I was intrigued. A few weeks later, I was cruising the local GameStop, and I spotted a lone used Too Human copy for 34.99. "What luck! A newer title, and a good one at that, for only 35 bucks.", so I bought it... and what a monumental disappointment it was.
The Graphics: It can be summed up into one word: pretty. I have no issues with the graphics in this game. They're quite stunning and well rendered, with character models being extremely detailed, and environments looking beautiful and well designed. If you want me to nit-pick however, I do have an issue with some of the weapons and armor. Some of them look rather boring, while others are just so gaudy they're hard to look at, and they're is some minor clipping with the graphics, but it isn't very noticeable.
The Sound: The music in this game, at least in my opinion, is pretty "Meh". I really didn't find too much enjoyment in it. The voice acting, however, ranges from decent to down right hilariously bad, while some characters have voice actors that can portray emotion well, others are just bland and boring. The sound effects are pretty standard fare, you have your grunts, shouts, sword slashes, gun shots, you get the idea. Once again, they are nothing spectacular, and are pretty boring.
The Plot: Take two part Norse mythology, two parts cyberpunk, and one part global apocalypse, and you have Too Human's setting. Here is the basic synopsis: in the bleak future, man has been driven to the brink of extinction by a race of war-machines. In this dark future, a small ray of hope comes in the form of The Aesir, a group of super-enhanced cyborgs who fight against the machines to keep humanity from going extinct. You play as Baldur, a recently rescued Aesir whose is trying to get back into the game of machine slaying. To say this game is flooding with Norse mythology references would be an understatement, they're all over the damn place! This is both good, and bad. Its good because Norse mythology is pretty interesting, but its also bad because it doesn't seem to mix well with a sci-fi atmosphere. The story is fairly interesting though, as far as most titles go anyway.
The Game Play: Oh boy. Where to begin...? Well, lets start with the good aspects. If its one thing this game has lots of, its customization! It has 5 classes to choose from, and each one has its own skill tree and abilities, and also you can choose between enhancements, either human or cybernetic. Taking the human tree allows you to deal out more damage in the way of combos, while the cyber tree makes you tougher and able to use bigger guns. Also, they're are things called "Runes" in the game, which you can apply to yourself to make your weapons stronger, or make you tougher, and a variety of other fun things like elemental procs, status effects, ect. ect.. Now, you might be saying "Oh, that doesn't sound so bad!", but since I got all the good stuff outta the way.. Onto the not-so-good stuff.
Unlike in most hack-n-slash titles, you don't use the buttons to attack at all; instead you use the joystick. The idea is that if you want to attack a certain enemy all you have to do is move the joy stick towards them and you would attack in that direction. This sounds nice, but in practice it sucks. Some of the time, you end up swinging blindly in the air just missing your target, or you just end up swinging in the complete opposite direction altogether. While annoying, it only gets worse when you throw in a horrid targeting system. Lets say your mobbed by enemies (and this happens a lot), and you want to attack a certain one, but instead of hitting the one you want, you'll hit the one right beside it, or in front of it. This problem is especially noticed when using guns, as its next to impossible to actually target the enemy you want to hit, making them all but useless, which eliminates one class from being playable. Now while we're talking about classes... The classes, except for a few small differences, play the exact same way. No different move sets per class, no cool specialty combos, no nothing. The only thing that makes them different is that one can use a shield, while one can dual wield, and another can heal (sort of). Now, lets talk about the level setup, it can pretty much be broken into this: Step 1: Walk into room, Step 2: Get attacked by tons of enemies, Step 3: Attack enemies, Step 4a: Die, respawn, and go to step 3, Step 4b: Move to next room and repeat. Sounds exciting doesn't it? Now, this wouldn't be so bad if you didn't die so much in this game! What makes it worse is that when you die, your forced to sit through a 60 second scene of a cyber-valkyire coming down, picking you up and taking you off to some unknown local, then you appear back in the room and guess what? You CANNOT skip it, ever; so every time you die your stuck watching this damn cut scene for a full minute, unable to do anything at all. Now, the developers were nice enough to put in two ways of healing in the game.. One being little orbs on the ground that drop randomly from enemies, and the healing class. No potions to speak of in this title, because that would be too convenient. Also, you cannot block and you cannot parry. I did mention that they're was a class that could use a shield, but guess what, you can't block with that either. The only way to avoid damage is this tacky dodge-roll which doesn't work half the time. This would be acceptable if you weren't fighting a ton of enemies at once, as they tend to surround and rip you apart. So, what really happens is this war of attrition where you keep dying and respawning till their are no enemies left to kill and you can move onto the next room. Now, I don't want to rant about items and such, but let me sum that up by saying this: don't bother getting attached to any piece of equipment, you'll replace it in ten minutes anyway, and if you don't, your screwed.
The Aftermath: As you can tell, I am less than pleased with this game. To say it infuriates me is an understatement. What really kills me is that Silicon Knights, the company making this game, took 10 years to make this game. If a game is 10 years into development, it better damn well be enjoyable, if not perfect. This game is neither of those things. Instead, its a horrid title that will haunt your nightmares to the grave. Also, after this game, I've lost some respect to syndicated reviewers, because they obviously didn't even bother to play this game if they gave it such a good score.
My Suggestion: Do.. Not.. Play.. It.. EVER! If some gives you the choice between playing Too Human and stabbing you with a rusty fork, take the fork! At least that will only hurt for a little bit. However, if you really want to play this game, rent it first.
Subject: Cookie Reviews: Too Human 
Fri Jul 03, 2009 5:39 am
