Too Human (Xbox 360)

To put it blandly, Too Human is great if you like that sort of thing. I do, and I did, but I had to adjust my expectations of the game as I went along. I love a good RPG and was seduced by the promise of an action RPG. But it's not really...rather it's an action game with a few, almost cursory, RPG elements bolted on.

Building your character by assigning skill points and scavenging better weapons and armour is fun at first, but it actually became something I just hustled through to get to the next bit of action. "Is that pair of boots better than what I've got...yes...then whack 'em on and let's go!". In the end this didn't matter because the action is brilliant.

The fighting system is really well thought out and put together. It's visually exciting and simple enough that random stick moving and button pressing results in a "Wow! Did I do that?!" type of frenzy. The real satisfaction comes when you've learnt a bit more control and actually create the the machine-splattering havoc you meant to.

The graphics and visuals are all good. It's a structured game rather than go anywhere one and it can feel a bit samey, but the nice touches give you something different now and again - for example, I thought the plaforms that flung you across huge gaps were a fun and different inclusion.

The storyline is a simple but different quirk on norse mythology, but again I ended up trying to race through the between action scenes to get to the next fight. Options to jump directly to the feasting hall/armoury/arsenal would be a really useful addition. Not a criticism but in many ways all I would've needed by way of instruction is 'norse god - loki bad - kill machines - level up - better weapons and armour - kill more machines - go!'

What it comes down to in the end is playability, and this game has it by the bucketload. I may have been drawn in by the supposed RPG element, but I ended up loving the action game. If you're the sort of person who thinks that Sensible World of Soccer on the Amiga was one of the best games ever then you'll know what I'm talking about when I say playability is king. Too Human should really be a pick up and go game. I admit that the RPG stuff does add another element - not least that without it Too Human would be unbearably short - and it pulls in all us RPG freaks who want out character to be the bestest ever, but perhaps that's best left to WoW.

The action part of the game is the dominant partner and that is Too Human's saving grace because it's excellently playable.

Until now I've never bothered to review a game, but my conscience compels me to warn others about Too Human...

I've clocked in well over 200 hours on it, with one complete epic armour set (class specific) and a few other epic pieces for other character builds, not to mention numerous epic weapons.

So I'm not complaining just for the sake of it - I've given this game more than a fair chance to endear itself to me.

However, that said I can't recommend Too Human to anybody but the extremely dedicated action role-playing, loot obsessed fraternity. The game's negatives seem to outweigh the positives, demanding too much from even the hard-core gamer. Bottom-line: a game should be 'fun' to play, and this seldom is. And don't confuse 'fun' with the addictive nature of loot hunting.

The learning curve is high, with various game concepts (e.g. runes, charms, statistical intricacies, etc.) insuffciently or poorly explained, necessitating undue trial & error or the player having to search online for the relevant information.

The camera on whichever setting is absolutely dreadful, requiring constant manual readjustment and can all too often lead to premature death in the heat of battle.

The control scheme is unintuitive but more importantly, imprecise, which leaves certain character classes at an unfair disadvantage.

The lack of customisation options for the epic armour sets (class specific) is, in my opinion, a stupid game design decision, as is the inability to change or swap out armour/weapon upgrades (is it really necessary to make players spend another 25-50 hours hunting for specific loot because earlier they made a bad upgrade decision or changed their mind about how they want to enhance their armour/weapons?)

The game fails to distinguish whether you're playing solo or co-op online, and thus does not accordingly adjust the type of loot to suit your character class. So if you're mostly a solo player, be prepared to receive a lot of utterly useless loot for your time and effort.

The developers expect you to suffer through so much tedium and frustration for what is ultimately (in gameplay terms) not that much of a beneficial reward, i.e. the epic armour sets.

And there are so many other annoyances - top of my list is that your superhuman character can be a veritable blur of fury in the midst of combat but the rest of the time can only traverse the large vacuous levels at a snail-pace jog, leading to god knows how many hours of wasted time (why??!!); the enemies level too close to your own character's progression detracting from any lasting sense of becoming a more powerful and effective combatant; there's a dire lack of enemy variety; animations are clunky; silly examples of 'clipping' on the main character model, etc...

I won't get into the story, voice-acting, mythology, etc. as this game was supposed to be the first installment in a planned (now probably scrapped) trilogy.

In light of how over-hyped it was, I think this game deserved the poor critical reception. And the subsequent poor sales probaby reflect that and will hopefully discourage other developers from making such a fundamentally flawed finished product.

I respect the efforts of those who collectively worked on this title as I'm sure it wasn't their intention to make a mediocre game, and I wish them better luck next time.

Tip for newbies: use internet searches to provide invaluable information about various in-game concepts, gameplay, etc. A really useful place to start might be (e.g. the 'Armor Compendium' from Silicon Knights community threads), it'll no doubt save you considerable wasted hours and lot of grief.

I'm 80 hours into Too Human now, not bad for a storyline that can be completed in 10-15 hours.

You play the part of Baldur, one of the Aesir 'Gods' charged with protecting mankind. When a mechanical monster decides to visit the local pub to drink some of the patrons blood Baldur gets involved in the quest to hunt him down and see what's making him tick. You're thrown in at the deep end, and during your first mission in the Hall of Heroes you'll experience some neat cutbacks via flashbacks to fill you in on more of the story which will take you through Svartelheim's Ice Forest, a trip to the World Serpent, Hel and back, with some side-trips to cyberspace and Aesir inbetween.

It's basically an action-RPG, but it's definitely not the usual button-mashing you'd associate with games like Champions of North or Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. Too Human is unique in the genre for the use of the analogue sticks for combat. Point the right stick in the direction of an enemy and if you're close enough you'll slide in and start to attack. In conjunction with the left stick you can perform several additional moves both on the ground and in the air, on top of which you have a few extra abilities that can be called upon if you've built up enough of your combo meter.

Timing your abilities and building up your combo meter are the key to success, and it took me about 30 hours to get the balance between building up a combo meter quickly and unleashing devastating abilities when they were absolutely tactically necessary rather than wasting them. Herein lies the depth of Too Human's combat: you'll find by the end of the first level that you've got the controls down pat, it's at the start of the second level that the difficulty ramps up and you have to start using them effectively, which catches a lot of people out.

On the RPG side of things, it's all about the 'phat lewt' and the stats, and there are oodles of both to be getting on with. Inventory management is simplified by being able to instantly 'salvage' different ranks of loot into Bounty, the ingame currency. There are several ranks of equipment from common to elite ranging in colour from white, green, blue, purple, orange and red, and some of these armor and weapon pieces come in 'sets' which give added bonuses if you equip them all.

Stat-wise you have not one but two skilltrees, your class skilltree (Berserker, Defender, Bioengineer, Champion and Commando, take your pick), and your alignment skilltree which you access after completion of the first level (human or cybernetic). You get a total of 95 skillpoints to distribute in all of your tree nodes, not enough to max them all out so you have to get selective and choose a path, which basically leads to 30 variants of main classes, which can be tweaked further suit your gameplay.

Affecting both your loot and stats are the Charm system and Runes. Runes can be socketed into your equipment, and there are over 100 types, each affecting stats like ballistic range, strength, dexterity, specific weapon damage, rate of fire and so on. Charms (of which you can equip 2) have to have associated quests completed and appropriate runes inserted before they become active, and at the endgame you get charms that can leech life, destroy whole hordes of enemies in one go, stun, freeze, emp pulse and so on.

For lovers of Norse myth you shouldn't be disappointed by the storyline. All the main characters are there (Thor, Heimdall, Freya, Hod, Loki, Fenrir, Norns, Garm, Hel and so on) although you might be pleasantly surprised by the plot departures from the original verses.

Personally I love the game to bits, I racked up about 200 hours in Two Worlds, a few years in Diablo II, ditto for Final Fantasy XI, WoW, PSU and too many others to mention. Too Human's replayability comes in the form of getting to the level 50 cap using the standard campaign map of variants of the same available after the game's first completion, as well as 2-player online co-op (no systemlink or co-op offline, sorry), as well as frequent trips to the Armor and Weapon shops in Aesir to stock up on fresh runes and to check if there are any nice reds on sale this session.

The most challenging achievement is probably to collect a full 7-piece red set (6 armor pieces and a weapon specific to your class/alignment) as this can literally take you 100s of hours of goblin thwacking troll whacking spider smacking elf attacking obelisk sacking fun. Add in a few timed arenas to check you're up to scratch, secret hidden areas, a kicking battle-music soundtrack (replete with jet engines as percussion) and that 'never sure what's around the next corner' element to the level layouts and you'll be loot hunting well into the small hours.

Highly addictive, hammered by most of the games press, loved by me. 9.5/10.