Too Human Review

Ah can’t you just visualize it now? It’s the year 2001; we just got over Y2K and the three consoles from last gen have just been released. Ah yes, picture them now in their splendor. The Nintendo GameCube, the PS2, and the one this review concerns: the Xbox.

Too Human
Developer: Silicon Knights
Platform: Xbox 360 (reviewed)
Ah yes, all three had finally perfect 3D gaming in the way past gens couldn’t dream of. Now keep envisioning this wondrous sight: it’s Christmas morning, you run out to see Santa left you a Monstervine t-shirt and an Xbox Console with its lead launch title Too Human. Wait a second that came out this year! I was thinking of good ol’ Halo: Combat Evolved.

Too Human is a game developed by Silicon Knights and directed by the legendary (not great in this case) Dennis Dyack. Now, most critics will be harsh on this game because it supposedly been in development for over ten years. However, I disagree. The idea had been in the thought process and tech demo process during those ten years, the actual game has only been in development for two years. Thus, we shouldn’t use the time put into the game as an excuse to pick on it, the game gives us enough reasons to do so.

In Too Human, you take on the role of a sci-fi Norse god by the name of Baldur. Now, in the really Norse mythology, Baldur was a pussy. Since, there are enough pussies in the world of gaming, Silicon Knights made the decision to turn him into a more self-concerned god that fights for the people (hypocrisy noted). The only way you can actually know that though is by taking the time to listen to the citizens of Asgard or taking the time to watch the intro to the game. That leads perfectly to the problem concerning the plot of this game: There is no character development at all. I think Silicon Knights honestly expects people to read (or care) about Norse mythology because they take all the characters and talk about them like we already know who they are like they’ve taken care of us since birth. This can be a good thing, but you actually have to give the characters personality and maybe show them once or twice. Dyack clearly did not get the memo, since they talk about one character like his betrayal was a big f*cking deal and we never met him. Actually, I’ve got absolutely no right to single out the man being the most repetitive boss fight in history; they do this with all the characters(that is make them boring, lacking personality, and killing them off before we have reason to give a sh*t) except Loki, who still turned out to be a disappointment. This is the main reason the plot of this game is so terrible. The game may give you the ability to summon spiders, but never will it give you the ability to care about anything going on. The plot was fairly well written and if just presented without horrible boring characters, terrible cut scenes (that’s my next paragraph), and repeated dialogue it could have done the trick.

The one aspect of Too Human that makes me believe this game was made for the Xbox back in 2001: the graphics. Many claim this game’s graphics are on par with the graphics of Mass Effect. In truth, that is only at its best. I played this game on a 1080p HD TV and honestly, the games graphics can swap anywhere from between Mass Effect glory or Halo: Combat Evolved ancient. It really will get that bad during some scenes. Also, you would never believe these were the same developers that made Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes, since the character movements in that game’s scenes were phenomenal. You would honestly believe those characters were from the Matrix or a Die Hard movie, and even though the game was not meant for those, it was fairly enjoyable. Now that Silicon Knights has the freedom to make GODS move around at the speed of light and do cool moves, the characters could not be stiffer nor slower. Another technical issue that just grinded my gears were the framerate and game speed. The framerate could not sustain itself… ever. It dropped constantly and just made the game annoying. As far game speed goes, if too many enemies were on screen (ohh believe me they will) the game will either slow down es rapido or freeze all together. All in all, the technical stuff for this game were just disappointing, especially when you look at their past projects like Metal Gear Solid Twin Snakes and Eternal Darkness.

Can a brother get a drum roll please? This is the part of the review where I talk about the most important thing: the game play. Admit it, if you looked into this game at least once you would notice how badass this could have been. The game play was advertised to be a mix of Devil May Cry with an aiming system and Diablo. Honestly, this could not be farther from what actually was made. While the ideas are noticeable, they certainly were lost along the way. First off, who the f*ck keeps trying to give the right analog stick schizophrenia? Let it control the camera at all times, never let it be in charge of combat over buttons. As you can guess, Too Human uses the right analog stick to control whatever melee weapon you have equipped to fend off the baddies and honestly, it doesn’t work nearly as well as button combinations do. I am sorry Silicon Knights, but who are thee to put down Devil May Cry? Buttons are the way to go, always. Second off, the shooting system is controlled in this game by pressing LT and RT depending on the weapon. For example, if you have dual pistols LT will control the left one and RT will control the right one. If you have a rifle, RT will be doing the shooting and LT will be secondary fire. The right analog stick will be doing the aiming. This sounds great, like they gave a TPS shooting system right in an action RPG. Again, they opened the window and threw it. The aiming makes homeless people on the side of the road look loaded and the gun damage is just plain horrible. Seriously, it’s like going to the back of a grocery store and looking in the dumpster for spoiled pea’s to put in the clip. For third, valkyries are annoying, why put them in? For four, who the f*ck was in their right idea when they put valkyries into this game?!?! For those who don’t know, when you die in this game you activate the most horrible death animation ever of all time. A thing called a valkyrie comes out of the sky, does six cross word puzzles to make sure this is the longest, unskipable thirty second death animation ever, picks you up, and drags your lifeless corpse to heaven then you respawn! It’s pointless to see, and honestly, this a major turn off for the game considering how sometimes they will just throw sixty over powered enemies at you all at once, so you will see lot’s of miss valkyrie. All in all, the game play here is just all around bad. The co-op skips through the story (though this is really a savior), items are randomized drops, there is no free roaming to get these drops, the enemies level with you meaning you are always f*cked no matter how godly you are, the environments are rep-the same throughout the whole game, and it’s honestly just a big seizure.

Too Human is a game that proves ideas aren’t bullet proof (sorry V). In this game you will see the problems of not being human enough in the cut scenes yet not being godly enough in the game play to save your ass from being put on hold by a valkyrie. The game is more repetitive than Space Invaders and has more re-appearing environments than space invaders too. The graphics and framerate jump around worse than a recent Sonic game too.

The Final Word

Although the first level is pretty sweet and how the rest of the game should have played out and co-op isn’t that bad, I honestly think Silicon Knights made the first level great, and then used the rest of the game as a social experiment to see just how good a horrible game with endless hype would sell.

– MonsterVine Rating: 2 out of 5 – Poor

Were you confused by this review? If so, that is exactly how the game will feel!