Too Human - Xbox 360

[WSGrundy]

Not a big game reviewer myself but I felt it was my duty to let people know about this one. I also understand if you want this is too long to read but I just need to vent.

Too Human is a diablo like hack and slash set in futuristic norse mythology. The basic idea is that gods are actually people who have learned how to enhance themselves with cybernetics to make them seem like gods next to the regular humans they have sworn to protect. The bad guys are Loki and a Matrix like machine race and the various units are called trolls,dark elfs, goblins, etc. I am not 100% on the whole story because even after playing it I still don't know what the hell is going on. From what I understand what would be our(mine and your) future generations depended on machines and then they started fighting and then the machines became aware and started to fight against us. Kind of like the terminator. Kind of hacky but I am still geeky enough to get behind the idea of futuristic norse mythology.

The problem is that it sucks. The whole game is a bunch of really cheesy/manly one liners. Like the film 300 only not anywhere near as fun or cool. They don't explain anything like what is up with your dead wife. I just have no idea what was going on with her or the other characters like the traitor and who some of the people are. The game tells part of the story with real time conversations between you and other characters but it is done while fight is happening so you can't always hear it, or pay attention to it, or be close enough to the character to hear them. There are other time where there are cut scenes that don't make any sense. One time a regular human soldier was pulling his wounded friend along with him while being attacked by the undead. A Valkyrie comes down to take the now dead soldier to heaven but also grabs the living soldier and pulls him up also. Why I don't know, I don't know if the living soldier had proved his bravery and was being taken to heaven as a reward or perhaps he was already dead and hallucinating the whole thing. This happens a bunch where stuff just happens and you get no explanation or anything. It ends with no story elements being tied up and a cliffhanger because of course this is suppose to be a trilogy but the game sucks so bad I don't see how I am going to play the next two.


On to the gameplay. You use the left stick to move around and the right stick to attack. You push the right stick in the direction you want to swing and that is where you go. The problem is you don't control the camera so you are at the mercy of seeing what the AI thinks is important. The AI is an idiot you are always looking the wrong way and you never know what is around you so you are never sure where to attack next. The targeting is also automated somewhat and it sucks. There are these suicide enemies that blow up(look identical to the Uruk-hai that blows up Helms Deep) so you must shoot them before they reach you. Problem is there are always dozens of enemies on the screen and the game thinks that locking on the the cannon fodder is more important so the guy always reaches you and blows up. There are also mini bosses that continuously spawn enemies until they are killed, again the targeting thinks it is more important to spend your time attacking the never ending horde of monsters then the guy who keeps spawning them. I spent an hour in one area because I kept dying and couldn't target get close to the mini bosses.

Speaking of dying, each time you do a Valkyrie comes down from the heavens stands above you then picks you up and you both fly to heaven. You then respawn with some damage to your equipment a bit farther away. This whole process takes about 22 secs is always the same and since you will being dying every few minutes during some points of the game it happens all the time. I may have spent 30-40mins watching this scene during the whole 12 hours it took me to finish the game. It sucks.

Then there are the bosses. When you start the game you can focus on melee, guns(range), healing, defense, or balance. I chose melee which is a must because of the thousands of exact copy monsters that are going to rush your throughout the whole game. Problem is the 3 of the 4 bosses and one in particular seem to have been designed to be fought with guns. So if you choose guns then you are OK during the boss fights but will never make it to the boss because guns suck against the horde of monster and if you choose melee then you are OK against the horde but have to spend forever fighting the bosses because you guns are so weak.

I think it is pretty obvious that this game sucks and even if you get it for free I wouldn't play it. You should always suspect a problem when something comes out for the 360 that was originally planned for the ps1. The same people who made Eternal Darkness made this and that was one of my favorite games off all time so I thought/hoped that they were taking the Blizzard route and just releasing the game when it was done. They were not. Gameplay sucks, story is cheesy and incomplete, and it just sucks.

The only reason I am not pissed that I spent money on this and played this game is that I got it on sale and the value on goozex is more then I paid for it so I will be making a profit.

Also a tiny thing but Thor is suppose to have upgraded himself with cybernetics so that he is 95% machine. Except that his whole head is still human and you can see his right arm isn't robotic either so I don't see how he can be only 5% human. Not a big deal if the rest of the game kicked ass but just another example of the developer thinking something sounds cool and never worrying if it makes sense.

And you choose between going fully cybernetic or staying more human at the beginning of the game. Each choice leads to different stat trees but the other gods look down on you because you try to keep some of your humanity but the story never changes no matter what side you choose. I would think that if keeping your humanity is one of the underlying themes of the game you would see some difference between the two paths story wise.

Fuck Too Human. I am now off to wikipedia or a message board to try to figure out the story.

[Leisher]

I was curious about this game. Thank you for letting me know to skip it.