First Thoughts: Too Human
Too Human is a new game out for the XBox 360 (stfu PC purists) labeled as an "Adventure" game that tries to be a good PC CPORPG (Couple People Online Role-Playing Game), made by the company Silicon Knights. As creators of other relatively good games, such as Eternal Darkness (when I said "games" I just meant this one), I looked at Too Human before playing it and opened myself to be drawn in and was prepared for an enjoyable gameplay experience.
The reason this is a first thoughts review is because I don't actually own the game, I just downloaded the Demo and played with that, because one of the guys in my class I'm taking swore it was the best thing to happen to the XBox since Gears of War. Currently, I'm inclined to disagree (kinda, READ ON).
Too Human starts off like a typical RPG game and lets you choose which class you'd like to play as from your standard Melee/Tank/Healer/Ranged/"Rounded Character" all lined up for the choosing, however two of these were not available in the demo. I played through the demo game as a Berserker, as they reminded me the most of a rogue. It started off well, I was introduced to be some legendary badass who is more badass than the badass platoon I'm with. As the developers said themselves, "Machines fear no man.You're no man. Step into the world of Too Human™."
The story, like the story in every RPG known to man, wasn't really followable given the limited time I had with the game. I was the key to victory or something, I had to explore some ruins recently populated by these weird little monsters and the random slightly stronger monsters. After the first few cut-scenes (that looked gorgeous) failed to really help with this predicament, I quickly found the skip scene button and proceeded to learn about the game in the best way possible, playing it. So there I got into the story. One thing struck me immediately. The controls were ludicrous.
Left Stick: Move - Good
Right Stick: Attack - Uh What?
Full Camera Control: None
Slight Camera recenter function: Left Bumper
With some random attacks thrown in-
X: Special Move
Y: Special Move
A: Jump
Right Bumper: Crazy Yell
Ok, so instead of the left = move, right = camera design that has made games great for the past ever, Silicon Knights decided they were better with the camera than you, and you should only need to attack with that right stick. While this does provide a slight nicety in-case you say, wanted to attack an enemy behind you and didn't want to turn around, you can just hit back and fly through the air to kill them. There was one point a giant machine monster thing attacked me, and I ran out of his range and slightly up a set of stairs. The camera apparently, on those stairs, HAD to be locked a certain direction, and this direction happened to not let me see the monster behind me. This was definitely troublesome, but I was able to deal with it. Largely because the combat I engaged in during the course of the game was a joke.
First Thoughts: Too Human
In this picture if you look close enough, you'll see a "named" enemy who has a health bar, so theoretically he should be tougher than a normal enemy. While this is true to a point, it's nothing you have to change strategies for.
I literally beat a large group of enemies who had a "named" with them by spinning the right analog stick until every enemy had been defeated. By the end of the demo I had some ridiculous hammer that killed 3 enemies at a time on every 2nd or 3rd swing. Also, the special attack default assigned to the right bumper is reallly damn strong. You have to beat up so many enemies to charge it up (for a total of 3 charges saved), but you can easily charge it up twice in-between the "named" fights. A few times I would get into a fight with a "named", and this was the really only enjoyable part, because a named could take more than 1 hit to the face, and you could actually do some combos by launching them into the air, only to be disappointed. If I happened to use my RB special move, and the named was too close, I could very well kill him instantly as well. What the hell is that?!
The only other enemy of note was the big machine thing, who moved so slow I slowly beat the shit out of his back, until I suddenly climbed on top of him, entered a pseudo-balance-minigame-thing, and then crushed his face after a certain period of time. There was no real intense action, nothing that made me feel like I actually had to not be horrible, nothing that screamed "fuck up a little and you die!" at me. Sure, this was the demo, but the enemies could be 10x harder and I'm sure I wouldn't notice at all.
The only real thing besides constant combat was this weird "cyber" world, where I could fight anything, and was given weird cyber-world only abilities like psychic push and shit, which only let me change small things there, resulting in small changes in the "real" world. The second time I went inside there was a rock that could point in 4 directions, the default or at 3 doors. if I pointed it at a door, it opened a real world door, so I could go fight shit there. But then I had to run out, run back to the terminal, and move it again to try the next door. Upon unlocking the 3rd door I thought to myself, my, this is tedious, what the fuck was the point of the cyber area? As far as I've seen, it's simply there to further the story, but hurts gameplay funness. REMEMBER DEVELOPERS, SACRIFICING FUN FOR YOUR FUCKING STORY IS NEVER A GOOD IDEA.
Now let me tell you about the inventory screens. They move slow as shit. Always. Everytime I found a new item (about every 3rd or 4th step it seemed), if I wanted to see what it was, I'd have to open my pause menu, scroll around a bigass wheel till I got to items, go to either armor or weapons, then scroll through another side bar of pieces that would go into each slot, usually to find that I couldn't equip anything because I was too low level. In the demo I reached level 8 before I got to the end. I had at least 3 pieces of cool looking gear that required level 9 or higher. Poor planning. I also wonder how these menus would work in multiplayer , do you fuck your teammate up if you want to check stuff by freezing him in time? Do they become realtime? Who really knows. Probably wouldn't be toooo big a deal though, as 2 players is the max. Yes, 2 people is the max for a single-player RPG game with 5 classes in it (ONE OF WHICH IS A FUCKING TANK).
Now since I've berated this game for awhile I suppose I could do it some nicety and give some pros to it. The graphics were extremely nice looking, of course that's HDMI on my 32" 1080p TV, so I would hope it looked damn good. Also, despite it's many deficiencies that make it feel "slow" overall. I find overall the combat was a relatively fun experience. I could jump halfway across huge rooms to attack enemies very far away, knock them into the air, jump up, and combo them in the air for a few seconds until they landed and were most likely dead. So I guess it wasn't the WORST game I've ever played, but it certainly wasn't the best. If you've got $65 dollars you really don't want, then I would recommend this game (or a letter to me with $65 in it), but if you're at all on a budget, this is definitely not the shining star that might warrant a purchase.
