Too Human has had a pretty rocky road through its development cycle. Shown way back at E3 in 1999 as a Playstation (One) title, Too Human was an entirely different game. Courtesy of IGN & Gamespot, I was able to rummage up what the game was originally supposed to be about and what it looked like.
On the Playstation:
“Too Human, a new 3D RPG from Silicon Knights, will officially be unveiled at next week’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), but we’ve got the first word on some of the game’s details. Set in 2450AD, Too Human is a futuristic psychological thriller that has you contemplate the effects of genetics, prosthetics, and the struggle of humankind to deal with the symbiosis of man and machine. By letting the player cybernetically enhance his own strength and invulnerability, Too Human will provide a unique twist on the action/RPG genre. Silicon Knights is claiming that Too Human will feature more than 80 hours of gameplay, along with 60 minutes of cinematics; the game will span 4 CD-ROMs. Stay tuned to videogames.com next week for additional screens and details from the E3 show.”
-Gamespot
After awhile, the title jumped ship from the Playstation brand and was brought over to the Nintendo Gamecube. The reason being that Nintendo bought out Silicon Knights, the developers of Too Human. Eventually, creative difference problems arose between Nintendo and Silicon Knights. One and one became two and the companies split.
On the Gamecube
Silicon Knights eventually landed a deal with Microsoft which settled Too Human on the Xbox 360. After ALL these problems, the game itself was finally on its way to being finished. Of course, what kind of story would this be without more problems? The 360 version was initially being developed using the Unreal Engine 3. An early build of the game was eventually shown at E3 in 2006 and was critically TRASHED thanks to several problems.
On the Xbox 360
Blame was eventually put on the games engine which led Silicon Knights to sue Epic Games for not delivering on what was promised out of the Unreal Engine 3. Too Human eventually ditched the Unreal Engine and created their own. On top of all these problems, other internet ZOMG drama shits happened but I’m not even going to get into that. Through all the changes, the game evolved for the better. The game eventually became an Action\Dungeon Crawler RPG and introduced Nordic Mythology into the futuristic setting. So that brings us to today. THE GAME IS ALMOST OUT. As such, a demo was released.
Ok, obviously the history isn’t the reason I’m all excited about the game. Before I actually got to play the demo, I was excited for it because of the story and the nature of the game. First off, who doesn’t like Nordic mythology? (if you don’t then I hate you). Now apply Nordic mythology to a futuristic setting and poof! Random awesomeness. Not only do you get to play around and rework the telling of the Gods, but there is Ragnarök! I love destruction. Which brings me the nature of the game. You are a god with shit tons of power and you are supposed to destroy everything on screen. The more you destroy, the more goodies you get to destroy even MORE. Once again, I love destruction.
Demo Impressions
I’ve played the demo three times now. On the first go around, the game felt really awkward. Camera angles felt weird, animation looked a little stiff, action felt really shallow. Even with all these problems, the game itself was still really fun. My first play through was pretty rushed and I didn’t get to take in the experience as much as I wanted to. Something weird happened my second play through. All the problems that I logged on my first run magically weren’t complaints anymore. It wasn’t the game that changed, but the way I approached it. You see, I came into the game with a Ninja Gaiden or Devil May Cry mentality. Super fluid animation and action that is done by pressing traditional buttons. You see, the games control scheme is quite different from anything else I’ve played before. It’s a hybrid between an action game and an MMO. To attack, all you have to do is aim the joystick in a direction. From there, your guy will fly towards the enemy and commence a beat down. It really is a rather simple way to attack.
On my first run, I was literally just pressing: up, down, left, up, down….all kinds of random shit. That was the reason the combat felt a little shallow and the animation seemed to look awkward. Basically, I wasn’t playing the game correctly. On the second play through, I learned that you can literally hold down the joystick and rotate it causing more fluid combat. This took away most of my gripes about the animation. My third play through was where all the fun was at. I came to the conclusion that the combat was as easy as you wanted it to be and as deep as you wanted it to be. You could always hold down the joystick and send everything to kingdom come, or you can pull off intricate moves with different combinations of taps. Every game in general has something like this, but there is definitely something different about it in Too Human. Like I said earlier, it REALLY feels like a mix between MMO combat and an action game.
Plus +
- The music is EPIC. I know that everything now a days has epic music, but this is no run of the mill epic, it actually grabs some emotion out of you.
- The combat itself is fun as hell. It doesn’t punish you for being terrible at it, but if you learn the complexities of it, it really rewards you. The leveling up system further compliments this because it changes the whole nature of combat and makes you feel that much more powerful.
- LOOT. The loot system in the game is similar to the Diablo games. After killing enemies, loot flies out of their bodies in all directions. It really is an addictive system. Who doesn’t want to make their character look pimped out and powerful?
Minus -
- The camera works. That is all that really can be said of it. I know Silicon Knights is going for a cinematic feel throughout the game and sometimes I actually feel it working. But no matter how much you play, you always feel like something is a little off. You know something is wrong but you don’t know how they could fix it. It’s one of those things where you know that in the context of the game this was the best system that could be used.
- The animation still feels stiff at some points. The combat animation is great, but there are some awkward moments littered throughout. Granted these are small things, but it still annoys me to see the main character (Baldur) walking and his head being in some ungodly (bad pun….) weird position.
- The puzzle elements are introduced to you by going into another world (cyberspace I think its called?) You end up transporting to a different area and the sole reason of this whole area is to solve one lousy puzzle. Truthfully, it feels a little pointless (It fit within the context of the story…but really? It’s BORING). I’ll give the game the benefit of the doubt though and say that this was only a demo and the final game will probably have more intuitive uses (or puzzles).
Final Word:
If you were to take out the story, music, mythology, or anything else out of the game and just left me with the combat system and enemies to kill, I’d still have a blast. Everything else adds to an already addicting and satisfying experience.
