Too Human

The Short


Pros
- Blend of Norse mythology and cyberpunk
- Lots of loot
- Has a distinct art style that looks pretty great
- Online two-player co-op
- Five classes to choose from

Cons
- Controls are a "streamlined" mess, probably the worst I've ever used
- Game is poorly balanced to the point of ridiculousness
- Co-op is broken by above mentioned balance issues
- Story doesn't even come close to its lofty potential
- First of an intended trilogy, and the second one will probably never come out
- Loot is too plentiful to be worth getting
- Unreal Engine hiccups: texture pop-in all up in here
- No healing potions. No healing at ALL unless you play a certain class
- Death has no penalty, aside from watching an unskippable, 45 second animation every. single. time.
- After the first level, this game becomes a frustrating, tiresome chore to play
- Only four levels in total. Maybe five; I don't remember.

An epic tale of a Norse god vs a lot of boring robots

The Long


Too Human is a game that makes a good first impression, then completely fails in every aspect after that. One of my friends owned the game, and in an attempt to convince me to buy it (to play co-op) I tested out the demo. The demo is essentially the first world/level, and when I played it I was...well, I wasn't blown away, but I had a good time. It was basically Diablo with cyberpunk Norse mythology. What wasn't to like?

Well, a lot of it, actually. Because after that first level (which is pretty easy and makes you feel powerful) the game becomes a horrid, torrential cesspool of awfulness. I can't believe Silicon Knights spent twelve freaking years making this game, only to have it turn out so poorly, but that seems to be the fate of games with massive development times (see also: Duke Nukem Forever, and to a lesser extent Alan Wake).

My friend (who I did end up playing the whole game co-op with) requested I point out this game is "total crap," so it has been noted. Ready to find out why? Read on.

The graphics...are pretty bad, honestly. 

The story to Too Human is a glimmer of a promise of greatness, but then quickly is overcome with mediocrity. You play a Baldur, a badass Norse god in mythology, a total whiner pansy in this game. Basically you are the other gods' messenger boy, sent off on their mission to kill "goblins" and "trolls" (which are basically just robots with fake mythological names) and with a hint of a traitor, etc. etc. The game manage to take all the gods (even Odin) and turn them into total losers, which makes me sad because robot-cyborg-cyberpunk Odin should have been the greatest thing ever.

I actually can't comment much on the story because I played most of the game co-op, and for some stupid reason it skips all the story scenes when you play co-op. Gee, thanks. I guess having two Baldurs running around broke the story. Anyway, the same friend above beat it single player, and said that after the last mission "you think stuff is about to get totally awesome, and then the game ends. Thanks, Too Human." So there you go.

The character designs range from "bland" to "total mess"

But who cares about the story, right? Nobody played Torchlight or Diablo for the story, they played it for the loot-driven, level-grinding gameplay! Right guys? Guys? Anyway, if Too Human had managed to ape the formula from Diablo, only with a cyberpunk setting, maybe I would have forgiven a lot of its flaws. Luckily for me and my ability to only forgive one game a year, Too Human sucks in the gameplay department too, meaning I can dedicate my full effort towards hating it.

The controls are "streamlined," meaning they are horrible. You essentially control the game with the two sticks. The left stick moves, and the right stick is to direct where Baldur will fling himself next. So basically you just hold the stick towards an enemy and Baldur will keep swinging until it's dead. Point him towards an enemy a while off, and he'll completely ignore the laws of friction and slide forward a massive distance as if wearing roller skates while covered in grease, on ice. 

That's basically the entire game, holding the stick in the direction of bad guys. You can do special moves (which also use the right stick. We have all these buttons, Too Human. Let us use them.) by tapping the stick a certain number of times, and I think you got other moves later (like...there were guns, I'm pretty sure, except they were stupid weak so you might as well just melee) but the droll monotony of just holding a stick and waiting for an enemy to die is essentially 80% of this game.

I say 80% because the other 20% you'll spend dying and watching the death animation. But we'll get to that.

"Hey guys, I'm not a bald space marine, I'm a bald space god. Big difference."

More problems with the combat: no healing. At all. Unless you play the specific healer class (which basically just means his life regenerates extremely slowly instead of doing more damage) you have to rely on enemies dropping health...things (really, rare) or just fighting until you die. Why the crap are there no health potions? At least then that would add a sort of stupid strategy to the whole "hold a stick and wait for either you or the enemy to die" thing it has going on (now I could press RT for a potion from time to time. INTERACTIVITY).

The five classes aren't too different (minus the healer, I guess?), they just prefer different weapon types. Hint: don't do the gun one. Guns suck. Melee weapons are the only way to go, and then just tech up heavy hammer or swords. Or do yourself a favor and just never, ever play this game, then you don't have to worry about it! That's honestly your best bet. 

But we haven't gotten to the game breaking part of this game: enemy level scaling.

I think they might have had good enemy design. Maybe. I don't know. 

So those unfamiliar with the term, here you go: enemy scaling is where the enemies in the world "level up" with you. It's often employed in open-world games (like Oblivion, Dead Island, or Fallout 3) to ensure you don't turn into a total powerhouse before the end of the game. I personally hate level scaling because it makes leveling completely redundant. In Dead Island, for example, when I level up I see all the enemies nearby (who have their levels displayed over their heads) get tougher. Gee, thanks. Glad all my work just made the game harder. 

Too Human does this to the extreme. Often enemies are a higher level than you, but they at least stay the same level. The issue is I swear they get more stat points every level up than you do, meaning the game keeps getting progressively harder. With no health potions. So you have literally no sense of progression, at all.

This is only exacerbated by the horrid loot system. Yes, there is a lot of it. Yes, it's colored like in Diablo, Borderlands, which should make it addicting. The problem is: 1. There is just too much to organize, sort, and figure out and 2. Because of the constant scaling, you have to switch out weapons constantly in order to even stand a chance. This game is stupidly loot-dependent. Which makes me sound like a whiner, but I loved constantly mixing up guns in Borderlands (which I felt had the best mix of "keeping weapons for a while" vs "being willing to swap them out to experiment/for a better one). But in this one I felt like I had to switch my weapon every five minutes or face certain, overwhelming death. 

Apparently these are what pass as "elves" in the Too Human universe. 

The overwhelming level scaling is worse in co-op, because instead of scaling to the lower level character, they scale to the higher level. And since each enemy level up is a substantial upgrade, the lower level character will do nothing but die, over and over again, while barely scratching the enemies. Actually, I lied; in co-op they not only scale to the higher player, but they usually tack two more levels on as a bonus to make up for there being two of you. So you'd better both be exactly the same level, or else you'll be crushed.

By the end of the game, Too Human in co-op becomes almost impossible, even if you are the same level and have excellent gear. It's a monotonous, horrible grind that was already not fun due to it's poor gameplay, and now has the bonus frustration of you not being able to kill anything without it being a huge hassle. Yeah, you could say I just sucked at the game, but I swear I'm not awful at games. This is just a huge mess. 

Oh, and now we have the best part: the death sequence. You are gonna love this.

And when I say "love" I mean "abhor."

There is no real penalty for death in terms of stats or gear; you are respawned a distance away from where you died and get to go into the fray again. There is, however one massive, massive oversight with this: the death sequence.

When you die, a Valkyrie comes down, lifts you up to the heavens, and then you respawn. Sounds good, right? Little bit of mythology? Only she takes her damned sweet time doing it. Timed, it takes about 30 seconds, thirty freaking seconds. You may not think this is a bad thing, but consider this: you die constantly (as said above) and have to watch the same, boring, monotonous scene over and over again. It's awful. 

Just watching this video reminds me of how frustrating it was.

To add insult to injury, there's an achievement, worth only 5G, for dying 100 times. Let's do the math: 30 seconds, 100 times is fifty minutes. Fifty minutes of watching the same death scene over and over. Fifty minutes of my life I'll never get back. If you are good, you can beat all of Limbo or Braid in less than that amount of time. I honestly believe the developers are just sick jerks. 

Graphically, this game is just ok. It's clearly a game made in a post Mass Effect world, with cinematic camera angles and characters whose facial structures and body shape look a lot like Mass Effect characters. The graphics aren't bad, they are just really bland. It as the whole "Unreal Engine 3" laziness, where they use the bare minimum of the engine and don't bother bolstering it either technically or artistically. I liked the idea of fighting tons of mythological creatures that are now robots, but after you find out there are only about four enemies and then they just color-swap them, this game becomes a boring, ugly mess. 

And there's only four stages. Ok, maybe five, I don't remember. They are super long, don't let you save in the middle, and are just the same grind over and over. It's awful. Plus Baldur (when he isn't sliding across the world) runs stupid slow, making backtracking horrendous. Which you won't have to do much of, because the dungeons are about as linear as they come.

Don't be fooled by the bright colors: Too Human is not a pretty game. 

Too Human is a huge mess, and one that I can't recommend anybody play. I actually sunk way more time in this game than any sane person should, earning about 3/4 of the achievements and beating the game on co-op and power leveling my character. Even in co-op, which could have been this game's saving grace, the combat, leveling, loot, and gameplay in general is just horrid. It's borderline broken with the bad scaling, which means you really, really should avoid this game. 

Don't buy it at any price. One out of five stars, and that's me being generous. Don't make sequels to this, Silicon Knights. I really don't care about the story that much; just make something better (like Eternal Darkness II?)