Too Human (Xbox 360)
The first part of Silicon Knights' grandiose Norse trilogy turns out to be not so epic after all.
8/20/2008 9:12 PM | 3 Comments | Page 1 of 3
What's Hot: Tons of cool-looking loot; Intriguing fusion of Norse mythology and advanced tech; Controls are button-mashing-free; One of the characters is a severed talking head.
What's Not: Broken camera and targeting system; Unsophisticated enemies and allies; Barren environments; Graphically dated; You have to watch a 26-second cut scene each time you die.
Erin Bell
Status: Heading to Monkey Town ... aka: the Crispy Game Room
In a typical
Too Human scenario, I'm face-to-face with a giant mechanical troll-thing flanked by endlessly respawning goblin creatures. My allies, not surprisingly, are nowhere to be found. I target the troll. No, not that body part. The other one. No, not the goblin. The troll. Camera careens wildly. Goblins swarm all over me. I'm dead. A valkyrie descends from Valhalla and cradles my character in her arms. After precisely 26 seconds, I return to battle.
With both analog sticks used for movement, there's no way to manually adjust the camera on the fly -- a shame.
Goblins coming. Run away. Camera careens wildly. Can't see anything. Swivel around. Can't see anything. Center camera. Oh,
there's the troll. Fire at it. My shots miss. Why am I firing off to the side? Troll coming closer. Goblins. Death. Valkyrie. Twenty-six-second wait. (Check e-mail while reincarnating.) Run. Swivel around. Center camera. There's the troll. Target body part. No, not that body part, the other one. Crap, goblins. Death. Valkyrie appears...
Clearly, something is wrong with this picture -- and for the record, it isn't my hack n' slash skills. I love a good monster-thwacking, loot-hording dungeon crawl as much as the next person, but in spite of its grandiose ambitions in that direction (complete with skill trees, multiple player classes and a mind-boggling array of equippable and customizable weapons and armor),
Too Human largely fails to deliver where it matters most: gameplay.
The Aesir's cybernetically enhanced bodies make them more powerful than mere mortals.
The game's story puts a unique spin on ancient Norse mythology by fusing it with advanced technology. The main character, Baldur, is one of the Aesir, gods represented as superhumans with cybernetic implants who wield both sword and machine gun, and reside in the hallowed halls of Asgard where bronze statues and red wall tapestries are side by side with potted plants and secretaries wearing grey skirts and high heels.
This juxtaposition of medieval and modern is the most intriguing part of
Too Human, if for no other reason than it makes for some truly messed up loot, like the Pure Shockplate Traction Pads of Battle Prayer, the Silver Effector Implant of Swiftness, the Reciprocal Blast Array of the Cunning, or -- my favorite -- the Willful Gunslinger's Drawplate of Ventilation.
But man, does the gameplay stink. To be fair, I should append that sentence with "at times." When Baldur and his contingent of allies are simply wandering through the game's cavernous halls dispatching waves of lesser enemies, things are pretty much hunky-dory, if a little bland.
Ice goblins are one of several enemy variants that can negatively affect Baldur's status.
You use the left analog stick to move and the right analog stick to perform melee attacks. Simply press the right stick in the direction of an enemy, and Baldur will glide there all godlike and start swinging at it. Keep the stick pressed on the enemy and Baldur will hammer away at it until it's dead. It's a straightforward and, in its most basic form, elegant, approach to combat. Most importantly, it takes button-mashing completely out of the equation, which is a good thing. There were certainly some Zen moments to be had while happily gliding from one enemy to the next, laying the beat down with my Wilful Quarterstaff of Sharpness.
