Gaming by GlossGreen

I just finished Too Human (literally, I just put down the controller and picked up my computer just this minute) and I am not impressed. Good ole Dennis has a lot of hype to answer for. This game is in very sharp contrast to another game I recently played, Fallout 3. Whereas Fallout had interesting characters that are well rounded and have decent dialog, Too Human's Aesir are just a bunch of jerks. Balder was, for lack of a better term, an ass. He was modeled poorly, voiced stiffly and just not an engaging character. What I really want to know is why the development team thought that making their main character as acerbic as possible was good for the game?

For me, story and character are the two main ingredients to make a great game, and this one falls short on both counts. The characters I've already covered, and the story? The story doesn't make a lick of sense. To be honest, I don't know what the point of the whole game was. I know that the Aesir are in charge (self appointed and reviled by the look of things) of protecting the humans, from seemingly rogue elements of themselves. Who, or what, exactly are the Aesir? We find out early on in one of the many lengthy cut scenes that they are actually the Aesir Corporation. So, are they human or not? We have no idea whatsoever. These Aesir do have the annoying habit of refering to themselves as gods? Really? A little high on themselves, aren't they?

Controlling balder is a bit of pain in itself. The left stick controls movement and the right controls attack direction. Did I mention that there is no way to control the camera? No? Well, there isn't, and it allows a lot of cheap shots that will kill you. When I say a lot, I don't mean 5, 10 or even 50 times. In fact, if you put any time into this game at all, you will receive the coveted Valkyrie's Folly achievement (which I got) for dying 100 times during the game. Sounds like an unobtainable number, right? Not when you can't see what you are doing with a character that moves slower than molasses, and even slower when using a weapon. Speaking of the Valkyries, I'm not going to complain about how long it takes to restart after one of my numerous deaths, I actually liked that. It gave me time to write e-mails, check out news on other, better games and update my Twitter feed. Good stuff there. Attacking is a chore made worse by having a sloppy control scheme for attacks mapped to the right stick. I only managed to throw out one or two different types of attacks. What I did do most of the time was pull my guns and stay out of the enemy's range while circling and firing at them. Hey, that strategy works well most of the time. What I also hate is the fact that everyone making games today must have attended the Bungie School of Wave Enemy Design. I swear in one protracted and escruciating level I was fighting the Flood. I hate the Flood.

Graphically, the game looks last gen, and from what I understand, Too Human was conceived as an original Xbox game. Well, it really shows. I can't even say that it's close to the graphical quality of recent PS3 or 360 games, it's just not good. See the pic over there? That's from a cut-scene. Most of the levels are uninspired, plus you've already seen them in a hundred other games. What you'll see are standard hallways and bland corridors for the most part, maybe just a bit taller, but not any more interesting. Speaking about what you've seen before, I swear the Aesir headquarters looks a damn sight like the Gardens from Final Fantasy VIII. No joke, they just have less jagged edges here. One of the attempts the designers made at changing things up was the addition of a cyberspace element in the game. Basically what it ends up being is a bland outdoor environment with a horrible draw distance and a ton of fog. Fog, was that really necessary? The cyberspace element itself is not very interesting. The goal in this computer realm is to interact with it's environment to affect objects in the real world. What this entails is simply pushing the right button to, say, open a gate. Flash to a scene where a door is opened in the real world. And that's about it. Sure, there are things to find in cyberspace, like a ton of rediculously named items and weapons, but you get the point. My question is this. How would pushing a tree over in cyberspace cause a bridge to rise in the real world?

Anyway, the bottom line for this game is simple. The game itself is not horrible, it's just that there are no compelling reasons to play it. The characters are annoying, the visuals are last gen and the play mechanics are frustrating. This game is most definitely a pass.