Edit: It' s not finished. I' ve got pictures, videos, and more details to be added tomorrow when I' m better rested.
The preview' s a little bit late (It' s still technically " later this evening" ... right?), and a lot a bit slapdash compared to my usual work, but I decided to make a few departures from my usual formula, and for one time only, will be issuing a numeric score for each of the sections, with a final numbered score at the end. I' m doing this to express my exact sentiment about the title' s quality, and to assuage any doubts of prejudice. My review is critical, but I place only as much critique on the title as the developers and the industry placed hype. I held Too Human to the same standard I did when I reviewed any other AAA title, and will be critical of anything but perfection in my reviews, that' s just how it works.
Xbox 360
July 14, 2008
120 Minutes of Playtime Too Human: Does Ten Years a Good Game Make? For the impatient, the answer to this question is definitive.
Not necessarily.
Too Human began it' s long drawn-out life as an original Playstation title, first shown to the public nine years ago at E3 ' 99. We saw one last video of the title at SpaceWorld 2000 before it dropped off the grid entirely, and was moved to the Nintendo Gamecube. After an exclusivity deal with Nintendo lasting four years, Silicon Knights broke away and signed yet-another deal, this time with Microsoft, for a trilogy revolving around the Too Human universe. Obviously, by this time next to no original assets remained as even reference for the new title. The 360 version is a bog standard Level the Dungeon and Level-Up experience, whereas the original was penned to be a psychological thriller dealing with the moral ramifications of cybernetic engineering...
Needless to say, a large part of me pines for the original Too Human.
The plot is a half-contrived amalgam of Norse mythology and the old-English Beowulf myth, and one certainly begins to wonder where those ten years of redesigns went; certainly not into the storyline. It' s the stuff of myths to be sure... the only problem being that the myth they present has been seen time and time again over the years, with the only deviation being cybernetics, which as far as the demo goes did little to effect the progression or development of the story as a whole. As far as I' m concerned, it could have been explained away with magic. There are no particular plot holes in the title. Every human is driven by the survival of their species, and the will to appease the gods, which in-and-of-itself isn' t flawed... it' s just none too interesting either.
Six rehashed myths out of Ten.
VOCAL TALENT The diologue between characters could have been fantastic, given the larger-than-life nature of the game, but an indecisive script and at-times-abysmal voice acting drags down the cutscenes, realtime, and non-controllable. It feels like the writers were torn between making a spiritual successor to The Lord of The Rings, and Saving Private Ryan, could not decide which provided a more thrilling emotional scope, and settled for a fifty-fifty split. Twenty-first century battle chatter can be heard among epic proclamations of bloodshed and destruction, the likes of which have not been heard on a battlefield for hundreds of years, and frankly put, they do not coexist well. Your larger-than-life compatriot is at times barbaric, and one wonders how he worked his way up to the highly-structured military unit you are supposed to be leading.
To oversimplify it a bit. It' s like taking your favorite ruthless LEGO pirate as a child, and placing him in amongst your highly-intelligent, technologically superior Star Wars LEGOs... certain characters simply feel out of place.
Five " RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!" s out of Ten.
SOUND EFFECTS AND SCORE Top-notch. The battles are raucous, the score is emotive, and the ranged weapons all sound suitably powerful. I have no complaints in this department.
Ten black sheep out of Ten.
GRAPHICS Too Human is the epitome of a graphical mixed bag. I' m running short on time, as I' ve intentionally procrastinated with this section, so I' ll suffice for writing a few mini-sections.
Characters - Baldur and the other primary characters are all suitably detailed, though from a distance the illuminated detail on their faces looks quite poor. The secondary characters are as bland as they are homologous. Soldiers in your unit run across the planet in stilted jerky animation, with no regard for the ground underneath them. They don' t run, so much as slide across the terrain whilst moving their legs.
Weapons - Pretty, but uninspired.
Environments - Large and architecturally intriguing, but repetitive after the first cavern. Valhalla is gorgeous, but you spend a small amount of time there, and the time you do is crippled by a lack of real gameplay.
This is my main graphical gripe with the title. Not in that the caverns look bad... but in that Valhalla looks so good. Were I in charge, I would have a much larger component of the game take place there. It proves that SK do in fact have a measure of talent, if not necessarily inspiration, in creating a game environment.
Six out of Ten in the caves.
Nine out of Ten in Valhalla.
Seven out of Ten for weapons and characters.
Avg. Seven out of Ten
GAMEPLAY Hack and Slash, Lock-on Shooter dungeon crawling. I imagined I would spend a large amount of time on this section, but it' s wound up being rather short compared to my original draft, probably because the gameplay is so simple.
Hack, slash, shoot, hack, slash, shoot, slide, shoot, jump hackslash hackslash.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
You can tell Dyack took some serious pages out of God of War with the gameplay, which isn' t necessarily a bad thing... at least he didn' t try something revolutionary with Microsoft' s full backing, and fail miserably, it' s just that... well... God of War does it better. It emulates everything, the hack and slash, the jump attacks, even the mounting bosses has been rehashed, all in a slightly more cumbersome fashion than it' s PS2 spiritual successor.
It does surpass God of War in some elements however, if only because the hardware limitations are fewer on the 360. There are a relatively large amount of enemies on screen at one time, far more than God of War, but certainly nothing jaw-dropping, in scope or variety especially given the cavernous environments. Even with fifty or more enemies on screen, it still feels small due to the scale of the rooms you fight in. On this note, the enemies are bland... it doesn' t belong here, but they' re totally homogeneous robot monsters... Silicon could have done so much better.
Eight Hacks and/or Slashes out of Ten
MECHANICS The camera is broken... inexcusably broken.
That might not be the most grammatically correct method of beginning a section, but it warrants the first spot, because it' s a huge problem when you play the game.
While the game draws praise for it' s usage of the right thumbstick for combat, it leaves the camera literally hanging in the breeze. Apart from the left bumper, which centers the camera on Baldur, you have no control whatsoever. Your camera is panned back enough to be functional, but never enough to enjoy the environment you are in, nor is it intuitive enough to respond quickly to change in direction. This is an intentional feature no doubt, however a serious flaw when half of your arsenal consists of ranged weapons. The camera will eventually circle around you to face your character' s direction, however only after waiting still for a solid second, which can be an eternity while you are being assailed by five meelee grunts and a rocket robot.
Spyro the Dragon had a better camera, and that game managed to be released on time.
I usually don' t devote an entire section of my reviews to artificial intelligence, but this one really does deserve an entire paragraph all to it' s own.
Grunts flock towards you en massè, moving akin to grains of sand in an hourglass. They have no sense of self preservation, no defense, no tactics of any variety. Their sole purpose is to surround you in such number that it is nigh impossible to kill them all without taking damage. The occasional stereotypical rocket enemy crouches at a distance, and fires a maelstrom of irritating missiles towards you and your men,
frequently hitting you due to your preoccupation with dispatching the small cloud of grunts encircling you, almost
always causing the framerate to chug.
Which leads me to the framerate of the game entire. There were multiple occasions in the beginning of the demo when I was looking for framerate anomalies, where I confused some jiggity animation for a framerate chug, but didn' t really notice any framerate problems until a few specific moments. the first framerate issue occurs when you combine a high enemy count and rockets. The game runs relatively steady, with a few hitches until you combine these two, and then you can see a noticeable dip in framerate, down to the mid to low twenties, and on one occasion even further. If you don' t believe me, set up this situation, and then jump frequently. You' ll see it.
The second is while you' re battling the hammer boss. At times it would slip back down to the mid to low twenties, although it was less frequent than the previous instances.
The game runs in and around the thirty frame per second mark, but it' s far from rock solid.
...but then again, we knew they' d been having optimization troubles for months.
Seven prayers for a better camera in the sequel out of Ten.
CONCLUSION Too Human is a shining example of what happens when a game gets delayed for an entire decade. The inspiration and shine the original title may have had is marred by frequent revisions, shoddy voice acting, and dare I say it? A lack of polish.
I can hardly believe I' m saying this... but... the game that took over a decade to produce, could benefit from a few more months in the oven.
It has some amazing potential. However without any inkling as to the quality of the multiplayer, and judging on the sole qualities presented in the single-player demo, it' s far from the massive revolutionary success pointed to by David Dyack, Silicon Knights and the Gaming Media at large. I' ll be keeping my eyes peeled for the sequel, as this game may just be the next-gen proving ground Silicon Knights needed to get rolling for what may some day be an entertaining saga...
However, for now?
It' s nothing more than a weekend rental.
THE FINAL WORD
Six or Seven sobbing 2Pacs out of Ten.
< Message edited by eddie_the_hated -- 15 Jul 08 6:05:30 >