Dennis Dyack has had a lot to say about Too Human over the past couple of years. He spoke of a game with rich RPG elements, solid action, and interesting plot.  Dyack promised a game unlike any we’ve played before. It was a lofty promise, and it earned him a lot of hateful attacks criticism.  So what was the final product really like? Was it the golden piece of innovation promised by Dyack, or the brown piece of excrement described by the forum trolls?

The action in Too human is fast paced, and fairly smooth. The melee combat is directed by the right analog stick, which allows for quick and easy direction of your attacks from one enemy to the next…. when the auto targeting system agrees with you on which enemy should be attacked next, that is. Say there are two enemies to your left, and one to your right. You’re delivering the deathblow to the one on the right, and you press the right stick to the left to redirect your attack to the first enemy on your left side - but instead, Baldur goes to the enemy that’s slightly further back, leaving you open to an assault by the enemy you zipped past in order to get to your target. This doesn’t happen every time mind you, but when it does it’s frustrating to think that a God would make such a weak tactical decision when left to his own devices.  These moments aren’t so frequent that they break the combat, but they do weaken it.  The shooting aspect of combat works fairly well. Point at the enemy you want to kill, and fire away. This only works well from a distance as your are normally faced with a large group of enemies, and stopping to shoot just one in a crowd can leave you open to take damage.

There are some solid stat and equipment development options in Too Human. Runes allow you to augment weapons, armor and charms to provide Baldur with a solid stat boost. Unfortunately, the extremely high rate with which loot drops makes this a tedious practice rather than a fulfilling one. Just when you think you have your weapons and armor tricked out with runes upping your stats  and making you feel like an all around bad ass, you glance at your inventory and discover it was all for nothing as you’ve already picked up a better sword and some boots that make your over all armor rating raise by a significant percentage.  I guess what I’m saying (and I never thought I’d say this) is that there’s just too much loot.

I’m not here to drop spoilers on you, but I will say that the story of Too Human had my attention. The characters weren’t entirely true to mythology, but the story was fairly well crafted, and by the end of the game, I was left wanting more. Unfortunately, that feeling came from the sensation that this game provided only the most basic beginning of the overall story. It was akin to watching the first fifteen minutes of a movie - you have an idea of who the characters are, and what the bigger conflict is, but it’s ultimately worthless without the remaining hour and forty five minutes.

Too Human was a lot of fun, and despite repetitive combat, excessive loot, and short story, I’d recommend it to anyone looking for a good action game. It’s neither the golden innovator, nor the heap of crap that either side of the Too Human debate would have you believe. Every cloud in the game has it’s silver lining.

-Mike Kurz

Tags: Microsoft, review, Too Human, Xbox 360

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