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Too Human
Never has a game gone from being so bad to so good...
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Silicon Knights has no one to blame but themselves for some of the poor reviews that “Too Human” has been receiving. The game does a horrendous job of explaining itself and does little to let the new user know how truly revolutionary it is. Rest assured, this is one of the most ambitious and, frankly, fun games to come along in a long time. It has revived a genre for me that I never thought I would play again, the Dungeon Crawler, and the strange thing is that I feel as if I’ve only just started playing it. If reading the popular forum over at toohuman.net is any indication, I am not alone. The people who love this game love it a lot, and we’re not going to keep quiet about it.
So, why? Why, if a game is so great, is it receiving such mixed reviews? Well, like I said, it doesn’t do much to fill the new user in on what it’s all about. The first time I played through the single player campaign it took me 12 hours and I HATED the game. The only reason I finished it was to see the end of the story, but the core gameplay itself was nothing that I thought was original or satisfying and I couldn’t believe I had the patience to sit through it to tell you the truth.
Then a little game called “Castle Crashers” came out, and for some reason playing this other Dungeon Crawler made me go back to Too Human. I started a 2nd character but ignored the single player campaign and went through the entire game as a co-op online experience. As time went on, I fell more and more in love.
The online multiplayer allows you to team up with one other player and go through the level you’re currently working on or any level you’ve completed previously. It ignores all the story elements, bypasses skipable and non-skipable cinematics and doesn’t even give you the story supporting voice-overs to the action. It’s nothing but the action. The great thing is, however, that you get to share all experience with the random player you hook up with. This pretty much allows you to move through the game twice as fast as you can in single player, and level up twice as fast as well. More importantly, you don’t die as often which makes the game tremendously more fun.
Let me elaborate on that last statement a bit. You are going to die in this game. A lot. More than you’ve ever died in any other game before. One of the primary complaints that most reviewers have about this game is the complete lack of death penalty since you start right where you died with full health, but all your enemies have the same health you left them with. I maintain, however, that if this game had a more severe death penalty no one would make it past the first 2 hours. The game is almost as hard at lvl 1 as it is at lvl 50. Even harder, maybe. How fucked up is that? Everything in the world, no matter which level you choose, is scaled to your current level. Many people complain that this removes any sense of accomplishment but they really need to play the game for another 10 hours, start moving through massive segments of the game without dying and keeping their combo meter up, and they’ll see that death is certainly not without its annoyances.
Now comes the point where I give the strangest advice I’ve ever given in my life of playing video games. When you play “Too Human” for the first time, ignore the single player campaign, or play just enough of it so you understand the basic principles of the game and opening up gates in cyberspace. Then take your character to online multiplayer and work through the levels until you reach level 20-25. Once you’ve understood the core mechanics and built your character up THEN go to the single player campaign and watch the story. Why? Because the game is way easier with another person and you level up twice as fast. Even though the enemies scale to your level, you still have all your loot and skills that you didn’t have at level 1. Believe me, the game is much easier to solo at lvl 20 than it is at lvl 1. You’ll die 1/10th as much.
Now, given that playing online is so important you’d think that the online matchmaking system would be perfect, right? WRONG! This is the first and most important thing that needs to be patched in the game. When I select a list of games to play online, if you are going to limit that list to 15 entries then give me a god damned level filter. I can’t believe that I have to sort through 7 or 8 lvl 50 maps to find the 1 or 2 people that might be closer to my level. I know that if the game is always returning 15 results that it’s picking the first 15 it finds and that there must be many more games than that going on. This is confirmed by simply exiting and re-entering the lobby and seeing the nearly completely new list of games to join. Once you’re playing with someone it’s great, but the process of finding someone to play with is unnecessarily painful.
While we’re complaining about things in the game, I want to mention something rather specific. Why is it that every sound effect used within the pause menu and inventory management system has to be so piercingly high pitched that I get headaches every time I spend more than 5 minutes looking through my crap. It’s remarkable to me that a game so heavily focused on character development and loot would have such incredibly annoying sound effects to accompany the process. I literally mute my stereo system if I know that I will be managing inventory for more than an item or two.
Another primary complaint I keep hearing about is the story, or lack thereof. Anyone that has this complaint has become sensitized to the emotional maturity of a grade school student. This is the level of dialogue they have come to expect from their games:
“Jonathan. I am going to the cave to fetch some water.”
“Some water you say? There is water in the cave?”
“Yes, I am going to the cave to get water. Do you want to come?”
“I would like to come to the cave to get water, but I am not sure there is water in the cave. Are you sure there is water in the cave?”
“Yes I am sure there is water in the cave. Come to the cave and you’ll see how much water there is.”
“Too Human” has a complex back-history, a massive world filled with characters, each with their own story, and it doesn’t tell you ANY of it. It shows you one chapter in these people’s lives, and doesn’t bother explaining the expansive details of their past, instead providing quick glimpses into the major events that have shaped them. It assumes that you are intelligent enough to fill in the blanks for yourself without having every minor detail hammered in through your senses. This is mature storytelling, an experience that is made for adults and not children. They introduce the primary conflict that will guide the trilogy, Loki’s rebellion, and the story that is told in this first chapter has 4 distinct sections that are very satisfying in their own right.
This review can’t be complete without a discussion about the art direction. I have never seen a game that paid so much attention to every tiny detail in my life. There are backdrops in this game, massive moving sets, that look as if the artists spent hundreds of hours on them, and you see them for about 2 seconds while you rip shit up on the battlefield. I have played through the game 5 or 6 times now and still enjoy watching the camera angles and the gorgeous textures presented in every level of the game. If a DLC ever came out for a new zone in “Too Human” it would be awesome just to experience more of this lush and fantastic universe.
Another thing I want to mention about the story and content is how supremely trippy it is. It is some fucked up combination of Norse mythology and technology, where beings are gods only because of their massive technological advantages. Whenever the character enters cyberspace, hacking a door to unlock it, it is represented as a lush forest environment where they must lift and push trees and stones to effect the real world. Everything you watch seems to be like some massive allegory, but at the same time it is a raw physical story that takes place in the real world. As you play the game again and again it is truly surreal to experience and wrap your mind around.
And that really is the lesson of the day with “Too Human”, something I read in another review before I bought it and something I want to pass on to you now. You must play this game again and again, even when you don’t understand why it’s supposed to be good. I promise you that in time it will become clear. Even after maxing my character at level 50 I still discover subtleties in the combat and level designs that allow me to kick just a little more ass than before. That really is the appeal: This is a game that lets you kick ass like no other. You eventually build your character to the point that every battle is a beautiful dance that Baldur is performing, true performance art in gaming, and if you don’t know what I’m talking about yet, if you can’t believe I am saying this about THAT game you hated, go put it back in your machine and play through it again. I guarantee by your second play-through that it’s one of your favourite games of all time. |
Graphics
No the textures aren't mind-blowing and there are far better looking games out there, but the attention to detail and cinematic direction are top notch.
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9.0 |
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Sound
The game sound is good, but the menu sounds are so high-pitched it gives me headaches to play too long. Please someone patch this game and reduce the frequency of menu sounds!
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7.5 |
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Gameplay
Once you learn how to control the game it turns into a beautiful dance unlike no other. It takes a while to get there, however, since they do such a terrible job explaining it.
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8.5 |
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Originality
Everything from the story, to the dual-analog combat, to the character building and loot systems seeps in originality. One of the most unique games to come along in a while.
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9.5 |
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Interface
Terrible menu sounds, slow and clunky inventory system, GUI elements that take up way too much space on the screen. This game could have used more polish.
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6.0 |
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Fun
I never get tired of the combat in this game now that I know how to play it. Seems as if there is always a unique combination of enemies being thrown at you and working on a character, new or old, never gets tiresome.
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9.5 |
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Lasting Appeal
I have one lvl 50 character with a couple pieces of epic loot and two other characters I'm working on. I don't see myself stopping until I at least have a lvl 50 of each class.
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9.0 |
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Overall
It seems impossible to think that you can hate a game so much and then come to love it with a passion, but with "Too Human" that's exactly what happened. This one is worth the time invested.
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8.4 |
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