My games of 2008: Too Human - The car crash of video games.

I thought I'd blogged about this one at length. I'm trying not to repeat myself with this little series of rambles, and as such I probably won't be going over Fallout, Prince of Persia or Ninja Gaiden II as I've bleated on about those already (although there is an addendum I want to make about PoP; the fourth boss I got to broke me. The game has been put away and is ready for sale, and it's a damn DAMN shame). So I did a search and tried to find my meanderings on it and to my surprise I don't seem to have said anything substantial about the odd, strange and downright hideous mangle that is Too Human, just the line on my post from last september. So, without further ado, Too Human:

I'm not entirely sure what Denis Dyack was thinking with the smack talk cobblers that he spouted on NeoGAF. Probably the same thing he was thinking when he told the world he thought the "enthusiast press" were a waste of time (in so many words). Any game that takes ten years to come to fruition, and has the lead designer defending said game on a notoriously opinionated video games forum before it comes out makes the alarm bells go off and the big neon sign that says "Warning! Massive cluster fuck approaching!" light up like a Christmas tree that's been doused in petrol and set on fire. I'm all for the developers of games being among the people who buy their games, to be part of the community that are paying for their product (pirates aside, obviously) and to remove the celebrity rubbish that surrounds some developers but you don't do this by going about it the way Dyack did. I'm firmly of the belief the game wouldn't have been nearly as panned if he'd kept his mouth shut, but the damage was done and that's that.

The problem with Too Human, one of MANY problems with Too Human but the one that immediately springs to mind, is that Silicon Nights tried to make a niche type of game a big release for a major console. Dungeon crawlers just don't have the clout to appeal to the mass space marine/football/WWII shooter crowd and that's before you get to what . I mean, the subject matter is pure, undiluted geek. Greek mythology cyber punk. To me, it's wicked. Big fucking hammers, scarred Nordic thunder gods, off the chain rogue deities, it sounds fucking ace! But try explaining it to your average COD4 player:

"So, you play Baldur, a son of Odin, who is one of the solider's in the war against the Machine menace. They fight with the humans to try and stop the machines dominating their realm. Then there's these rogue gods who want to throw a spanner in the works. You go into cyber space via the Tree Of Life...wait, where are you going?"

See? You'd get a blank stare or a stream of profanity and mockery. People don't like cool shit. The entire aesthetic of the game is based around techno-mythology, and you aren't going to get much more niche than that. I think a lot of it looks awesome; big open spaces, massive statues, arctic wastes, foundries, massive coffins, it's pretty cool. Aside from the art direction, the problem with the graphics and the look of it stems from it's incredibly long gestation period. The textures and models veer from quite impressive to pretty abysmal, as does the level design. It's a damn shame, because it could have been epic. Anyway, that's only the first obstacle, before you get to the controls.

The game controls require you to use the right thumbstick to make your combat moves. Using the right stick as an intrinsic part of the way the game plays isn't overly new, but it isn't common either. At first it's utterly baffling because, as the game is a "button masher", it's difficult to mash the button when the button is a stick. After the acclimatisation, it works quite well. The variety of moves you can do by adding the left stick (which is movement, naturally) is enough to stop the combat getting too stale but you still only really end up holding the right stick in the direction of where the bad guy is stood, and then pushing a different direction when he's dead. Of course, different enemies show up to break it up, and you have a rifle to pop at them with but the rifle and ranged combat is a little bit rubbish because there's no camera movement. You can centre by holding RB and look around by holding it and moving the stick but it's useless in combat and makes for a confusing combination. I think the problem people had with the combat is that it's pretty repetitive, but it's a fucking dungeon crawler. You mash the hell out of baddies, loot them, move on, mash more baddies, loot them, mash the hell out of the boss, loot him, rinse and repeat. And I love that about it, I love mashing and looting, it's satisfying, it's entertaining (at least for a while).

Unfortunately, while the combat and loot makes me forget the real world well enough, there's some things that make my grind my teeth and curse the very name of Dyack and Silicon Knights, primarily being the death sequence. Every time you die, and this really is every time, you have to sit through a death sequence where a Valkyrie comes down and takes your body to Valhalla. Now, apart from it being utterly fucking pointless because after the sequence is done you're stood in the same vicinity as when you died, thereby making the point of the Valkyrie coming to take you body to the ultimate feast of the heavens completely redundant, this bloody stupid sequence lasts about 15-20 seconds. "15-20 seconds? HOW DO YOU COPE!!??" I hear you cry, in sarcastic woe-is-you-you-crybaby tones. Try it. Go on, try dying A LOT and see how the 30 second interruptions make you want to force feed the telly your 360 pad. It was a shockingly bad design decision, and completely superfluous.

But there's much it does right like the loot and gear is suitably plentiful, and socketing them with runes adds to the damage/loot drop chance/speed/a million other things, the online co-op is sturdy and fun, the story is utter hokum cobblers and suits the game perfectly. The consoles don't have many of these type of game (the only one's I can think of are Sacred 2 which is new and Demon's Souls, and even then that's more of a kind of rogue-like), but then again maybe there's a reason there aren't many. It could be argued making them work on a pad is difficult, and usually these type of games have far too much content and are of epic length which could be too much for ADD console owners. Whatever the reason, it's a shame and it's a shame not enough people are bothered because the satisfaction these type of games give me is wonderful, only superceded by nailing a drum part on Rock Band. Oh well, I'll just have to enjoy the niche myself.