Too Human Review

Over a decade in the making, Silicon Knights' Too Human is finally upon us. Has it been worth the wait, or is it a case of a game stuck in development hell (or should that be Hel) that should have remained there?

When looking at Too Human it's worth acknowledging the troubles this game has faced just to make it onto the shop shelves. Manifesting itself on no less than three different console generations, emerging through a dismal unveiling at E3'06, before being caught up in a heavily publicised spat with Epic Games over the failures of Unreal Engine 3 (forcing Silicon Knights to scrap everything and start again on a new engine), it's a Herculean effort worthy of Baldur himself that the game has even made it!

It's also testimony to Silicon Knights determination and belief that Too Human deserves recognition - something TVG wholeheartedly agrees with.

Pitched as a trilogy, Too Human takes place in a world frozen in an eternal winter following an epic war between machines and mankind. While the machines are prospering from the frozen wastelands, humanity finds itself tittering on the brink of extinction with their last hope remaining with the mighty Gods, the Aesir and the great Odin.

Step forth Baldur...

No Man Will Spare Another

In terms of plot, characters, and the many finer details running throughout Too Human, the obvious influences from Norse mythology will not be missed by experts of the Eddur and Viking metal fanatics alike. For the rest of us it puts up a very good reason to brush up with a little Wikipedia. Baldur, Thor, Loki, Heimdall and plenty of other characters and surroundings bring the story convincingly to a new setting, and as you'd expect from the team that gave us Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, it provides a compelling backbone to the actual game.

Beginning with the choice of five different character classes, each with associated strengths and weaknesses, Too Human immediately sets itself as a hardcore dungeon-crawling RPG close to such hallowed legends as Diablo. The appeal behind Too Human, like Diablo before it, lies with exploration and the search for increasingly bigger and more powerful weapons and armour. There's a gargantuan number of items to collect, along with sets of elite armoury and blueprints for the biggest, baddest weapons, all of which provides an engrossing hook.

Individual skill trees for each character class provide a considerable spectrum for character development, unlocking new abilities and bumping attributes considerably. Beyond the standard skill tree a second tree is unlocked later in the game based around an Alignment choice between Human or Cybernetic. Although this has little bearing on the plot or other characters, it does at least provide further areas for development and harks back to an influential quote from the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil along with the mocking Baldur receives from the other Gods that he shuns cybernetic technology, and is himself 'too human'.

Runes also play a considerable factor throughout Too Human. Inserted within weapons and armour, runestones bring a range of additional benefits and also serve as the platform for the game's secondary quests. Although this lack of focus on secondary quests is quite refreshing and adds value to repeatedly coming back to the game, we feel the concept is perhaps a little too underplayed and could be overlooked by the vast majority on the first run through.

Covering all the fundamental elements associated with an RPG, Too Human accomplishes all of the RPG mechanics with absolute confidence and provides genuine depth and long-term replay value.

Ready To Ride To The Ranks Of the Gods

Beneath the pages of numbers and percentages lurks a combat system that bears more in common with Devil May Cry than Diablo. Using the right thumbstick to thrust and slash with all manner of oversized one-handed or two-handed blades, staves, and hammers, Too Human employs a sliding mechanism that is a work of genius and easily one of the best examples we've seen in an action title. Rotations of the thumbstick perform various thrusts and slices, with advanced techniques such as aerial combos, juggles and finisher moves all easily accommodated into the setup. It takes a little time to get used to, but soon you'll find yourself leaping into battle, switching instantly between the mechanised Goblins, Dark Elves, and Trolls that literally come at you in their hundreds.

A combo meter that conversely runs into the hundreds rewards players with bonuses such as special moves and experience points perks, whilst also ensuring that the action is constantly mounting with ranged weapons firing at a faster pace and slide speeds drastically improved. This setup underpins the entire combat system, resulting in one of the most accomplished efforts we've seen and easily establishing a new benchmark for RPGs - point, point, click this certainly isn't. In turn when the combo meter is full it tallies up to allow you to activate special moves such as the Ruiner, Battlecry techniques and the use of Baldur's ever so helpful Spider bot.

On the ranged weapon front being able to independently target two opponents caused us all kinds of troubles when TVG check out an earlier build, however it seems that Silicon Knights have ironed out many of these niggles. The sheer brilliance of the melee setup means that ranged weapons are downplayed slightly, although the interchange between both is handled effectively and certainly comes in useful when targeting specific locations on some of the bigger adversaries Baldur comes across.

Because the right thumbstick is used for combat, Too Human employs an automatic camera system that can take a little time to get used to. Initially the setup can seem a little dated, but it becomes more apparent that the camera behind Too Human is actually a sophisticated beast. Panning and moving to provide the best view of all the opponents, the camera's most subtle technique is its ability to automatically focus on the biggest threat linking in with the sliding mechanism almost perfectly. Silicon Knights' Dennis Dyack likened the camera to a radar system when speaking to TVG, which we can agree with and we don't differ on his claims that players shouldn't have to worry about controlling the camera as well as the character - AI cams are the future. The only problem we encountered was when you're not actually in combat but walking around corners and having to manually re-align the camera behind Baldur with a press of the bumper button.

If Too Human was merely just an action title we'd be ranting and raving about it, but it's so much more then that, the RPG mechanics provide a deep and enthralling hook to the game that dungeon-crawling fanatics will lap up. On face value, Too Human shouldn't be as engrossing as it is. Judged on face value, slashing into the same opponents for hours upon end in the search of the 'Golden piece of Magnificent Chest Armour' should feel overly repetitive and soon grow tedious. Yet Too Human's appeal continues to grow stronger and we can only put that down to the enthralling mix of intense combat with a deep RPG hook.

Sunshine Becomes Black...

Unfortunately when it seemed that Too Human was shaping up to be an essential purchase for any Xbox 360 owner with an inkling for action or RPGs, Too Human slips up short of offering the must have that it could have been. Although its RPG and Action mechanics are handled flawlessly, its attempt to add puzzles through the cyberspace dimension falls far short of the standards set by the rest of the game.

Populated by the all-seeing Norns who exert control over all paths of information in the realm known as cyberspace, Baldur enters the dimension through various portals (wells) dotted around the landscape or via the World Tree linking the various worlds in a similar manner to its depiction in Norse mythology. Beyond plot-moving dialogue with the Norns, cyberspace serves as little more than padding to the main game. The simple premise behind cyberspace is for Baldur to overcome impassable barriers, unlocking the ability to raise, push and burn barriers in cyberspace with Jedi-like motions, which in turn correspond to the barriers in the real game world.

What could have been an area to inject a puzzle element to the proceedings is completely missed. Instead these sections consist primarily of walking between two points, occasionally getting lost, before eventually blowing open some doors - it's just not much fun. The situation is made even worse by the dismal visuals and primitive path-based designs, which ultimately leaves you groaning whenever a cyberspace section appears.

Considering the creativity Silicon Knights poured over the Sanity system in Eternal Darkness: Sanity Requiem, these sections massively disappoint and we can only surmise that the team ran out of time and couldn't develop the concept as far as they originally planned.

A further criticism can also be levelled at the game's length. Split between four considerably sized acts, Too Human duration stands at around 8-12 hours, which although reasonable for an action title is somewhere short of what we'd expect from a deep RPG.

Fortunately, Silicon Knights have a trump card up their sleeve with the inclusion of a two-player co-op mode. On the first run through you can expect to reach levels approaching 30, but with a level cap of 50 and plenty of weapons and armour to discover along with the secondary Rune Charm quests there's a reasonable incentive to keep coming back for more.

Which is exactly where the online co-op mode fits in. Although it's disappointing that Silicon Knights had to reduce the number of players from four down to two, Too Human still manages to be a hugely entertaining multiplayer experience. Scrapping cut-scenes to focus on the dungeon-crawling and combat, co-op handles trading and looting effectively but there doesn't appear to be any opportunity for complimentary combat. The apparent randomness of opponents should keep the long-term replay high, however, we'd like to have seen a random element to the level designs in a similar manner to Diablo II.

The ending hinting towards the start of Ragnarok could also be considered a little anti-climatic for some, but then again Silicon Knights had to leave us desperate for Too Human 2.