Too Human To Keep Going

Too Human has been sitting in my pile of un-played games for quite some time. The combination of tales of astronomical development costs, a great story rooted in Norse mythology and equal amounts of praise and levelling criticism from the press left me unsure whether to take the plunge and play the game. I had hopes that the positive words from half the gaming community would be well founded and leave me with the sense that this title should have played long ago, but I couldn't shake the feeling that the negative reviewers were onto something.

A few days ago I finally popped the game in and applied the updates (a grumble for another day) and started on my adventure. Having long ago played the demo I was partially prepared for the horrors of having the camera control that should be mapped to the right stick of the 360s control pad being the melee stick, but it still felt unnatural and I spent the first few hours of play attacking when I really wanted to change the camera perspective. Having chose a character class and worked out the inventory system, my character was beginning to level up and become more powerful as more and more abilities became available.

The hack and slash game play and level design is where opinion will, and has, been split. The combat is very simple yet allows for a certain amount of tactical flair. We're not talking about anything close to the levels of flair achieved by the truly breath taking fluid combat of Ninja Gaiden II (oddly another game with a messed up camera), but a combat system that is relatively solid and serves its purpose. The levels are painfully repetitive, very little exists to separate them from each other as they all have the same steam-punk-esque aesthetic, utilising similar set pieces that essentially throw different combinations and amounts of enemies at you.

This leaves you with a horrible feeling of repetition. The story feels like little more than window dressing as you spend the game wading through wave after wave of identical opponents. This was where I gave up. I hate when any game gets to the point where I have to put it down, the only exception being where games are so obviously broken or badly programed that I wish to have never picked them up in the first place. This game however simply became boring. It's a shame because Too Human seems to have had so much potential and so much to offer but the implementation was wrong.

Opinion on Too Human is very divided, some gamers hold it in their top 5 games, some sit where I am and see it as repetitive and boring. I'm just giving you my opinion here and as I've yet to finish the game and don't plan to I won't be giving it proper review, just my thoughts. My suggestion is to pick it up and give it a go for yourself. Too Human goes for such a low price nowadays that I would recommend giving it a go just to see where you stand.