Is Too Human Too Flawed To(o) be Fun?
I think I could best some up this odd love child of Dungeons & Dragons style loot drops and Devil May Cry style hack'n'slashery by saying 'Human' is fun when it's fun and controller-throwlingly bad when it's bad. So it is true, and this is where I bunker down beneath my keyboard to avoid the flaming arrows of internet punditry, I did actually have fun playing Too Human...sometimes. But those few rare moments of zen aren't enough to out-weight the crap ton of complaints I will now commence flinging at Dyack's Too Long in production brainchild.
The tragic flaw with Too Human, and most likely the reason for its resoundingly poor reception amongst critics, is it only shines to a decidedly limited audience. 'Human's core gameplay, smashing robots with hammers and zapping zombies with guns, does nothing to set it apart from the white noise of expected sci-fi game mechanics. Where 'Human' attempts to set itself apart is through its "loot" system, which encourages players to keep wading through a sea of mediocre action moments in search of the next "epic" armor drop.
Now if you are fan of a certain MMORPG by a certain developer that rhymes with "lizard," you might find "epic loot" an enticing enough carrot to merit wading through a sea of repetition. But if you're like most of the American gaming demographic, finding the "Greater Sword of Lesser Mediocrity" which has one less damage but plus-two to fierce dual-handed pistol critical hits, is probably not your idea of an incentive. And when the sword looks and acts exactly like the "Lesser Sword of Greater Mediocrity," the "American gamer" appeal drops even more. Just because it's a classic sin of RPGs doesn't make it any less of sin. Only if your game ends in a roman numeral greater than ten or allows you to infinitely undiscover something are you off the hook.
The game's combat tries to overcome its stale incentive system by attempting to present a unique method of targeting and moving from enemy to enemy in order to smack their robot brains out all over the ruined temple floor. Using the right analogue stick you can quickly "slide" from enemy to enemy, racking up large combos and increasing the damage you do as your combo meter fills. This is actually incredibly entertaining, and one of the few redeeming qualities of the game. The problem is, enemies swiftly become so strong that they are no longer sent flying by your mighty enchanted mace. Rather the bad robots unflinchingly swipe at your head, removing both it and the game's only fun factor with surgical precision. And then you are forced to sit through 15.5 seconds of agonizing, un-bloody-skippable cutscene, as punishment for daring to die.
Too Human suffers from what I will call "myopic design." It feels like the game's designers spent plenty of time thinking about parts of the game, and the rest feels like a rushed, poorly planned and poorly implemented mess. The first level is actually pretty fun, but past that the game fluctuates from being overly tedious to ridiculously unfair. For instance, there is a large enemy which can be killed through a sort of cinematic, hit-the-big-red-button-on-its-head way (ala Shadow of the Colossus). However, when presented with the same character, only beefed up with more armor as a final boss, the only way to kill it is to strafe endlessly around in circles, shooting at it with your pea-shooter of weapon for ten bloody minutes. Clearly some thought was put into the non-boss version of this enemy, but little to no thought was put into its more interesting counter part. This trend is seen over and over again from the level design to the game menus.
'Human's last attempt to differentiate itself is through its Viking-esque future-drama story. While I'm not particularly a fan Norse mythos, I thought the concepts of the story had merit. The idea of a future civilization playing out a mythological setting using technology to replace the limitations of a magic-less world is intriguing. The dialog and voice acting meet the mediocre expectations set forth by the rest of the game, but none of it is exceedingly poor. However, the game's myopic design choices rear their ugly heads again in the games attempt to model "cyberspace" as forested fantasy world. That's actually kind of cool, but the designers took what could have been a unique way to present problems like "hacking open a door" by simply forcing you to run through a magical cyberspace forest, open a magical wooden door, which then, you guessed it, opens the real door. These mundane analogs are so bad that in attempting to hack the core of an ancient starship, you find that its cyberspace analog is a big rock...that you push...with another rock.
So is the game bad enough to keep you from wasting another 60 greenbacks? Yes, provisionally (I've always wanted to say that). Provided that you never forgotten to sleep or eat while plundering the plains of Azeroth, and provided you've never spent hours respecing your Arch-mage's armor alignment, then you can feel free to never give this game another thought. But if you do find yourself booting up the game for second time to play through as a Berzerker or a Defender, I won't blame you. After all, we're only too human.
