Too Human Review–A Bit Too Clunky
Being of Scandinavian descent myself–specifically Danish–I’m always caught by surprise when I see Norse mythology hit the pop culture circuit. Throw out a Loki or an Odin or a badly overused Thor or even a Yggdrasil or some such and you’ve got my attention.
Which is one of the biggest reasons that I was interested in finally getting my hands on a copy of Too Human, the game that shows you that it’s true–any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Here, “Norse gods” are just cybernetically enhanced humans getting a kind of carefully regulated technology from the Aesir Corporation. One such “god”, Baldur, has received the mission of protecting the human race from the encroaching machine armies of fellow “god” Loki.
There’s an interesting dichotomy at work here–the “gods” use machine parts to give them new abilities and thus become more machinelike with each new enhancement, but Loki’s machine armies harvest human blood and limbs and graft them onto their own superstructures, in an effort to become more human. It’s as though the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, and neither man nor machine wants to stay that way for long.
The part that’ll really kill you about Too Human is that it spent fully TEN YEARS in development hell, starting life as a four-disc adventure game for the original Playstation. Yes, I mean Playstation ONE. So what you’re seeing here is the result of ten years’ worth of work and refinement.
The sad part is that, for ten years of development, you don’t really get that much out of it. Sure, it’s fun enough in most spots, but all you really do is run and hack and slash. Most would call this stuff shovelware, and if it weren’t for the decent gameplay, solid story and absolutely jaw-dropping graphics, shovelware would apply perfectly. The only problem is, that for ten years of development, decent gameplay, solid story and absolutely jaw-dropping graphics should not be sufficient. EVERYTHING about a game that took ten years to make should be jaw-dropping.
In fact, there are plenty of moments about Too Human that are simply too ludicrous to be included in the game, like the death sequence. See, a “Norse god” can’t just DIE–what would be the point of that? That wouldn’t do at all, so what happens is a valkyrie apparently decides that you’re one of the “righteous dead” and comes down from on high, scoops you up, and ostensibly hauls you back to Asgard where you’re reborn and dropped back into the same general area where you died.
The problem with this is that the sequence takes what feels like a lifetime to complete and there’s no way to bypass it. So every time you die, which might be frequently, you’ll have to watch that stupid Valkyrie come down, scoop you up, float you away, and then you can come back. I suppose this is done to keep players from abusing the respawn system, but still–it’s annoying.
Also, I didn’t enjoy the fact that my weapons could break down from overuse, actually requiring me to teleport back to my home base, mid-game if I were so inclined, for repairs. It took a lot of the logic out of the whole thing and left me cold.
So really, at the end of the day, Too Human is a fair game. It’s definitely a good rental, but may not be your cup of tea sufficiently to be a purchase.