Too Human is a Silicon Knights game that has a demo on XBLA. I just downloaded the 1.4 G beast, and gave it a run through.
A demo is a special thing. It’s a great way to see if a game even makes sense to rent, let alone buy. Too Human’s demo at first made me cringe, but it’s got some depth to it that I didn’t expect. Unfortunately, the extra depth doesn’t make up for the cringe-worthy features.
The combat is hack and slash, pure and simple. The controls are a bit funky, and there’s really no camera control to speak of. There’s a choice of two weapons, a sword and a set of guns. The right stick is the main combat stick, oddly enough. You hold it in the direction you want to slash, or aim it generally when you want to shoot by pulling the triggers. All in all, it’s too hard to aim properly, and as soon as the generic monsters get near you, the sword does a better job. I got to play through 1 hour and 42 minutes of the demo, when it ended.
Basically, there’s a couple of bosses, and a ton of generic robotic enemies to hack through. The NPCs, including one of the other classes that will be unlockable in the full game, don’t do a whole hell of a lot, but they do make space marine comments. I don’t know if I can stand to hear, “In Odin’s Name!” one more time, though.
Which brings me to the storyline/plot/world. A good sf RPG adventure game has a good story or world. This world is just WAY too melodramatic for my taste. Ok, cool, I get the whole “based on Norse mythology” thing, but it’s laid on with a trowel. The visual design is stunningly next-gen, and all shiny and textured. They should have stopped with that. To add on horribly melodramatic, over-serious dialogue spoken like it’s being read for a dress rehearsal of a stage-play was just too much. The Valkyrie that comes down when a player is killed was cool, but then to have to waste an entire non-skippable cut-scene just to have someone say, “She’s a Valkyrie, come to take Thorisson to Valhalla!” in the loud stage reading voice killed the fun and immersive-ness I crave in a RPG. Go try out Mass Effect and Assassin’s Creed for comparison.
The depth comes after some hack and slash. Generic enemies suck, did I mention that? It’s my gripe with the Superhero games – too many stupid robotic enemies. But I digress, again. Depth here is in the form of upgrades and weapons, and a curiously underdeveloped (in the demo) side story/level called cyberspace, but more like a trip to the land of mythology, whit trees and sparkly pools and the like. Plus the young/middle aged/hag Fury characters, called the Norns in the game demo.
Upgrading the sword led to a huge JRPG-style sword that killed a lot more effectively than the original one, so that was fun. The equipment screens seemed like they’d be right at home in a traditional paper-based role-playing game, full of complexity and style. There are also “skill points” that you can add ot different abilities, leading to better and better upgrades, though the demo really only provided a taste of this idea, rather than any concrete evidence of it working.
Bottom line, download the demo. It’s a decently fun, though flawed, experience if you’ve nothing better to do. I wouldn’t recommend buying the game based only on the demo, though. it’s just a bit over the top for my sentiments. Maybe a rental, if it’s a lonely Sunday with no friends around to play Rock Band with. The awful camera control, overly saturated dialogue and story line, along with basic hack and slash combat really doesn’t come together as much as I’d like. It doesn’t balance out the stunning graphics and amazing textures to qualify for a buy, in my opinion.
Editor’s Note: While a demo is often times a good way to go to gauge how the finished article will be, it’s not always the case. Check out the demo on Xbox Live and let us know what you think in the comments.
