Too Human: Day Two, or rather, Finished
By mrchup0n 3 Comments
1) I'm a huge fan of Eternal Darkness, a game that Silicon Knights and its father, Denis Dyack, worked on for the Gamecube. I'm also a fan, though nowhere near as big, of Blood Omen: The Legacy of Kain. Given these two titles, I was looking forward to Too Human -- even with the recent backlash -- and am glad to finally have played it.
2) Despite its numerous issues, I still see something that can help this become a competent trilogy when all is said and done -- provided that Silicon Knights takes heed of the complaints. Had I written it off as a "flop" and relied on the hugely mixed reaction as a sign to stay away, I might not even care about future installments. Now, I want them to come.
That said, it's not like it's over. I still want to play co-op. I've heard that the game is better suited to co-op, after all. In any case, after nearly 12 hours of single-player Too Human, there are a whole bunch of thoughts rummaging around in my brain. You've already seen most of my thoughts with regards to the combat, but I'll sum them up here in addition to everything else.
WHAT I LIKED
* I liked that the combat was easy to learn and get into. One of the personal barriers to entry for me is learning a new game when I've got so many in the backlog that I'm already familiar with. That Too Human stayed away from being too complex helped me ease into it. The same can be said for Titan Quest, God of War and any FPS using a mouse.
* Very few loading times. Unless I'm remembering incorrectly, the combat environments NEVER suffered a loading time. There were loads going to Aesir (your "home base" of sorts, like the Citadel in Mass Effect or the Town in Diablo I) and back mid-mission, and there are likely loads masked by elevator travel and mission-intro cinematics -- but that's about it. Room to room, skirmish to skirmish, the game did. Not. Load. And that's a good thing.
* Re-spec. Now, I didn't re-spec my skill tree at all because I was happy with my choices. But, if you realize you've made a mistake, you can take back your skill points and re-apply them as you so choose for a small (very small) monetary fine. I really like having this flexibility and it gave me peace of mind throughout my experience.
* No grinding. I don't mind grinding in RPGs. I'm used to it. Have been since Final Fantasy Legend II on the original Gameboy. However, I also find it to be a little wasteful in this day and age, with the only real "joy" coming out of the "pride" I take in having monstrously powerful characters. "Yeah, I worked hard on that," is the mentality. But here, as long as you don't run away from every battle like a coward, you will be able to progress through the ranks. Honestly, I don't even know if you CAN run away from a battle into the next room, as I've never tried. But I liked that I could beat the game without having to re-visit old areas just to fight more enemies.
* Aesir and the world tree. One of the issues that Kevin Van Ord had with the game was that it was just big. Walking through long, lifeless hallways can get tedious. I completely understand where he's coming from. That said, I somehow didn't mind exploring Aesir at all. Maybe it's because it was the prettiest locale in the game. You also have access the the world tree, which is also referred to as cyberspace in the game. Now, the world tree is like a sub-area -- similar to those alternate planes of existence in Eternal Darkness -- and many of its locations (bone graveyard, lakeside mountain) are graphically barren. But it was a nice break from the nearly endless combat (which I'll get to in the negatives) to be able to just go back to Aesir, jump in the world tree, and explore at my leisure to find hidden rune stashes.
* Item customization. Some weapons and armor have open "rune slots" -- similar to Materia slots in Final Fantasy VII -- in which you can place one of the several runes in the game. Runes have properties such as increasing your health, damage potential, attack speed, et cetera. I spent a lot of my time looking at weapons and seeing how I could build them up to my liking. Even if I was never going to use a weapon, I liked seeing its "Empty Rune Slot" entries fill up with wicked bonuses.
* Sentient weapon. The sentient weapon is a skill that sends a copy of your current weapon flying around and hitting enemies on its own accord. It sounds really dumb, and in fact it also looks really dumb. But the effect in-game is wholly amusing. It's something of a guilty pleasure to know that you can be in one area, pounding away at an enemy, while in the other corner of the room a replica of your sword is doing the tango with another enemy.
* The environment graphics from a technical standpoint. The environments in Too Human, except for many parts of the world tree, look very detailed. HDR lighting was used nicely, too. Bear in mind, my entire time was spent playing this in SD resolutions via component, so I still have to evaluate it in HD -- but it still looked good for the most part. It doesn't maintain a rock-solid framerate when enemies crowd the screen, but since the game is a hack-and-slash looting RPG, this wasn't that much of an issue.
* The music. I don't remember much of it, but that's not to say it was bad. What I heard of it, I liked, and I want to find a soundtrack just so I can listen to it more carefully.
* The story. The actual events and revelations that transpire are pretty neat. I'm not a story guy, so even if this game had the crappiest of stories, it wouldn't have changed my experience with the gameplay, but it was definitely a nice-to-have. In reading up on some Norse mythology, Silicon Knights did a good job transplanting the events in the ancient poems to this strange modernized cybernetic world.
* The fact that I finished this game. I barely finish games I play for leisure anymore, and it's always nice when I make it to the end of one.
WHAT I DISLIKED
* Combat after long periods of time. For the first few minutes of any combat sequence, I'm enjoying myself. By the time my thumbs have pushed on the analog stick for the tenth minute in a row, I'm bored. I explained the tactile differences that my brain interprets between holding / double-tapping an analog stick, clicking a mouse and pressing a button here (same link as above). My brain prefers the necessary skill -- however minimal -- in pointing to something or pressing a button over just holding the stick in a general direction. (And before anyone tells me that Geometry Wars says "Hi" -- erm, Geometry Wars requires infinitely higher reflexes than does Too Human. Play it. You have one hit to live, and look at how fast and numerous your adversaries are.)
* Visual design. Aside from Aesir, which was really pretty, the combat areas are all bland from an artistic standpoint. Yes, I did mention they are very technically well done -- and they are. Every texture and glowing whatsit looks crisp. Allow me a metaphor: It's like saying that F.E.A.R. was the best rendering of an office building I'd ever seen (which it's not, but let's just say it was). Does an office building really excite you? Likewise, every combat area in Too Human is some rusty, metallic place with glowing walls or floors. When I saw the Ice Forest, I thought -- ooh nice, I'll get to fight in the snow. Not so much. You trek through the snow INTO another metallic place. The only varied area was the final one, and yet again it was mostly a... rusty metallic fortress, just this time brimming with a lot of red and orange on the periphery. It made me feel like I was playing in some nightmarish extension of Halo's Library level, only this time for several hours on end. Oh, and the world tree has pop-in. Yuck.
* Penalty for death is a little too lenient. Yes, your armor wears down. Yes, you have to watch a really stupid 20-second cutscene where the valkyrie takes you to Valhalla. No, you don't start "exactly" where you left off (at worst, though, a few seconds away). Still, dying felt like a non-factor. Armor takes a long time to break, so I never felt ANY urgency surrounding that. Now, I mentioned that I hated the "repair" aspect of these loot games (Titan Quest has none -- HAH! -- or at least, none that I've seen in my first 4 hours), but instead of forcing me to not want to die, this dislike just resulted in me never repairing armor until it hit almost zero. And I still progressed just fine. What do I think should be the penalty? How about, your armor and weapons don't wear-and-tear, but if you die too frequently within a time span (who knows -- three times in a mission), the equipment you're wearing breaks completely and you have to go back and fix that. I can live with that. Or how about, you get to keep the experience you earned (because apparently people didn't like loot or leveling penalties so Dyack conceded), but all minor enemies in that area respawn completely. All of them. I could deal with that.
* The fact that 80% of everything you customize (skill tree, runes, charms) consists of buffs and enemy de-buffs. I really wanted to be able to unlock something like, twirl the attack stick in a 360 degree angle and you can execute some massive awesomeness. Or learn the ability to stick out a blade while you're rolling. Things like slow / stun effects from charms are nice, but I'd like the ability to be able to execute them as spells whenever I want to, at some cost. The Spiders and War Cry just don't feel like enough.
* Pacing. Assuming you never really need to go back to Aesir, I feel that the overall game progression was like this: multiple hours of combat, Aesir and a 10-minute cutscene, multiple hours of combat, Aesir and a 10-minute cutscene, multiple hours of combat, ending. Only the first 3 hours of the game or so lept back and forth between heavy combat, exploration, and plot exposition. That was pretty cool. The rest, not so much. In all fairness, you can go back to Aesir any time you want and explore the World Tree, which is nice.
* Camera. Instead of having some fixed camera, it was decided that this game needed a smart camera to best capture a cinematic experience. However, I really didn't like having to switch from pushing the analog stick left to pushing it right when running down a walkway just because the camera decided to "smartly" swoop around in the exact opposite direction for no apparent reason. This happened quite often, and in battle, too.
* The names for weapons and armor. In truth, this didn't affect my experience, but "Bodyform Legguards of Elusion"? "Willful Plated Schynbald of The Maiden"? Doesn't that sound just a touch ridiculous? It's amusing, true, but I highly doubt that this was a case of self-parody.
* Why no healing items? I get that the enemies drop healing pickups, but I want to be able to use a potion-esque item when I please. This would allow them to ratchet up the challenge level of the enemies a little bit while not making the game cheap.
How did my Thoughts Contrast to Some Review Points
I find that some people read reviews and then play a game with the review in mind, which subconsciously directs them to look out for flaws for them to agree with or more vehemently oppose than they normally would. This is why my friend Gideon said he only ever reads reviews after he plays games. I try to "forget" about a review before I go into a game that I've decided to buy on my own, so after my experience with Too Human, I mentally went back and tried to remember what I felt were the most interesting issues or praises with the game and see what my own experiences were. Here are the conflicting points:
* "Too much special loot." This was one complaint voiced by Giancarlo Varanini that wasn't entirely universal across critics. I can definitely see why the complaint was made, as nothing really feels special because you're getting some hot new weapon or armor every so often. As far as armor goes, this bothered me because I would spend some powerful Runes customizing a piece of armor that, well, became obsolete 15 minutes later. However, this didn't bother me SO much because they throw a whole lot of powerful runes at you. Maybe excess in general is the issue here -- too much armor, too many runes, too many enemies. But all in all, I personally wasn't bothered too much by it.
* "Frustrating controls." The analog stick combat wasn't frustrating at all. It was just clumsy and grew boring too quickly. It was the targeting that was frustrating for me. Why am I shooting directly into a wall when I'm clearly pointed at the enemy? Why am I shooting at a DEAD enemy? Regardless, this didn't happen often enough to piss me off, as I mostly concentrated on melee combat.
* "20 second death animation." You know what? This honestly did not bother me. At all. In fact, it gave me a brief reprieve from when combat became mind-numbing. At points, I *welcomed* this cutscene. Weird, I know...
* "Combat can be fun when you get into a groove." Oddly enough, it was when I got into a groove that combat ultimately became boring. It's likely because it doesn't take much to be in that groove. You don't have to have particularly good reflexes or timing to push someone in the air and juggle him. Like I said, it's the first few minutes of a skirmish that are the most fun for me, because these moments come just after I've been walking around with nothing happening and I'm ready to fight.
* "Storytelling only really got good in the end." Fair enough -- I find that many times, the ending sequences to games, films, et cetera, are viewed as the better parts simply because they reveal stuff, and this was no exception. However, from a story perspective, I found enough to be interested in throughout all of the cutscenes from beginning to end. The plot points behind Hod were pretty cool, and they were introduced only halfway through the game.
* "The game never slows down or lags at all." I only saw this from one review, but then, my brain doesn't remember seeing complaints about framerate issues elsewhere, either. Either I remember wrong, or I should be surprised: The framerate indeed chopped up for me, if only slightly, quite a few times. It never got unplayable, but it's definitely noticeable and distracting when it happens. Sometimes even in the world tree, I'd encounter areas where it would rocket up from the high 20's to a smooth 60. In my book, it's better to have a consistent framerate than to have one that can reach 60 often, but also slows down every now and again. Often I find that it's a jarring transition that bothers me moreso than a slower consistency.
As it stands after Single Player, were I to review this on Trigames.NET, it'd be a 3 out of 5. I won't write one until I play some co-op with the_antipode, though.