Too Human

 

 
Triumph of Humanity
Hel has been defeated by the Human Baldur.

Gamerscore = 30   Acquired 21/9/2009

While I had completed the game several times before, I had never completed the game as the human Baldur.  So as I had blogged previously, with all the loot-game talk surrounding Borderlands and the Diablo series as of late, I was inspired to pick up Too Human once again.  I am glad that I decided to give this game another go, I really appreciated it and was probably the play through of the game I enjoyed the most.  I know that Too Human is a very decisive game amongst gamers and critics alike, but for me it is one of my Xbox 360 favourites.

I really hope that the trilogy will find its way into gamers' hands, <SPOILER> just the site of those Giants at the end of the game is enough to get me going for the next Too Human,  With a handful of polish and improvements this series could have a serious bounce-back.  Lets hope that this happens. I have to see how this story ends.

siliconknights.net

-SG    

I'm one of those types of gamers who likes to stick up for the artistic merits of computer games in random internet forums. Blogging comes naturally to me, which is why I now have a big chunky catalogue of TL:DR blog posts about why Braid is the best game ever made and why anyone who doesn't enjoy GTA4 has no soul.

BE THAT AS IT MAY

I decided to play some Ninja Gaiden 2 recently. Ninja Gaiden 2 received high review scores and was welcomed by the gaming community with open arms. It was for this reason I decided to purchase my first ever 3D combo-oriented fighting game for my 360 and start mashing the fuck out of my X and Y buttons.
Now, when the game is in full flow, it looks stunning. It's a blur of flashing lights and sharp objects which are repeatedly put to graphic use. I played for over 6 hours and I still have no idea what the fuck is going on. If there was some sort of tutorial then it was lost on me. My strategy of blindly pressing X and Y as quickly as possible seemed to randomly succeed and fail at each fight I was thrust into - meaning my progression was rather jolting. There was no-one to teach me strategies, effective combos or weapons for each unique enemy type. The game gave me fuck all advice and then still punished me brutally for any mistakes I had made.

Now, I'm no fucking pussy. I play my games at a steady Hardcore. I like to think I am open to all types of games and have enough mental capacity to encorperate a great many playing styles. If there was some form of learning curve to Ninja Gaiden 2, I would have climbed it. I am currently at a stage in the game where I feel no more proffessional than I did when I first stepped into the spiky boots of mr Hayabusa. Is that my fault? No. It's the games fault.
 
Infuriatingly, a lot of people seem to find a solistic sanity in the swirling madness of Ninja Gaiden games. Apparently, there is a high level of skill which apparently I have not been introduced to. Unfortunately without it the game is complete bullshit.
"You must be doing it wrong then" said my friend Spence. Fuck that. I'm not trying to do it wrong. I want to succeed. The game never taught me how to do it right. Denis Dyack told people that if they didn't like Too Human they were "playing it wrong" and he was being a twat. That's just a sulky way of trying to compensate for not making your game engaging enough for new players. Fuck you Too Human, and fuck you Ninja Gaiden 2.
 
Games are art, no doubt. But sometimes you have to take a step back and realise that just because it's in an art museum doesn't stop it from being a pile of shit on the floor. Sometimes it's not art. Sometimes it just sucks.
 
Thanks For Reading
Love Sweep

Played Too Human with my good buddy EightBitWarrior last night after he rented it and it was my first time playing it as well. The first level was pretty damn cool, and we both started questioning the bad reviews the game received. Then we hit Level 2. OH GOOOOD Level 2. Not only did the level go on for probably 2 hours, it also was one of the most repetitive levels I have ever played. You fight the same enemies over and over and over in the same looking environments over and over ad naseum. This is where the game failed. Variety. There is some good ideas there, but you have to wade through 10 feet of shit to get to them. 

It seems that those 2002-ish games made a lasting impact on the game industry, with so many games now combining elements from any two of them to make something new.

Everyday there comes another new title, set in an "open world", requiring you to sneak past enemies, climb tall buildings, and slice through foes in the third person, starring a jaded hero wearing something like a hooded sweatshirt. And then comes the games that are further clones of the first set, like inFAMOUS and Prototype are to Assassin's Creed, which itself was to the 2002 games.

And I'm not saying it is a terrible situation, those four games were, well besides Spiderman, great. But I think the formula is set to run dry. And before long, games like Final Fantasy VS. 13 will give way to, "well what if we made a Devil May Cry God of War type game set in the Lego universe? With a hoodie and 5:00 shadow?" Its like we can simply break down games announced at E3 nowadays as "well here a GTA sandbox game. Heres a new Devil May Cry type game. Here is a stealth action game only this time starring a sexy woman. Here is a World War 2 FPS, only this time you play from Ireland's perspective, heres a Superpower game in NYC only it takes place in the 1950's..."

Hey blog heads! mike here but before i start on anything on this blog let me introduce myself to all the readers that might be reading this or that mistakely stumble into this blog. My name is mike im 24 years old and i live into chiacgo, im that typically Asian person that loves to play sports, eat food and watch movies with friends. Im attending college right now but have no major that im going into, so im basically taking first taste of all the majors that my colleges has to offer and going to choose which one that feels right to me. When im not in school im at work most of the time, i usually work 28-30 hours a week doing food. I decided to myself that i dont want to do this for the rest my life so i went back to school, work is just there to pay for my type of living style that iv plan for myself in the future.

Video games has always been a part of my life, since i was little kind i remember myself playing the regular Nintendo console games like mario, street fighter,batman,and ninja turtles. Since then as i grew up my passion for video games has also got bigger and my collection, over the years i collection tons of video game consoles and video games like sega,super Nintendo,n64,xbox,360 and the playstation 2 and 3, and its still growing pretty well as we speak! The current games that im playing right now are too human, i like this game alot, right now this is my second play thought in story mode my class is the berserk lvl 31. after im dont playing that class i plan on playing exploring more of the other classes in the game, I have to agree with most of the gamer that posted on the site about the problems about this game should of been fix before release date but what can we do? other then that i might write my own review on this game in the future.

Thats all i can say about myself but please leave a comment to let me know that you guys are there or if not i can tell how many people view this blog. thank you for visting have a nice day!

 

Given that this is the time of year that school decides to pick a fight with me (and inevitably win), I thought I’d write one last blog before things get too serious and I’m busy studying or at least guiltily procrastinating.  Since I last decided to relieve myself of game related opinions I haven’t played many new releases.  This is largely down to my disinterest in most of these games (Street Fighter IV being a prime example of this).  However I did play through Resident Evil 5 as well as some slightly older games.

Might as well start with the zombies.  I’m sure anyone who happens to be reading this (for whatever reason) is tired of hearing about RE5 at this point, so I’ll keep it quick.  It’s pretty good.  To be honest, RE is not a series I’m particularly fond of; the control scheme, the story, the very concept, none of it appeals to me.  That being said, I found the game to be fairly enjoyable.  The incredible graphics, intense boss fights and… hilariously bad presentation of local co-op, all fought against my apathy and made the game worth playing.

The next game that immediately comes to mind is Too Human (timely huh…).  For me, Too Human is the most frustrating kind of decent game.  At every turn, something just prevents it from being great.  Be it the slightly clunky controls, the somewhat off animation, or the fucking Valkyries. OK, so the Valkyries are decidedly worse than most other aspects of the game, but they’re still indicative of the problems that drag Too Human down.  Overall, I still enjoyed the game. Although it was largely down to the fact that Too Human is the type of game that I generally enjoy.

Next up, Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction.  I haven’t actually finished this yet, but I think I’m close enough to the end to form an opinion of sorts.  This is actually the first game in the series I’ve played, and it was mainly out of guilt for neglecting my PS3 that I played it.  The gameplay itself is not particularly compelling, but the story, setting, characters and colourful art style that surround it most certainly are.  The game has an all round (to use a technical term) pixar-ish quality about it, from the funny dialogue to the creative character design.  I’ll probably finish it in the next few days.

Besides these I have played quite a few other games that I don’t feel like writing as much about, these include:  Iron Man (…), CoD: WaW (good, but not good enough.  Sorry Treyarch, you just can’t win), Amped 3 (unbridled madness) and Need For Speed: Undercover (…).  On the DS front, I finally finished New Super Mario Bros and have spent shamefully little time playing Chrono Trigger.  I’ll play through it eventually.

This post has a lot of brackets...

Yeah yeah yeah, I know it's a little late to FINALLY be trying out Too Human, but I figure later is better than never.  While some may say that trading in Need For Speed Pro Street for some trade-in towards Too Human might be some part of me trading in a broken game for a broken game, I've gotta say this:  I enjoy Too Human.  Is the camera frustrating?  Fuck yeah.  Are my teammates on single player useless?  Fuck yeah.  Do the levels last WAAAAAAY too long?  FUCK YEAH!!!  My God, I'm five hours into the fucker and I'm only past the second area...which was about 3 of those 5 hours!!!  THAT'S A HUGE DUNGEON!!!

So it's been quite a while since Too Human was released. I tried and enjoyed the demo at the time, but couldn't justify the purchase. Now that I've got some spare cash and the dust has settled over the whole Too Human debate, I thought I'd pick it up and see if my enjoyment of the demo all those months ago was a fluke.

Definitely the first thing that hit me when I booted up the game was how captivating the game universe, if the not the story itself, really is. That whole "cyber vikings" thing seems to work a lot better than one might think. It's pretty easy to just shrug off the idea with "that's not creative, they just took preexisting mythology and replaced everyone's horned helmets with cybernetic implants," but to see it alive on the screen, it's pretty hard to deny the (for lack of a better word) coolness of the whole world. And to be fair, cybernetic implants are pretty sweet. They've got the cyber-future valkyries with their metal wings, and the "gods" wearing these futuristic suits with fur and nordic designs that look like a cross between Star Trek and... fur. There's also just some cool general sci-fi stuff in there, like my personal favorite touch, eyeglasses represented as small metal prongs on either side of the head that project holographics lenses over the wearer's eyes when needed. I wouldn't mind wearing those glasses.

For everything I like about the fictional world, I wish I could say as much for the story itself. I'm not too far in, but to be honest, I'm already lost. Maybe I would understand a little better if I knew more about Norse mythology? I've got no clue, but I do know that they've not compelled me to pay attention more. Let's try to lay down what I know so far. You're Baldur. He's like... badass 'n shit. His wife was killed because of some other guy who betrayed the "gods" after becoming half-robot as an experiment. I guess he's sided with the robots now? Did I mention they're fighting robots? Yeah they're fighting robots, but fuck me if I know why. So he's with the robots now because he's like... more of a robot than a person now? Like Darth Vader, right? That's all I can really think about anytime they try to bring up the issue of cybernetics. They try to make me care about humans handing over their humanity in return for cybernetic enhancements, but all I hear is old Ben Kenobi going "He's more machine now, than man..." in my head, over and over again. And I giggle. Not that I think it's not an interesting concept, but the execution is pretty lackluster so far. It doesn't help that I have no fucking clue what the robots are or why we want to kill them. but I can follow Metal Gear stories like 70% of the time, so I don't think that's my fault.

Oh yeah, and the world is supposedly ruined, and they want it to be return to the green paradise it was, ages ago. and sometimes you go into the cyber matrix home of the weird sisters, and it looks all lush in there, like it used to be in the real world. GET IT?! BECAUSE YOU'RE IN A COMPUTER, BUT IT'S GREEN AND NATURY IN THERE, AND COLD AND ROBOTIC IN THE REAL WORLD!!! IRONYYYY!!! Kids, that's what we in the biz call "irony".

I planned to also write about the gameplay, but it's rather late, and I think I'll leave that for later.

It now occurs to me that Silicon Knights should probably be given some kind of medal for what they did in making this game. Hold on, hear me out. Sure, the characters in this game are referred to as "gods", but at least they don't say that the hero characters are part of an organization known as G.O.D. or something . . . . *shudders*.... And you know, plenty of people in their position TOTALLY would have.

WOAH WOAH WOAH!! HOLD THE PHONE!! I just took a peek at the manual. Apparently your organization, referred to as Aesir in the game, is actually called AESIR CORP!!! Those. Bastards. Just... just... at least it wasn't an acronym... anything but acronyms....