Review: Too Human

Pretty shit is still shit.

The game looks great! You can see that the art has been worked on and refined for these many years that the game has been in production. They've had time to craft beautiful unique worlds full of nord-punk scenery with ice and machines beautifully melded.

The drawn out process that Too Human has gone through also shows in game mechanics, but not in a good way. Oh the feature creep! You can see how concepts grew and spawned and mutated, until they had to perform a massive feature-ectomy too near the end. What's left is half-there, half-done, a frankenstein of a game. There are some great ideas in there, but they just aren't fully realized. And because of that, many of the issues are just unforgivable.

The biggest issue for me is the co-op play. That's the whole reason we bought the game, so that me and my finacé could play co-op together. Here's one of the first places you can see the effects of last-minute chopping. It was supposed to be up to 4-players and there was supposed to be local co-op. With everyone on the same screen, you don't need a way to track the location of the other players, they're right there with you. But when you have to play online and you're running around these immense spaces fit for gods and the characters are all darkly dressed so that they blend into the forbidding shadows, it's really easy to lose track of someone. No minimap, no locator, unforgivable.

The other problem we had with co-op, is no story. Being able to skip story elements when you're just blazing through a section for the billionth time, fine. But not even allowing players the OPTION of playing through with the story, unforgivable. We started straight out playing co-op, no tutorials were offered, no hints as to why were running from room to room. No guidance as to what our goal was. It's nice to have goals. Loot is great and all, but goals give a player a sense of accomplishment. There's none of that with the co-op mode. It's nothing but a grindfest for loot and that's annoying for players who may want to have goal markers along the way to the finish line. Unforgivable.

It wouldn't be so bad grinding through if there were at least different enemies. Too Human has 4. Four fucking enemies in the entire game. Those four are beautifully done, don't get me wrong, with each part capable of taking damage and crippling the monster in a different way. But 4 enemies? How many years has this game been in production? It's repetitive. Once you figure out how to defeat one type, you know how to beat a quarter of the game! Part of the fun of being a gamer is being able to suss out the patterns. You get that thrill all of 4 times. Unforgivable.

And the worst offence of all is the camera. Every other review has already covered that much. It works against you and is utterly uncontrollable. Maybe there are 5 enemies in the game, if I could just figure out how to kill the fucking cameraman I'd be happy. Mapping the right stick to fighting so that moves can be about style instead of button mashing is an interesting idea. But if you're going to take away camera control, you'd better fucking be able to step up with some great cameras of your own. Unforgivable.

Along with cameras is the invisible wall category. Good lord! Those collisions are so poorly set. It's like someone did the collisions and then they made all the models 10% bigger or smaller. WTF? Forgivable, but it's just another little thing that adds to the big things.

As for cyberspace which some people detest, I find it more of an annoyance. The puzzles are lame and are more time consuming to get in and out than to "solve" the problems themselves. It's worst crime is that it breaks the flow. Yet again another feature creep that was obviously cut back to the point of impotence. Forgivable, but shoulda been cut altogether.

Another area where the cuts showed were in the classes. My fiancé played the Cybernetic Bioengineer, which is basically crippled. He needs combo points to heal, which means getting in the thick of things, except he's more of a ranged character. The two just don't work together! My Human Beserker was lots of fun, focusing on crazy combos. This meant that I had already destroy any low-end melee enemies by the time he was on the battlefield. Forgivable, but after this long the classes should be completely balanced.

The menus suck because once again they went for style over function. Pretty and unique, sure. But they take forever to load and exit, and those 5 seconds can feel like an eternity when you're trying to play a fast-paced game. Forgivable, but some things are standardized for a reason, to reduce user frustration.

As irate as I am about these things, there are some things that make the game good. The graphics are stunning (if a but buggy at times), the style-over-force rewards are good, lots of loot is fun. Juggling is ok, but it's more the combos I enjoyed. Zipping around the screen just destroying every enemy in a matter of minutes is pretty gleeful. Lots of loot is good, but it does break the flow since after nearly every battle you're ready to upgrade at least one thing.

They cut out a lot from the game and fans cried out when that news hit the intertubes. But I would say they didn't go far enough. The lack of focus leaves the game loose and full of holes instead of a tightly-packed gaming experience. Instead of trying to be everything to everyone, it should have focused on getting one thing perfectly right.

We will keep playing for a while. I just really hate that I'm forced to play through solo just to hear the fabulous story that Mr. Dydack has been pimping out. So many of these things could have been easily forgivable. But with the amount of time they've had to perfect the game, like everyone, I was expecting something far more polished and Too Human just didn't deliver.