Too Human Hands-On - Not Just an Action Game
We pay a visit to Silicon Knights and find out that there's much more to Too Human than just fast-paced action.
Currently scheduled for release in 2008, the first installment of Silicon Knights' Too Human trilogy is "one of the most misunderstood games in the industry," at least according to Denis Dyack, the developer's founder and president. We had an opportunity to visit Silicon Knights' Canadian office earlier this month, and after spending a couple of hours with a work-in-progress version of Too Human, we can report that Dyack is, or at least was , right. Nothing that we've been allowed to see of Too Human previously led us to believe that it would be anything other than a fast-paced, single-player action game, but we now know that simply isn't the case.
For starters, Too Human will be very much story-driven, and without wishing to give too much away, those of you who dig Norse mythology (albeit with a sci-fi twist) are in for a real treat. Those of you who enjoy role-playing games with an emphasis on loot collection should also find plenty that appeals in Too Human because based on what we saw of the game's loot system, it's going to be every bit as robust as those found in many massively multiplayer online games, including World of Warcraft. Furthermore, Too Human will support cooperative play, and although we're not certain how many players can team up to play through the campaign, we can confirm that there will be five different character classes from which to choose.
If you've been following our previous coverage of Too Human, you'll know that the game's protagonist is Baldur, an acrobatic warrior who's every bit as skilled with his sword as he is with firearms. However, the Baldur featured in trailers and such isn't necessarily the same Baldur that you'll be playing as--that's just what you might look like if you choose to play as a champion. The champion class is a jack-of-all-trades whose only specialization is aerial combat--the ability to "juggle" enemies and keep them up in the air using repeated attacks. Other character classes on offer will include the commando, who specializes in ranged weapons and explosives; the berserker, who can dual-wield melee weapons and dole out massive damage; the defender, who can carry a shield with a one-handed melee weapon and "tank" in group situations by drawing agro away from other players; and the bio-engineer, who's a healer, as well as a fighter. Additional character classes will purportedly be made available for download via Xbox Live post release, but nobody at Silicon Knights is talking about those just yet.
After opting for the commando class, we jumped straight into a single-player game. We found that it took a little getting used to some of the controls and gameplay mechanics. As a commando, our main weapon was an automatic rifle with a grenade launcher, and oddly, the two very different projectiles came from the same ammunition pool. Furthermore, although the size of the weapon's ammo clip was quite limited, our bullet-and-grenade resource was infinite, so the only real challenge with ammo was to make sure we reloaded at every opportunity and didn't end up fumbling with our weapon in the middle of a firefight. Unsurprisingly, our commando's main weapons didn't fare too well when enemies got up close and personal, so we were relieved to learn that the huge polearm on his back wasn't just for show.
Because the camera positions in Too Human are more or less locked, the right analog stick is available to serve a far greater purpose: melee-attacking enemies in any direction. With a well-timed double-tap, you can launch enemies into the air where they're helpless and can be juggled with subsequent projectile attacks. Incidentally, the right analog stick is also used to move your crosshair between targets when using ranged weapons, and we found that the system worked very well once we'd spent a little time with it. In fact, our commando proved to be a great choice as he destroyed wave after wave of incoming enemies with well-placed grenades, and we'll be very surprised if the class hasn't been made a little less powerful once the game is finished. With that said, we should mention that we were extremely lucky with some of the drops that we were getting from slain enemies, and our commando was barely recognizable as the same character that we'd started out with after about an hour of play.
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- GameSpot Score5.5mediocre
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Too Human Review
This action/role-playing hybrid is too unbalanced and too frustrating to recommend.
- Aug 18, 2008
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- Microsoft Game Studios
- Silicon Knights
- Sci-Fi Action Adventure
- Release: Aug 19, 2008 »
- ESRB: Teen
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