Too Human is brutal, mindless fun but lacks some of the sheen that would have made it a truly amazing title.
In Too Human you start off by picking your usual beefcake Norse hero and leap straight into kicking the arse of your enemies with sword and gun. Ok there is the small matter of the opening story cut scenes but in general the story of Too Human isn't too gripping. Usually I'm always one for good stories, but Too Human while it has some amazing cut scenes didn't have a plot that grabbed me and I found myself skipping a lot of them (and some of them infuriatingly don't seem to be skippable at random). If you're a fan of Norse Mythology it's certainly all there, Thor with his massive hammer, Loki suffering torture and references to many another part of the more traditional stories but for me it didn't grab. This is probably down to me just not being that into the world rather than it being bad so I'll let those of you who decide to play it make judgement.
Combat in Too Human is where the game shines, essentially like all good Action RPG's you kick a LOT of ass, chew a lot of gum, and pick up so much crap your surprised your character can move. You'll spend a lot of time button bashing, hurting your fingers and swapping equipment around being as uber as possible and it's very addicting a lot of fun. Enemies die in a variety of interesting ways too; you can dispatch with sword or melee weapon or knock them in the air Dante style and keep them airborne with bullets. You can also use lasers, explosives, special attacks, landmines and a variety of other devices of destruction to kick enemies' backsides. It's especially satisfying to leap on the back of huge robots and cleave them head to toe in a mini cutscene and it never gets old as you fight to keep balance on them as you do it. As you kill you level up a Diablo style skill tree too and the game is replayable online and offline to beef your character up to ridiculous heights. In terms of ticking the majority of important boxes for a JRPG Too human delivers.
Behind the adrenaline pumping gameplay though there are flaws, the most glaring error of which is the controls. Whoever decided that right stick should be attack and not camera is responsible for some of the most terrible camera angles ever to be in a video game. Seriously you will sometimes have to bring your head right into the TV screen to see what's going on as the camera has decided the best view for combat is that of a satellite in orbit around the planet rather than close to the action and it could have been easily rectified by having a working camera on the right stick. Using the stick for combat is a nightmare too as it just doesn't deliver the feel of a good button bashing that it should and disjoints the flow of battle to some degree. Another big problem with the game is the boss battles, these aren't as much challenging but LONG , the final battle in particular really drags with endless death upon death (death merely damages your equipment and you infinitely respawn so it's not much of an issue) as you chip away at her enormous hit point pool. The game seems to assume you'll be playing it multiplayer (double the damage!) which I wasn't, Silicon Knights should have throw in a offline co-op if they even vaguely wanted to entertain the fact everyone would play it co-op. The boss fights taking forever seems to be a common problem in recent action rpg titles, really would it be so difficult to stagger hit points of enemies depending on number of people playing? Oh and the game is also pretty buggy, I fell through the floor and had to replay big sections on three occasions, very frustrating.
Too Human has a lot of potential let down by some frustrating a noticeable flaws that prevent it from being a true classic, however it is still fun. If your looking for a compelling addictive title and can overlook it's issues Too Human offers a fun monster slaying experience.