[360] Too Human

Anyone own/play this? Thought? Reactions?


I've been following this game for about 10 years ever since I saw a preview of it in EGM. I eagerly awaited it and even found some early gameplay footage of the Playstation version online. For its time, it didn't look too bad. Now after another false start on the Gamecube it's finally out. Of course the game was never without controversy. From the poor reception at its E3 debut to the Epic Unreal lawsuit and Denis Dyack speaking his mind and replying to posts on message boards, how does the game hold up?


Overall, I do enjoy the game its fun but it is definitely without its faults. This game is so far one of the cheapest I have ever played. It's not really hard, it's just very fucking cheap. It could be that I'm playing as a Berzerker, which has low defenses but talking with my friends who play as well and as different classes experience the same issue. Where it's most noticeable is in the Ice Forest. There are areas where you're surrounded by goblins, Dark Elves and Trolls. A variety of Dark Elves are spider like which shoot energy bolts from a distance and perform a smash attack up close. There are two troll varieties, often there at the same time. One has a hammer used to smash the ground and the other lobs grenades from a distance. And you're surrounded by dozens upon dozens of goblins which some also have projectile abilities and they're all firing at the same time.

You try to get to Dark Elves first because they are most dangerous but you have a wave of Goblins in your way flanked by a Troll who is smashing the ground. And oh wait you died. Any enemies you kill rarely drop health pick ups, which with just a few more would make the game far more enjoyable rather than hair pulling frustratingly cheap. That's just one area. There are far more.

Of course when you die you're treated to a 30 second unskippable death sequence. It seems cool at first but gets annoying especially when death occurs so frequently. From a Denis Dyack interview it's not there to mask a load time, but as a penalty because you don't lose any items, experience points or have to travel far to return to the fray. I suppose. Again this could be offset with just a bit more frequency of health drops.

There are other issues like Aesir being sparsely populated and the population not reacting to your presence much. Invisible collision and some pretty bad animations plague the art.

Are these issues stemming from Silicon Knights' inability to make the Unreal 3 Engine work how they wanted it and had to create their own engine? I don't know. This game seems to lack some amount of polish.

Some good though. The co-op is insanely fun. Going around bashing enemies and creating a team that works well together is again fun. It's a shame that four player co-op was scrapped. Using the right analog stick in conjunction of the left really works and makes it feel like you're not just spamming the X button. There is a ton of loot and items dropped which give your character hundreds if not thousands of customization options. Plus the armor looks cool, sometimes even when its mismatched.

For me the main issue with the game is the unbalanced gameplay. I can forgive the graphical errors more than the unbalanced gameplay. I'm sure there will be people who despise this game, and hopefully some who love it. Either way, vent or praise or whatever.

I tried the demo and thought that it was decent, but I just couldn't get over the camera, which literally pissed me off left and right. Also the enormous amount of items that dropped was crazy. I thought they might have just been showing the variety of items you could get in the real game, but apparently from what I hear this is not the case. Graphics were good, and characters were pretty cool, don't know about story.

Won't buy it, but my buddy has already, so I might just borrow his eventually.

I thought it was a little too spastic in how you glide from enemy to enemy when attacking. And since targeting is a little wonky, the enemies who take more thought to kill can be frustrating.

Like BZ, I probably won't buy it. Maybe when it hits around 30 bucks or so.

It was tedious and monotonous, even though I beat it in 8 hours. Only about 4 environments, all ice or metal/lava themed. Only about 6 enemy types through the whole game. Story was sparsely told, unsophisticated, and obviously just a set-up for 2 sequels.

Pretty crappy game, but I did like the loot system. It was probably the only real thing keeping me going. Strange that I didn't much care for this game, yet I loved Advent Rising (that game was also set to be a sci-fi action trilogy).

Originally Posted by JazzFlight

It was tedious and monotonous, even though I beat it in 8 hours. Only about 4 environments, all ice or metal/lava themed. Only about 6 enemy types through the whole game. Story was sparsely told, unsophisticated, and obviously just a set-up for 2 sequels.

Pretty crappy game, but I did like the loot system. It was probably the only real thing keeping me going. Strange that I didn't much care for this game, yet I loved Advent Rising (that game was also set to be a sci-fi action trilogy).

Eight hours? Did you just run straight through or something? I'm on eleven hours just to the World Serpent.

I have to say I love this game. The camera is a complete non-issue to me, as is the lack of interaction in Asgard, this is an action game after all and I don't see how pointless conversations when you just want to repair your gear between missions would add anything to it. Also, I'm not finding it that hard at all. I have died a few times but that's been more from poor strategy on my part than the game being unfairly hard. I know the bit you mean in the Ice Forest and I died once there. Shoot the launchers off the backs of the trolls then ignore them as they can't hurt you if they're not near you. You can basically ignore the normal goblins except to use to chain combo's to get you near the projectile ones. Those die incredibly quickly and as long as you're comboing about the joint, the darkelves are never going to hit you with their projectiles. If they do get close, you can roll through their attacks, even if it looks like they hit you, or jump out of the way and nail them with your guns from mid-air. If you're getting swamped, fire off a ruiner to clear the bad guys away. Admittedly I'm playing as a defender which might help the survivability but you just got to remember to dodge once in a while really and the game isn't too hard at all and certainly I wouldn't call it cheap.

Edit: I think a lot of people's dislike of this game comes from thinking it's an rpg, which it clearly isn't. It's an action game with a lot of customisation of the character.

Originally Posted by Shin

Eight hours? Did you just run straight through or something? I'm on eleven hours just to the World Serpent.

Did you repeat stages? I didn't, mainly because they were boring enough on the first run-through and they seemed to take about an hour and a half at least to finish.

I played at a normal pace, I thought. Dungeon -> back to base to upgrade/craft equipment -> Dungeon -> back -> etc...

I mean, there's not really much to do other than to go linearly through the levels (unless you repeat them).

I might have left the box running for an hour thinking about it and I had to stop playing a couple of times, losing a bit of progress in the process. I guess I go through games pretty slowly as a rule though.

Originally Posted by JazzFlight

Strange that I didn't much care for this game, yet I loved Advent Rising (that game was also set to be a sci-fi action trilogy).

Advent Rising was the shit. Damn shame they scrapped that series.

I tried the demo for this and didn't like it at all. The combat seemed way too easy, just point the thumbstick and it basically fights for you. The amount of loot that drops is ridiculous, but half the time the stuff I picked up was either the same or weaker than what I had equipped. For a game they've been working on since the PSX days, it's quite a disappointment.

The combat is easy at first but gets a lot more complex in the later levels when you have Elites and polarity monsters mixed in with the waves of goblins. You really need to focus on what you're attacking rather than just spinning the stick around. The game does throw a lot of loot at you initially, although this too slows down a bit later when you get more runes than gear and you still generally find something better than what you already have every now and then.

Shit, I'm not going to try and change anyone's mind, it matters not to me if anyone else likes the game. It's certainly my favourite action game at the moment though.