Too Human Too Late? A review and impression of the demo.
Ok finally after almost a third of my life in development, testing, re-developing, law suits, and skepticism, Too Human is finally ready for release! And thanks to Microsoft and their E3 to you week on xbox live, we have a playable demo! But does it meet the hype? Or does it fall way short?
Nothing could have prepared me for this demo. I stumbled upon it on the marketplace and said “Oh Baby! This is a must download!”. So after like 30 minutes of downloading i got to take it for a spin. My initial impression was meh…
Now dont get all hate mail on me yet, I need to explain a few things. First is that I was expecting the aiming system to be a little more free. Sure your melee weapons can be aimed any direction, but the guns autolock on the targets. This takes a bit away from the game for me. The cutscenes are very well done and the graphics on them are great, but the gameplay graphics… I dunno, for all this dev time I would have thought they would be cleaner. And lastly, the lvl cap on this game is lvl 50. Which kinda scares me since I hit lvl 7 in the demo and I only played it for 30 mins. Sure Silicon Knights have announced that the other 2 parts of the trilogy (yeah thats right, a trilogy. I guess another 20 years will pass before we see that happen) will have lvling from 50-100 and 100-150, but come on!
Ok on to the goodness. First off the classes. In the demo you are only able to play as Champion, but there are a total of 5 classes each with their perks.
Bioengineer – The archetype Healer. This is your party class.
Commando – An offensive character focused on ranged combat via projectile weapons.
Champion – The most ‘balanced’ class between hit points, melee combat and ranged combat. He also has a slant towards in air combat. Aka n00b class.
Defender – A heavy damage taker focused on resistance and large hitpoints. Aka the tank.
Berserker – An offensive character focused on melee combat. Aka the meat shield.
Sure that looks like a lot. But with the lvl 50 level cap, how many times are you going to use the same build?
The skill tree for each class is a nice touch but nothing revolutionary. We have seen this so many times before in games like Diablo 2, that it is no longer something that catches your eyes, but more of a necessity of life. Plus the skill trees aren’t that huge. If there were like 5 or 6 more skills in each, I would not have a problem with it. But there are too few skills going on here. Plus from what I see, you can do the whole tree by the time you are lvl 50. That is something that kills it for me. I wanted a diablo 2 type thing that you could specialize in something. Make your character one type. This would make the customization factor increase 10x, and give players a lot more room to be different. Now by no way am I a Diablo fanboy. It had its problems and lacks, but I thought their skill system was the best so far.
But the best part of the game and the factor that may just end up saving it. The endless weapon and armor customization! It has the loot drop of diablo, along with its randomization of stats on the weapons and armor. Along with common, uncommon, rare, and uniques. As I was going through the demo, I kept finding more weapons and armors that I just had to try out! The best part of this game is definatly the customization! And I dont define customizing the same way Honda owners do, (ya know when someone brags about their custom parts on the car and you know that every other car has the same crap on it) I define it as really being able to play with anyone else and never have the same layout of weapons and armor because of the multitude of drops and the variations of the stats on those drops. I picked up multiple of the same weapon in the demo, but each had different stats and such. This sets it apart from other RPG/Hack and Slash games because most of those just have multiple weapons but the same stats.
I will be getting this when it comes out for sure. I just was expecting something a little more awesome since its been in development so long. Yes the story line is very unique (being 3000 years ago when the gods aparently lived down here and were part cyborg waging a war against full cybernetic creatures trying to destroy mankind), the graphics are ok though the cutscenes are sweet looking. The fact that its only 2 player co-op takes it down for me, and that you cant customize your character to the extent of building him from the ground up also make it lose points. I dunno, It may just be me, but I think this was way too over-hyped for its own good. Overall it gets an 8/10. Higher lvl cap and another character class or two may have gotten it a 9/10.
Oh and here is a little trick. To unlock the Berserker and Commando classes in the demo you need to exit xbox live, unplug your internet connection from it the 360, then go to the last blade of your dashboard and change your date to 2009. WOOO There are your two other classes to play. Just remember you cant be on xbox live or plug in your internet while playing these two, the system date will change back. ENJOY!!!
look man, there’s no sence being hard on it just because they gave away the origin of your people. I thought the demo looked fun. I say looked as I just watched Andy play it, lol. I have yet to try it myself. but I will.