Review of "Too Human"

"Too Human" is Silicon Knights artisitc depiction of Norse Mythology featuring Baldur as the main character. Within the game, Baldur is part of a race of humans so advanced by technology they begin to call themselves "Gods" (Aesir in Norse) in order to fully differentiate themselves from the rest of the humans in the world.

Within mythology though, Baldur is a horribly depressed teenage boy who hates everything in the world because he knows one day something will end up killing him. In order to make her son happy though, Baldur's mother personally visits every object, thing, human, freak of nature, atom, cell and quark to ensure they will all place nice with her emotionally deranged teenager (you know, in the same way a real mother would for their depressed teen child). The end result has Baldur bragging to his little friends about he can't be harmed by any object on the planet and in doing so creates the great Asgard past time of "Throw dangerous objects at the invulnerable idiot". Eventually, one of the dangerous objects thrown is a spear made out of the one object his dear mommy didn't talk to thus leading to his death and subsequent traditional Viking funeral where they end up burning him, his ship, his wife, his mom, his toys, his room and a dwarf Thor decided to punt into the bonfire.
Within the game though, all of this excellent back story was seemingly excluded in order to preserve the "super human hero" mold Silicon Knights tried to shoe horn Baldur into, leaving the player with the mutant child of Marcus Fenix from Gears of War and Aang from Avatar the Last Airbender (glowing eyes and all).His personality, instead of a whiny teenager, has become a monotone, cliché superman with the character depth of a a road killed squirrel singing "Hello ma baby!" It’s intriguing to see at first, but its still flat and it doesn't cover up the blatant murder nor the unoriginal idea.
The character depth of some of the other Norse gods portrayed in “Too Human” are either incredibly plain or act nothing like their Norse counter parts. The best example of this was the character named Tyr, who lost everything that made him unique as the god of war in Norse mythology in order to become a faceless background character.
The plot of the game mainly revolves around a war the Aesir are fighting and the murderous robots left over by some crazy war in the past that involved two societies being too lazy to build up their military thus making murderous robots to throw at each other’s faces. The plot also goes into how the Aesir are doing their best to defend the world and things about a traitor Aesir named Loki. While Silicon Knights could have taken the time to draw out the tragedy of the Aesir and how they have sacrificed all of their human parts to become super human and how there might be something wrong with their god complex, they instead take the time to keep showing "We're the Aesir. We are awesome. Watch us as we totally fug ourselves over".
Execution of the plot also suffers from the incoherency of the cut scenes, such as times when the characters are explaining an object or character new to the player but never revealing the point in the object's existence in this new world. An example of this is the Valkyries and how they drift down to pick up the dead to bring them to Valhalla. The game explains who they are and what they do, but never explains the purpose for these Valkyries to be doing their job and how they came to be within this futuristic society. This further suffers when the player needs to wait 5 minutes on the starting screen to see the real opening cut scene left out in the game.

Since we're talking about the game's opening, when the player first begins the game he is asked to pick Baldur's class from the following: Berserker, Champion, Bio-Engineer, Commando or Guardian.
The over-glossed summary of each class are as follows:


Berserkers deal a lot of damage but die if something even winks in their general direction.

Champions are the well rounded and possibly most boring class in the game due to their lack of
any noticeable strength or weaknesses.

Bio-engineers are the only class in the game who is allowed to heal themselves, but in all other respects fail miserably. For example, the damage you would do by throwing a wet sponge at a wall is the equivalent to how much damage this class can do.

Commandos focus on guns, but due to the fighting system, the commandos will be forced to go into melee anyway.

Guardians focus on defense but flail around miserably when forced to murder anything other than a large marshmallow.


Once you've got Baldur's class figured out, it’s time for the player to walk into their first battle and discover all of the terrible horrors Silicon Knights have put into this game.First off, the npc (non-player character) companions you begin to travel with never shut up. Their scripted dialogue always range from whining about their current predicament to boasting about how great they are at fighting before they cower into a corner the moment the first enemy shows itself. On a normal occasion, this kind of incoherent, inappropriate dialogue would serve to be more amusing than anything else. But in the case of "Too Human", almost every battle Baldur will find himself in will have your random companions speaking the same lines, in the same pattern, in inappropriate moments, enough times to make you want to bludgeon the wires out of your Xbox 360. Maybe if these little dialogues could be a little more relevant to the plot and change more often, then they could serve as a useful tool to the makers of the game instead of a nuisance to its overall enjoyment.
It’s also during the first battle players will realize the controls have become a horrid sin against god. The right joy stick, normally used in third person games such as this for camera, has been press-ganged into serving as Baldur's close combat attacks. The effect leaves the camera free from the tyranny of the player's control, as it happily begins to stare at random bricks on the ceiling or robot monster cleavage instead of aiding the player in exploration.Melee soon feels blocky and repetitious as the only thing needed to win most fights is to move the joysticks as though you were suffering from an epileptic seizure in the general direction of the enemy.
Failing this, Baldur has the option of resorting to the many guns at his disposal. The problem for this comes when you realize the bullets are made out of pillows and achieve the same effect as shooting little bits of paper at the legions of blood thirsty, robotic foes clawing their ways toward you. The guns also rely on an auto targeting system controlled by the right joystick as well. This portion of the controls seems to work just as well as the melee, because the right joystick tries to aim at everything except the target you want to shoot at. Even the random bricks on the ceiling the camera seems so enticed about seem like a better target to shoot at then the forty foot tall steel behemoth charging your way.
Some of the enemies are also blessed with ailment-causing, elemental explosions. These said enemies are also immune to bullets apparently, so the only way to ever deal with them is through the blocky melee system where the only thing Baldur can do in that position is to take these explosions to his face and then suffer/wade out the ailments caused by the explosions at point blank range. By the time the ailments are finished, Baldur will either be limping, dead or on his way to dying in a few short steps.
By the time this first battle ends you've probably already become acquaintances with the death system as a result of the combined factors listed above and have realized how extremely annoying it is. First, once you drop dead, a valkyrie slowly floats downward as though she has all the time in the world and lightly picks you up like the whiny brat Baldur was meant to be. She then floats into the gently glowing light hovering in the sky at the same pace most people would take to finish several of these paragraphs. It finally all ends when you teleport back to where you were with almost no penalty for dying like an idiot. Through all of this, death becomes a momentary inconvenience that serves to break the flow of the game just so you can stare at a heavily armored woman fly down, pick your corpse up and fling you back to the entrance of the room.
Beside ridiculously long death animations, "Too Human" also suffers from "mountains upon mountains of loot" syndrome. Symptoms include killing one enemy and soon after drowning in the money, weapons and armor gushing from its body. The amount of money, weapons and armor Baldur will receive from either taking several steps into a room or massacring a horde of foes becomes so ridiculous that even the rarest, top of the line items for that level become outclassed by the fecal droppings of a monkey a few steps later. This syndrome makes every drop in the game feel insignificant and pointless, leading to the murder of any feelings of accomplishment the player may have after spending hours upon hours of work in order to obtain a rare piece of equipment.

The levels make the game feel as though it just drags on and on as Baldur seem to be running on a treadmill with the background rarely ever changing to anything significant. Many of the levels you'll be playing in are ruined snow covered futuristic building to ruined futuristic ruins. Baldur's little journey into "cyberspace" doesn't help this at all since everything in cyberspace looks like the tree you just passed several seconds ago.
The levels make the game feel as though it just drags on and on as Baldur seems to be running on a treadmill with the background rarely ever changing to anything significant. Many of the levels you'll be playing in are ruined snow covered futurisitc building to ruined futuristic ruins. Baldur's little journey into "cyberspace" doesn't help this at all since everything in cyberspace looks like the tree you just passed several seconds ago.

In the end though, the only redeeming factor this game has is the online multiplayer. The multiplayer itself allows you to go online, play with a few people in a level you've completed and just beat the game without the crappy cutscenes, plot lines, whiny dialogue, or annoying NPCs. Wow, its almost as though Silicon Knights knew about their single player failures and made a way to circumvent all of it. Suddenly all the classes have a purpose against the numerous hordes of enemies, and dying carries the consequence of leaving your friend all alone against a mob calling out for blood. It’s strange how easily a game can be fixed just by throwing in a buddy to play alongside you. My only two gripes with this is how in the manual it says "You can play with anyone!", when in reality you can play with everyone except the person sitting next to you. My other gripe is the lack of any form of PvP. I mean it'd be nice either versing my partner or seeing who can kill the most enemies in an arena setting.

Anyhow, this blog has gone on for too long so on with the summary!
Graphics- Gameplay looks fine and the enemies look very glowy/menacing. But some of the human models look like they've been through the toilet several times before making their appearance in game.
Sounds- Sounds like your in the battlefield based upon the clangs and bangs. But since the enemies don't make too much noise it kinda feels like your just swinging at sentient buckets instead of bloodthirsty robots intent on carving you up.
Story- Its entertaining in the worst way possible. They might as well just crack puns every other step of the way to keep you interested.
Controls- Who the hell puts the right analog stick as melee?!
Overall fun- Its something to do when you have alot of time to burn.
Single Player- Horrid, the plot might be entertaining here and there but it certainly didn't keep me wanting to play it again after I beat it.
Multiplayer- Far more entertaining than single player was and has alot more replay value. Fixes some of the earlier issues with the game but lacks any form of PvP.

Community- The great "Theory of Xbox live" states that everyone online is an idiot time bomb waiting to blow up at the slightest thing going against them. This theory, for once in its nice history, doesn't hold completely true on "Too Human". While some of the people you will meet online will be the occasional jerk, everyone else seems to only care about getting better equipment for their character. Also, once your online, your going to notice how everyone and their mums are berserkers who only ever fill up the role of "leap into nearest crowd and die", so expect to do alot of the killing yourself.

End notes:
So was buying "Too Human" at 60$ worth it? Fuck no. Maybe 50$, but even that's stretching it. Somewhere in the 45-39$ range sounds about right.