Warren Review: Too Human (360)

August 27th, 2008 by

Hours Played: 12.5
Progress: Level 28, Main story completed, vast majority of side-quests completed (yeah, I know.)

This long-awaited game from Silicon Knights (who are Canadian, woo!), the makers of Eternal Darkness on the GameCube, is finally out.  With a unique combat system and a story based on what can only be described as cyber-Norse mythology, does this game really live up to the incredible hype that has been surrounding it for years?

Graphics

This game is no graphical slouch.  During my play-through of the game I had very little to complain about, and I’m ridiculously picky.   The only complaints I can come up with are that there is poor shadow-filtering on some of the characters during cutscenes (all done with real-time graphics), a very mildly noticable draw distance for some of the smaller objects, and Freya’s mouth is freaking ugly most of the time.  Otherwise, considering that this game uses futuristic graphical streaming thingies to prevent any load times what-so-ever, the graphics hold up very well.  The game also sports great art direction considering places and figures from Norse mythology had to be given a cyber-makeover.  Overall, I give the graphics a “sweet”.

Sound

There’s not much to complain about in the sound department either.  There’s some very solid music, some even featuring what sounds like a very large choir.  All of your expected clanks and booms and the like are here in full force and are rendered in all kinds of high definitions.  My sound complaints are that almost whenever Baldur (the main character that you play) jumps he lets off a huge grunt when he lands as if someone just prodded him in the crotch with something sharp.  I’m pretty sure that when you’re a god that jumping in armour is not going to hurt that much.  Also, some of the in-game voice clips that come from your squad or other Aesir (gods) can be crazy-repetitive.  This only becomes apparent about half-way through the game when you’re with Thor who apparently does not have too huge of a vocabulary.  Overall, sound gets a “nice”.

Controls

Controls are one of the unique features of this game.  There’s a lot of extra stuff that you can do that I pretty much found myself not bothering with.  Right-stick controls your melee weapon, be it a huge sword, huge hammer, huge pike, or huge lance.  The way in which you point it or rotate it effects how your character wields their weapon.  The right-trigger is for firing your long-range weapon be it a couple of pistols, a rifle, a canon, or a huge laser.  The left-trigger covers secondary fire which can be a second gun, grenade launching, or other such stuffs.  Once unlocked, clicking both sticks will activate your “sentient weapon” that is a copy of your melee weapon that goes around and kicks butt on its own.  X, Y, and RB can be assigned various unlockable moves later on in the game.  Otherwise, it’s pretty straight-forward, A to jump, B to dodge, LB to center the camera behind you and the like.  One interesting thing to note is that you can customize what is shown on the screen, whether you want the HUD up or not, whether you want to see how much damage each one of your attacks does, and how zoomed-in to the character you want the camera to be.  Sometimes the stick control for the melee weapons can feel a bit unresponsive, which sucks when you’re surrounded by a hoarde of enemies, but it’s overall okay.  Thus, I give the controls an “okay”.

Gameplay

Well, I have to start off this section by pointing to the playtime it took for me to finish this game.  Yes, this game is WAAAAY TOO SHORT.  On top of that, the narrative is not even finished within the game.  You’ll feel that you’re about half-done the game when it abruptly ends.  There is no explanation or reason given for this as you sit in shock during the 15 minute credits.  It’s amazing that not one of these thousands of people who worked on the game thought that there should be more than 3-4 levels.

With the shortness aside, the game actually holds out quite well during gameplay.  Pretty much all of the enemies drop things like Runes (which can be used to customize weapons and enhance traits), weapons, and armour.  Thus, I found myself usually about once every five minutes going into the Equipment menu to salvage/sell items and craft or equip. new ones.  Customization fans are indeed in for a treat because there are even “colour ruins” that can be used to customize the colours of weapons and armour.  The hack-and-slash gameplay is actually quite engaging and there’s an acceptable variety of enemies that come at you, most of which have to be dealt with differently (some go boom).  I was expecting tedium to set in due to the straightforward nature of the gameplay, but I guess the game was short enough to prevent that from happening.  Make sure to fully explore the Norn world from the pool in front of the Great Tree, there’s a lot of cool items in there.  Overall, gameplay gets a “not enough”.

Pros
+ Plenty of style
+ Zero load times
+ Good graphics/sound
+ Interesting characters, especially if you know a bit of Norse mythology
+ Tons of weapons and customization

Cons
WAY TOO DARN SHORT
– Some minor graphic/sound annoyances
– Doesn’t even end gracefully

Perhaps not worth the money right now due to the fact that it’s only about 1/3 to 1/2 of a game, this is definitely something that I’d suggest looking in to when it hits the bargain bins rather quickly (like Prey and The Darkness before it). Overall:

8.0