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DON’T BELIEVE THE HATE
Too Human is surprisingly good

The Internet really seems to have a hate on for Too Human and Denis Dyack, director of Silicon Knights (the studio that developed the game). I’ve been following the development of this game somewhat closely over the last few years – in fact since the launch of the Xbox 360. Why was I so interested? Mostly because it was actually being made right here, in Canada, and on top of that not too far from where I live. In fact, in a town I spent much time in visiting family and friends.

The game’s development had been a slow process, and admittedly one that probably had its fair share of setbacks which other games have not faced. The earliest screenshots I’ve seen from Too Human were from a GameCube version and I gotta tell you, I’m glad it wasn’t released on that console. But Silicon Knights’ game that was released for it, Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem, was heralded as a breath of fresh air and many to this day still feel it’s one of the best games available for that system.

Me, I couldn’t see it at the time. At the time I was still dizzy from the flash-bang that was the jaw-dropping Resident Evil remake for the ‘Cube. While I had a review copy of Eternal Darkness, I ended up shelving it and eventually trading it in for god-knows-what. It’s a decision I sometimes regret, though I could always go out and buy a used copy.

Now, we’re on the eve of the release of Too Human (as of this writing), and it’s looking a whole lot better that the GameCube screenshots did. In fact, it’s looking a lot better than early 360 screenshots showed.

Its success would mean a lot to not only the developer, but to the Niagara region, as Dyack hopes to help the area grow into a technology hub, possibly stopping the brain drain of programmers to US markets. Please note he did not actually say, “If you don’t buy this game you will condemn St. Catharines to financial ruin,” as some people might try to tell you.

Dyack is continually slammed by the gaming press, who are barely more diplomatic about their absolute hate-on for the man that the people who comment on the sites. And in cases where subtle cynicism towards him is present, it seems to exist only with the intent of egging on readers into what eventually becomes an all-out hatefest. Of course, it doesn’t help him that he has replied directly to message board comments.

This is just unfortunate, for however good his intentions may have been, people have picked them apart and used his words against him. Hey, it’s the Internet. It happens. It’s happened to me, and chances are it’s happened to you. And yes, it really sucks and can cause lots of emotional damage even when it’s basement-dwellers throwing the insults around. But life does in fact go on.

Getting back to the game, though; I received a review copy of it last Thursday and played it for a few hours that night. Now I had previously played an early build of the game in October 2007 and then what I presume to be the final build of the game at last week’s launch party. The first time I played it, I quite enjoyed it. There were a few technical issues but that was to be expected from a preview build. The second time I played it was last week – and I found some of the actions to have a lot of lag associated with them. For instance, there was considerable latency when hitting the jump button to when my character actually jumped.

As noted in an update to my previous post on the game, it appears that the monitor I was playing on probably had some calibration issues. Because when I play it at home, on a TV I’m used to (a trusty SD tube, I might add), I find it plays very well. So well, in fact, that I had no problem playing it for six hours on Friday night, taking turns ploughing through enemy hordes with Adam (who really needs to write something again).

Since I’m now hours into the single-player mode of the game, I must disagree with early impressions and reviews on Too Human wherein the reviewer bashes the game for being boring or complains about dying all the time. Yeah, the game is difficult at times, and yeah, you can hack and slash through enemies. But you can’t just run into the middle of the battle and expect to survive.

I am a huge fan of action games like the Devil May Cry (the fourth instalment, especially) and God of War series. I like having lots of enemies to fight at once and I also like being able to dispatch them quickly. To this end, Too Human does not disappoint. The game’s also being publicized as having an extensive RPG element to it, which is something I’m not usually into because RPGs are generally too deep for me to pay attention to. But thankfully these RPG elements are light and unobtrusive to my enjoyment of the game. That said, I do find the loot/levelling up system fascinating and enjoy finding armour/weapon combinations that result in greater battle efficiency. Plus, it’s pretty cool that it changes the look Baldur (the protagonist) significantly.

Other players have complained about the death sequence in Too Human, in particular the fact that it can’t be skipped. What they generally fail to mention is that when you do re-spawn, you don’t have to wait for a damn loading screen. While I didn’t time this death sequence on a stopwatch, I’d say the whole thing lasts maybe 30 seconds. In fact, if you play the game the way it’s meant to be played and with its cinematic experience in mind, you will only ever see one loading screen: the one when you start the game. Everything in the game is buffered while you’re being shown other stuff. Mostly, it’s cinematic sequences that are done with the in-game engine. And considering this, they look pretty good with the exception of a few strange textures (such as long hair, which looks off, so it’s a good thing your character can’t get any balder, har har). These cutscenes serve in the plot development. At first, we don’t know why Baldur and his infantry team are dungeon-crawling but through these scenes we eventually learn why. Think of it like a show with flashbacks. And there are a lot of these cinematics – so much in fact that Adam and I joked that Metal Gear Solid 4 has nothing on Too Human.

We were joking. Don’t freak out about it, MGS fans.

In terms of everything Too Human set out to accomplish – melding an action title with RPG elements and centring that around a deeply philosophical question on what it means to be human – it would be an understatement to say the game is ambitious. And as far as I’m concerned, the game makes good on those attempts. But games, whether they’re trying to tell a story or not, should be fun. And Too Human is just that. It’s not a perfect game - but which game is?

Although the game’s received much negative hype on the Internet, I doubt it will matter once people start playing it. If the world really cared what people on message boards thought, Snakes on a Plane would have been the biggest Hollywood blockbuster of all time, George W. Bush would have been thrown out of office, and Jar Jar Binks would have been killed brutally in Episode II.

Posted in Canada, Editorial, News, Xbox 360 |