"You do not lose any progress or XP when you get killed. Dead enemies stay dead and injured enemies, even bosses don't get health back. They had to dumb the game down to kid mode to keep it playable. ...And for the record I heard that the Commando class has a bullet ricochet skill that utterly breaks the game, incase you're ever tempted to try this for yourself. I know its free on Xbox Live now."
— DLJadow
"Lots of people dislike the control stick only combat, the game felt overly grindy and repetitive, and the story was far too stilted and flat to make up for it all."
— Matt McMuscles
Too Human
Protagonist(s):
Baldur
Genre(s):
Action role-playing
Platform(s):
Xbox 360
Release Date:
August 19, 2008
Developer(s):
Silicon Knights
Publisher(s):
Microsoft
Country:
Canada
Successor:
Too Human: Rise of Giants (cancelled)
Too Human is an action role-playing game developed by Silicon Knights and published by Microsoft Game Studios, released on August 19. 2008.
The game, alongside with X-Men: Destiny, was eventually delisted in 2012 after Epic Games won against Silicon Knights after it was deemed that they used an illegally modified Unreal 3 engine, after Silicon Knights sued Epic Games in 2007 for breach of contract regarding the engine.
Too Human was envisioned by Silicon Knights in the late 90s, as a Blade Runner inspired cyberpunk action-adventure game revolving around a futuristic cop named Frank Shields who investigates a cyborg-run criminal underworld after his partner was killed by cyborgs. It first aimed for the Sega Saturn, and eventually moved over to the PlayStation 1. Gameplay was going to revolve around utilizing a variety of guns and utilizing futuristic implants and cyborg technology, hence the title Too Human. It aimed for a very big scope, aiming for at least four PlayStation compact discs, which would make it one of the only action games to reach 3 to 4 discs.
Things changed in the 2000s when Silicon Knights ended up striking a deal with Nintendo to publish a different IP, Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, which was well-received. Then, Silicon Knights would continue their partnership with Nintendo to work on Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, while Too Human remained suspended. Then, in late 2004, Denis Dyack, seeing the Nintendo Wii prototype, was convinced that the new Wii console wouldn't support his dream project, Too Human. This resulted in Silicon Knights ending their partnership with Nintendo and striking off on their own, eventually settling for the Xbox 360 instead.
Sometime in 2006, a website started circulating that Silicon Knights was cancelling their plans to use Unreal 3 for the Too Human. Dyack disputed these rumors, despite the fact that they were actually correct. In July 2007, Silicon Knights sued Epic Games for the tech that they were provided in Unreal 3, stating that the engine yielded unsatisfactory results and aimed to seek compensation from them in court. Meanwhile behind doors, Denis and his team were modifying the Unreal 3 engine to their own results, which while it made development smoother, ended up making the final project less functional.
Why It Failed One Too Many Times
Development hell: This game was notorious for having a very long development time, spanning over a decade with multiple reboots and direction changes. The final result was a game that looks roughly made despite being on a 60 million dollar budget. Many of this game's problems aside from Denis Dyack's direction, alongside with X-Men: Destiny, was most likely due to Silicon Knights' use of an illegally modified Unreal 3 engine that while it allowed them to avoid Epic's royalty fees, it ended up backfiring on them because it made the engine less solid to work with, which in the end resulted in a major factor of X-Men: Destiny's troubled production and their closure in 2014.
The plot is a confusing and disjointed mess.
There's also a scene where Baldur's weapon suddenly becomes alive, which comes out of nowhere and becomes swiftly forgotten afterward.
Thor, who just looks like Baldur but in a different armor set and hairstyle, has only a few lines on the section that he appears, therefore he ends up saying the same things over and over.
Most of the game just boils down to progressing through hallways filled with enemies with very little uniqueness in each area.
Combat is done via the right analog stick, which is typically used for the camera. While this technically works well for top-down games, this is in fact a 3rd-person melee-focused action game in the same vein as God of War or Devil May Cry, which doesn't really translate well for these kinds of games. It makes performing attacks even more frustrating than it needs to be, and there's very little unique melee attacks with the exception of an area of effect shockwave and a ranged wolf howl attack that is done by flicking the right analog stick. Aside from that, the right analog stick is also used to aim the guns instead of just locking on to each target.
It can be theorized that the reason why the right analog stick is used for combat was that because this was meant for be a Wii game but got moved to the Xbox 360 game, as the early concept of Too Human centered around a futuristic cop in a cyberpunk world who investigates a criminal underworld with a variety of guns, but slowly around the GameCube/Wii cycle got transitioned over a sci-fi Norse mythology hybrid.
Speaking of the guns, most of the guns are straight up weak and barely do any damage to enemies with the exception of mostly beam weapons that fire a continuous stream that deals consistent damage to them. However, there is only one class that has an ability that makes the guns more powerful than melee weapons.
Weapons, which includes swords, dual swords (which are locked to the Berserker class), spears, hammers, etc don't really change much combat-wise and all basically do the same thing but with higher stats.
Weak enemy variety, which are mostly just robot beasts that do the same thing across each area. The only time enemies change is on the final level where you fight against zombie-like enemies. However, some of these zombies can inflict a poison DoT (damage over time) effect that cannot be cured unless you pick up a health orb that only has a low chance to even drop or via entering a portal to Cyberspace. Aside from that, the only way to cure the poison damage over time is to enter portals and come back. Enemies will barely react to your enemy attacks which makes it to where there's hardly any room to dodge their attacks, especially ranged attacks like missiles and mortars from faraway enemies.
The camera is all over the place, where sometimes when standing still, the camera will sway back and forth on its own.
The Commando class is the most broken out of the five classes, because it has a special skill that is supposed to make the bullets ricochet, but what it ends up doing is somehow multiplying the damage output on the guns to the point where it actually makes them better than the melee weapons.
Bosses and even enemies have inconsistent hit detection. The first major boss, GRNDL-1, has a wonky hitbox which causes most attacks to miss him, which doesn't make the battle hard but rather artificially padded via an awkwardly-designed hitbox.
Dying is virtually pointless, as not only do you have to sit through a 35 second long animation of the Valkyrie picking up your dead body and then ascending back up, but you instantly respawn immediately afterward with the enemies/bosses still intact. Therefore, if you exclude the whole long animation when you die, there's virtually no difficulty as you can die with no punishment at all.
The Cyberspace zones, which are the forest areas that when you enter them removes the HUD as there's no enemies to fight in that area, are filled with invisible walls and often times maze-like layouts making it hard to figure out where to go.
Sequel baiting: After Baldur defeats Hel, who is shown to be the main antagonist from the opening cutscene of the game, and returns to Aesir, the game ends on a cliffhanger where Loki, one of the antagonists of the game, meets with a giant robot outside in the tundra, and then credits roll afterward. This game was meant to be part of a trilogy, but due to Silicon Knights's lawsuit with Epic Games and the poor reception regarding this game, this would never ever be resolved.
Redeeming Qualities
For 2008 standards, the graphics are okay and are on standard with other early Unreal 3 games such as RoboBlitz and Gears of War.
Decent audio and soundtrack, with the use of an epic-style soundtrack throughout the game which enhances the atmosphere thoroughly.
Reception
Initially, people were hyped for this game when it was announced to be on the Xbox 360, as the demo on the Xbox 360 gained over 300,000 downloads and plays. However, as the release date neared, Denis Dyack took it to Neogaf to complain how his project was being negatively received, which resulting in him getting banned and a negative stigma to be surrounded over the game, especially when word was floating around that Too Human was entangled in the Silicon Knights vs. Epic Games lawsuit. Eventually, the game ended up selling less than 1 million copies worldwide.
The game would eventually become backwards compatible with the Xbox One and return to the Xbox store in June 2019 re-released for free.
