Right before the start of E3, Microsoft let slip out a demo to the public for Silicon Knights latest game, Too Human. Now unless you were awake at 2am, the flurry of megaton news coming out the past two days might have made you overlook playing this title. I wouldn’t be too quick to setup the download for this one gig demo just yet, read on to know what you might be getting yourself into.
Let me start with the good the game offers, which is pretty damn good depending on what your likes are. The audio, supurb. The start menu alone grabs you with some atmospheric opera type music. Sound effects are spot on. Voice actors are nothing to write home about, but in no way suck (sans the Duke Nukem wannabe in your squad).
Visually this game is beautiful. The designers really took the time to make sure both indoor and outdoor surroundings are something you want to take a second to just look around. Too Human deals with a storyline that blends futuristic and mythological themes very well, and the backdrop really helps accomplish that. See below for an example of that (red arrows = the actual characters, the huge guy in the background is just eye candy).
Gameplay consists of killing many many bad guys while they drop powerups like crazy. The game focuses on building your character with both skills and weapons of your choosing. There is a pretty good depth to that aspect of the game, but when going into battle, the deepness ends. The game could easily be played by using the right analog stick to just start swinging your sword like a madman until you clear a room.
This is where this review starts heading south. Just the use of the right analog stick tied to a weapon instead of what we naturally associate with moving the camera view takes a while to get used to. Just go ahead and get used to not changing the camera view at all, as the choices are limited to close and far views, but never where you want the camera. The great visuals that would normally enrich the overall experience of the game, end up being a hassle to check out.
While backgrounds and even enemies look nice, every character model used within cutscenes just plain blows. Not helping matters is the terrible animation during these scenes, where I have even noticed framerate drops. See below picture for an example of what a character looks like talking (extremely accurate representation).
I have to reiterate how annoying the lack of control you have over the camera. When battle is heated up (ie you are twiddling that right analog stick in random directions over and over), you really won’t take notice of the lack of camera control. Once you put your guns and swords away though, that is when you are reminded of how terrible it feels to lack that control. There is moments in the demo where you are put in lush green outdoor environments that scream to you “explore me!” .. instead you walk around in circles to see a good view or end up having to constantly press the left bumper button to auto-align the camera to whatever direction your character is facing. I don’t want to sound like a crazy Diablo fan crying to make a game browner, but lacking the option to just view what you want to view hurts this game greatly.
In the end, I can only recommend this game to gamers that enjoy being given a character that they can build up via a collectathon of powerups/weapons/skills/etc, where the game does shine. However, to everyone else, unless you have an hour to kill (as it will take that long before the game starts being somewhat fun), I highly suggest using that gig space on your hard drive to find some new E3 videos to watch or go read a book for Odin’s sake!
The demo did not offer the co-op play that will be in the final version. Also are 5 characters, however only 1 available for the demo…… but, there is a little secret for those who will be venturing in the game. To access the Berserker and Commando characters in the demo:
*Exit out of Xbox Live, unplug your internet.
*Go to the last blade in the dashboard.
*Change the year to 2009.
*Enjoy! You cannot be signed into Live for this to work, as it will just readjust the date.
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Totally agree with your review. It will interesting to see what Adam Sesler from X-Play says, he is always talking about how excited he is about this game
It is a subjective world, especially when it comes to games. Personally, the demo got me really jazzed about playing the full game. I appreciated the different control scheme. I thought they framed the action well and I enjoyed swinging my sword with the right analogue stick. You can look around the environments when you’re not fighting by pressing and holding the left bumper. And while certainly not as accessible or intuitive as using the right analogue stick, it gets the job done if you really want to do that. And the story feels like it’s going to be great. I suspect the demo is just scratching the surface of the gameplay – but I guess we’ll see when the full game comes out. But I for one will be buying this game for sure. So do yourself a favor: download the demo and judge for yourself.
The demo was alot of fun and I’m highly upset that the game wasn’t as great as I hoped it would be. Personally after hearing the overwhelmingly negative feedback in regards to the combat and especially the camera I would say this is reason enough for Silicon Knights to push the date back a few more months (I’d say to Christmas or early 2009) in order to fix the camera problem and combat. At the very least since the game is planned as a trilogy I hope they’ll take the lessons learned from the first games failings and fix them in the next game.
So the demo was fun. Yet your saying it wasn’t good? Aren’t games meant to be just that…FUN??? You seem like the kind of guy who bases his opinions on what somebody else thinks rather then being able to form your own opinion… or EVEN WORSE forming your own, and then changing it to fit the majority. People like you make me sick.
this gaame was better than ii expected. and i expected it to be the best game ever. it has an innovative control scheme that fits this game perfectly. my only complain is aiming with the pistols on berseker it is kindave hard to aim and i hope its better in the real game. otherwise this might be th greatest game ever made
This demo was a disappointment. I was looking forward to this game, until I played the demo. The combat isn’t very deep in my opinion, I expected a mush better experience. Ranged attacks were EXTREMELY unwieldy, I found myself shooting walls when there were enemies right next to me. The facial textures and animations lie DEEP in the “uncanny valley”. I was very disappointed, and I won’t be purchasing this game. Hopefully, SK revises all of the problems in sequels.
actually the demoo was way so much better than i expected…and is a very good game to play…there were a lot of weapons and armors and thats goood
…but this is actually a game that has like 10 years in development and for ten years or a bit less than 10 years this game should be a freakin’ perfect game and is not…the game is great but it´s not perfect…hopefully they fix the few errors not for the sequel..but for the first one….they are not so much a big errors 
….and definitively i’ll buy it…it’s not perfect but it’s really fun and addictive…..arriba mexico!!! 
XD
Here is the problem with this, and many other reviews, the problem is not with the camera, it is with you!! Yes I did the same thing, swing my sword wildy when trying to look around, but you have to learn to adjust. Put the view back and adjust, eventually you get used to it and will be comfortable bringing the camera back in. Yes, in the intro demo you can get away with blindly attacking beginning level enemies, but if you take time to focus and understand what you are doing you will begin to realize how deep and varied the combat is. With the ability to customize your character to your style this game is going to be amazing, even if some of the canned cut scenes are average/mediocre. (search for the bar fight though, its good)