Playing A Game Too Human X360

Anyone who knows anything about long-term projects will tell you that, when a project takes substantially longer than was planned - say, ten years - the problem is probably with its scope. In software and games this is easily attributed to "feature creep," where an unclear initial scope, or boneheaded attempts to add to it later in development, create a tangled mess of goal features that are often impossible to achieve. Too Human is a perfect example of what can go wrong in such a project, and why most of the time, overscoped games never make it to commercial release.

Every aspect of the game is a disgusting hybrid of utterly incompatible influences. The plot is inspired by Norse mythology - except the gods are actually people, no, they're cybernetically enhanced people, and demons are actually demon robots? But if you think that they're substituting mythology with technology, hold on to your hat: there is a cyberspace world, parallel to the real world, which for some reason has more grass and trees and life than the real world. And magical witches. There is something deeply unsettling about geared-up commandos teleporting between a glowing techno-castle and a lush forest. Throw in a romantic subplot and you've got a story not even Uwe Boll would love.

The game itself is, of course, an action RPG. Except, it controls like a two-axis shooter. Even if you don't have a gun, the right stick controls your melee weapon. But it has character classes, and attributes and talent trees! And equipment, which drops randomly, Diablo-style. Naturally the cyberpunk-meets-high-fantasy-meets-Odin setting makes for equippable weapons along the lines of rifles, laser swords, and grenade launchers. Oh, and when you die, a cybernetic valkyrie takes you back to a spawn point.

Despite the potential depth of such a varied system, it is optimized for speed: you can play without having the slightest clue of what's going on. Which is good, because if I really had to worry about all this shit, I wouldn't even have finished the demo.

Too Human is the Spruce Goose of modern video games. It tries too much, and in so doing, fails at its ultimate goal. There's nothing here to enjoy, short of a few cheap thrills - if you haven't played a better dungeon-crawling Action RPG already. At the same time, I am quite glad it exists, because it is a textbook (if there were such textbooks) case of what to avoid in the course of producing a game.

Progress: Gave Up -- Finished the demo