Too Human Demo Impressions

After all the hype, hyperbole, and vitriol launched at Silicon Knight's latest game I was a little unsure as to what to expect when I booted the demo up. I knew going in that it had elements of Norse Mythology in its sci-fi story and setting and a gameplay philosophy that borrowed much from Diablo. What I played this afternoon ultimately confirmed these facts and left a middling impression.

First of all, I hate playing demos for games that are heavily story driven. Demos by their nature are constructed to give the user a broad overview of the game's style and gameplay mechanics. Too Human's demo is no different and launches you headlong into the story-line where you're riding along on some sort of gigantic hovership about to be dropped off into a combat zone. In the game you control Baldur, a God who is battling the "goblins" in an effort to save the humans. The bad-guys are referred to as "goblins" and "monsters" but they are obviously robotic organisms. It's a little off-putting at first to try and merge the concepts of science fiction and mythology butSilicon Knights has a done a good job of making the universe appear coherent. After the opening cut-scene ends, you are thrust straight into gameplay after seeing a splash page pop-up with all of you controls.

The controls were one aspect of Too Human that I immediately found to be quirky. You have no control over the camera when you are moving about the screen. Instead, the right analog stick is engaged for melee combat. When an enemy is in front of you, all you need do is press the right stick in their direction and your character will hurtle at them engaging in melee combat. This control scheme makes for a fun gameplay tactic of bouncing across the stage from one enemy to the next while hacking them to pieces. In some of the bigger battles in the demo I found the lack of an ability to rotate the camera problematic when I got surrounded by mechanical foes and had no quick way of changing my characters on screen orientation. You do have some degree of control over the camera's properties by pressing up and down on the D-Pad. Three modes are available to toggle through in the camera settings: Near, Normal, and Back. I found little difference in usability between the three modes and left the camera on normal for my playthrough.

In addittion to melee, there is also a shooting mechanic in Too Human as each character class has the ability to wield firearms. Using the left and right triggers fires whatever ranged weapon your character has equipped. There is an auto lock on that is engaged as you depress the trigger and move towards enemies. I found it frustrating not being able to tell which creature I was going to be targeting until I was expending ammo. Sometimes randomly I would begin firing and my character would turn around firing behind himself and I struggled to try and turn his fire around towards the enemies that were barreling towards me. My impression on game-play overall is that it is mostly fun, but the camera and wonky lock-on system will occasionally spoil things.

Graphics and sound are more or less average. Surround effects are put to good use but the gun sound effects and melee sound effects lacked any visceral punch. The voice acting was below average and very B-movie like. The acting wasn't bad enough to pull me out of the experience but it certainly didn't immerse me further into the game either. The grapnics are okay, there are a few areas where they truly shine and other areas that are less than inspired. Animation is stiff and awkward, especially the animation of Baldur sailing from one enemy to the next in combat, he appears to just glide across the ground and it looks a little silly.

Borrowing from games such as Diablo, there is a loot system in Too Human that allows you to get new armor and weapons and equip them. It is also possible to level your character up and assign skill points to different specialization trees. The menus for equipping loot and assigning skill points I found to be very bland and hard to navigate. Everything at first blush appeared to be a little too complex for its own good, especially for a game that is all about fast-paced combat. Eventually I got the hang of navigating the different menus and equipping items, but I still wish the interface were more streamlined.

I find it hard to predict if this demo is going to prove to be an accurate barometer of the final game's quality. I would like to experience the narrative of this title first-hand to see just how fleshed out this game's setting is. It's hard to get a feel in the demo for what the game is going to offer in terms of story but the setting is intriguing enough that I want to find out more. Despite the concerns I have about the title I plan on renting it and digging deeper into it. There is a chance that despite a few design nit-picks this game could have a lot of potential, especially when you factor in two player co-operative play.

World of Warcraft Patch is Live

After a long wait the latest WoW patch is here bringing with it the long awaited ability to get player ride-able mounts at level 30. It looks like Blizzard is intentionally making the game more casual friendly through the leveling process. Since the level cap will very soon be level 80 I think it's a step in the right direction.

It used to be that leveling from 1 to 60 was a Herculean effort that took months for the average person. In the old leveling structure players were not able to get their first mount until level 40, which always seemed a bit odd given that the next tier of mounts was available at 60. Now in the new patch as soon as your character hits 30 you can visit your local riding trainer and pay the 35 gold to learn how to ride your racial mount of choice. There's no excuse now for folks not being prepared to explore the frosty snow covered regions of Northrend in "Wrath of the Lich King" this fall!

Microsoft E3 Conference Impressions

Bring on the casual market seemed to be the rallying cry for the big M in today's conference presentation. The opening moments of Microsoft's event focused on some of the "hardcore" fare headed to the retail chain this holiday showing titles such as "Fallout 3," "Fable 2," and "Gears of War 2." Along with the updates and hands-on demos of these titles Xbox head honcho Dan Matrick also teased that they were going to revolutionize the console race with a new innovation.

This new innovation is apparently a redesigned from the ground up Xbox Live interface. The main bullet-point in this redesign appear to be "avatars." These avatars are 3-D rendered embodiments of your online persona, much like Miis on the Wii. Rare studios came up with the avatar editor system and promise thousands of pieces of content to customize your unique avatar with. Other than the addition of avatars the new Live interface will sport a streamlined design that consists of floating windows representing the different areas of the Xbox 360. From there the conference began to focus on party games and yet more casual fare espousing a more online, connected, and social atmosphere being their goal moving forward for the Live service.

As a gamer, I found myself ultimately left wanting by this conference. The big announcement was obviously the re-imagining of Live and I was left scratching my head mostly as to how this was going to "revolutionize" the way I play and experience games. It seemed to me that Microsoft is very content with their position in the marketplace (as they should be) and they are playing things related to their core users very safe by not making any new announcements or revealing any future franchises. It seems that their #1 priority is attracting a more casual market to their system by syphoning off the target audience of the Wii.

Microsoft has a maddening tendency to want to try and be all things to all people and this conference personified this trait in my eyes. Looking at the conference as a whole, Microsoft essentially lead off with demos of hardcore titles, then spent the rest of the conference hammering their new casual approach while ending with a hardcore appeasing announcment from Square. I was hoping for more excitment from the 360 camp out of this conference and in my eyes they did not deliver. I am excited for Gears 2, Fable 2, and Rock Band 2 at the end of this year but Microsoft failed to stimulate much interest or excitement from me on what lies ahead in 2009. What is your reaction to the conference?

Draft Posting for Feedback

Given that my site has very few (if any at this point!) regular readers I thought it might be a fun experiment to post chunks of my reviews as I write them to gather feedback on the style of my writing. Writing reviews for games is a challenge for me, I am used to writing movie reviews in which its fairly easy to give a comprehensive overview of the film-going experience. When it comes to video games, there are many other considerations that have to be juggled in the context of a review. There is of course the story and setting which are much like films, but there are also gameplay considerations, multi-player, audio/visual presentation, and of course craftsmanship. In learning how to juggle these different factors it would be helpful I think to get the feedback of the people who are reading it to see if I am covering the topics that are of interest to them. What do you guys think? Would you be interested in reading chunks of reviews as they are written and offering feedback on how the review is progressing?