Thrills? All too few, man.

I won't lie. I was excited when I first heard the details for Too Human. A dungeon crawling game? RPG-ing of the grind 'n' find kind? Made by the company who made Legacy of Kain? Set in a Norse sci-fi background? The latest hyped up 360 release? Count me intrigued.

The combat is just lovely. It was a great feeling watching Baldur zip across the screen, robots flying, as more of their friends poured in from off-screen. The merest twitch of the thumbstick sends the hero Baldur homing towards the group of antagonists. The occasional fumbling left my character waving his sword at air but still... I felt like was actually good at this game. There is a lack of variety among enemies, but this didn't cross my mind as I crashed into the next mob, and the next mob and then...stopped as I was forced to 'play' through a clumsy exposition of how I came to be in this fascinatingly dark locale. Dark shadows on dark textures on dark walls, as is becoming the industry standard for 'adult' content. Thanks to Gears of War for that one.

Aside from the style of narrative, the story itself annoyed me on a visceral level. Someone needs to take the developers aside and let them in on a little secret; simply dropping Viking names into a dull, inspired story makes for... a dull uninspired story with Viking names. I actually cringed during some of the cutscenes, especially those featuring Freya and Baldur, and the baffling attempt to render vaguely eroticised body language in the game engine. This narrative intrudes upon the gameplay to a near unacceptable degree. In fact, lots of things intrude upon the game to an unacceptable degree. The walking. The puzzles. (which are ridiculously simple, they are more akin to a speedbump than a challenge). The pacing of the gaps between is all wrong, leaving a frustrated and unsatisfied player in it's wake.

I would give some credit to what I think the developers have tried to do with the game. They evidently took apart what people liked about these games, and thought of ways they could improve the subgenre. Simpler, more intuitive combat, check. A more involving narrative, check. They also thought about the staples; Grinding combat, check. Extensive loot, levelling and upgrade system, check.

Too Human achieves all these things. Yet it is not a good game. Unfortunately they forgot one thing; all of these have to be put back together, molded, sewn up, or whatever metaphor you care to use. This type of game has to play as a singular experience, that sucks the player out and away from his normal priorities and drags him through the game until the small hours of the morning, searching for that final quest that will allow him to return to the everyday world of coffee and girlfriends and furniture and jobs. Yes, this player may care about such things as a good story and great controls. But these aren't the things that make him play. The developers haven't made any real effort to smooth and pace the playing experience. Why did people keep playing Diablo, and the Dynasty Warriors titles for so long? Because the experience they offered was pure and uninterrupted. It simply offered a steady and varied stream of enemies to defeat, loot to claim and objectives to achieve. As pointless as it may seem to non-fans, this appealed to... well... the type of people it appealed to. There was an undefined, factor, be it passion or manic personality flaw, that keeps people playing through the same game over and over to uncover every single play style, item, combo. Silicon Knights have tried to improve on this, and have not succeeded.

The lack of real guidance about the combat system is intensely frustrating, as are the NPC humans who accompany you. For a game that is supposed to be about the struggle and mystery of being human in world of cybernetic Gods and robots, I found it difficult to work out if the humans had any real impact on the game at all. I dodged around a troll for about five minutes trying to work out if the rifle rounds pouring from the human's guns were having any impact, and I simply couldn't tell. If they are there simply for narrative effect, then why include them in the game engine at all? They constantly lag behind anyway, and are nowhere to be found in a fight.

The heart of any, is the urge and addiction towards finding that better piece of equipment, of sneaking up just one more level before friends and relatives gather to prise the controller from your pallid and trembling hands. For the both semi-obsessive and more sedate players, the pace of play is all important. People came back to play Dynasty Warriors and the like because they felt they could do something better, or faster the second time around. They felt that playing a new character or class could help them find new angles in what was enjoyable the first time through. I suspect that in Too Human, this different angle on play is likely to be too narrow to extend play time by much. the classes really need to feel different, to have viable alternative strategies for completing the game. With the failures in effectively communicating the narrative, the pull for this game should be to collect every piece of equipment, to master every kill, and to see the game through different play styles. The equipment all looks very similar, and the variety of swords, hammers and staves play virtually the same way, with the only real distinction being between fast weapons and slightly slower weapons.

It will probably be pretty well received online, but that's not saying too much considering the paucity of the market in this particular genre, and the hold of the Call of Duty 4 grind upon the general gamer is unlikely to be overly affected.

Too Human is certainly no masterpiece, and is hugely flawed in certain areas. The enjoyment gained from the smooth combat is stunted by the stuttering enemy placement, laughably bad story, and a lack of variety. It is painful, in the regard that there is a perfectly enjoyable game somewhere inside, but the whole package is let down by a persistent lack of streamlining and finish. It is shallow in about every department, and in such a way that isn't going to be fixed by downloadable content. Still, they have two more games to get it right, and the game probably has just enough Good Stuff to allow this to happen.

Silicon Knights needs to sort out what it wants Too Human to be. If Too Human hadnt spent most of the last decade in development, this would be excusable. But 9 years is long enough to develop a concept and run with it. To put it simply, Too Human barely manages to pull anything off successfully.