Too Human has been in development for nearly ten years, and in that time has undergone a great many changes. It’s almost as legendary as the developer’s recent commentary about the innovation of the game. However, what I’m about to say probably won’t win me many friends in the camp of Too Human love. But I’m not going to jump right in and decry Dyack at all for what he and his team at Silicon Knights have done.

The story is one that is delivered throughout the game via sparse cut-scenes and doesn’t really get going until near the end, and this is a short game at around ten hours of gameplay with some replay, that is apparently the first in a trilogy. You are Baldur, a Viking god, except that Too Human has techo-future-vikings and nano/cybernetic technology. Mankind is at war with machines, which are given names from Norse myth, such as goblins and dark elves (svart alfar). Even Grendel makes an appearance.

Silicon Knights have attempted to be innovative by permitting you to have a modicum of control during certain in-game cut-scenes, for example, an early scene showing a goblin’s eye view of Baldur allows you to charge forwards, guns blazing and actually kill the creature as the scene ends. Yet the game doesn’t tell you this, you discover this by playing. A bit like the first time a door opens and you wonder why your character hasn’t walked into the room and you discover that you have to move him yourself.

The problem with Too Human is that it’s trying to be innovative, but it draws from numerous games that have come before it, uses an MMO style loot system and you spend far too much time in the game’s menus. It’s the perfect game for people who loved Diablo and getting tonnes and tonnes of virtual loot. The game features no camera control and it could be described as a 3rd person action/rpg with the emphasis on repetitive action against hordes of monsters that scale to your level and the loot that’s dropped.

I’ll say it here too; you use the right stick for combat!

Gamers who are used to using the right stick for camera control will find they end up attacking at first, it takes some getting used to not having this feature. When you’re finally used to the fact that the right stick attacks with a drawn melee weapon, you press the left and right triggers to use your guns and the right stick is used to aim them in different directions. It’s not a bad system of control; it’s just slightly flawed in places. With various movements of the left and right stick you create combos and chain together a series of fairly impressive attacks. By quickly tapping both sticks in the same direction you can perform a finisher, a devastating acrobatic combat move. Add to this the Ruiner, a showy area effect spell like move that kills everything in a certain radius which is triggered by pressing the right bumper when you have enough combo meter to do so.

Yet it lacks the immediacy of the traditional button hammering, often sending you way too far forwards into a mass of enemies that proceed to cut you to ribbons. It’s Ok however, since you’re a god, you can die and wait in an un-skippable in-game cut-scene where a Valkyrie comes and takes you to Valhalla…or rather they don’t, you appear back on the level, back in the fight and sometimes you’re right in trouble since the enemies might have followed you when you tried to run away and conserve your health. The only penalty for dying is that you take some damage to your items, which then need to be repaired by using bounty.