Silicon Knights might have been quiet for a few years regarding Too Human (quiet for nearly a decade, but hey, who’s counting?), but that doesn’t mean they weren’t busy working on it. After going hands-on with the game, which is one of the Xbox 360’s biggest titles of 2006, it’s safe to say that Silicon Knights’ well-kept secret will make a big splash with gamers when it finally releases.
While Too Human may have gone through several changes since it was revealed, it’s clearly in top form in its current incarnation. An epic cyber-warrior storyline heavily influenced by Norse mythology provides the backbone for this futuristic third-person adventure, though it doesn’t play like other games on the market. Chances are it won’t be the case for long after Too Human comes out, seeing as how the control scheme is as intuitive as it is.
Movement is controlled with the Left stick. Players can fire guns with the right and left triggers. Multiple targets will swarm the player, sometimes as many as ten enemies at once. Targeting is handled by flicking the Right stick towards other enemies. Since the character has two guns, one in each hand, the character can target two enemies at once. The game doesn’t auto-target to another enemy when one is killed, so it’s up to the player to keep a careful eye on combat, even if it does feel slightly automatic at times.
Melee combat is controlled with the Right stick. All kinds of moves are mapped to the stick, and each is as impressively choreographed as the last. The combat feels visceral and brutal, which is important in an action game. While there aren’t any insane decapitations like in God of War, the combat retains an excellent feeling of pure ultra-violence.
Power moves are available after filling meters, which fill when enough damage has been done in combat. These moves are impressive to watch and are mostly automatic, but are quick enough that you don’t feel removed from the combat. Combat itself feels fairly basic to be honest, but there are so many enemies swarming around at most times that any additional depth could have hurt the playability. Late in the demo a gigantic mech showed up, which required far more strategy to defeat than the swarms of insect-like enemies you mow through before getting there. It’s important that more enemies like this show up, or combat could risk becoming stagnant as the game progresses.
The control scheme is possible because the camera in Too Human will be fixed in certain places, similar to how it is in older Resident Evil games. Of course, the camera is handled with far more care than it was in the early survival horror games, providing a more dynamic and cinematic experience. There were a few times the view zoomed out incomprehensibly far, maybe to show off the massive environments and amazing architecture, but it’s tough to see what’s going on when it does.
Graphically, Too Human isn’t the most impressive game on the Xbox 360, but it’s nothing to sneeze at either -- it just seems like it’s fairly early in development. The detail on the character models is deeper than what’s found in a first-generation Xbox game, though the 360 is capable of better. It’s probably because so many enemies appear on screen at once. The environments are detailed with far more care, showcasing the expertly detailed cyber-fantasy environments, but the game does slow down fairly frequently, sometimes even coming to a complete stop.
The game is slated to come out this holiday season, and a lot of smoothing out will need to be done before then, but Too Human is shaping up to be one of the Xbox 360’s biggest games. The game is the first in a planned trilogy, so laying solid framework is important. Silicon Knights seems to be well on their way -- let’s just hope the kinks are ironed out before the holiday season.
