By Kevin Chen on September 11th, 2008

This game was tough to score. Honestly, I’ve never spent so much time agonizing over a score for a game as I did with Too Human. Have you ever played a game that had elements of a 9.0 game as well as elements of a 6.0 title? For me, Too Human did.

I played the first portions of Too Human thinking it would be a surefire 9.0 or higher. I loved the game’s battle mechanics from the first enemy encounter; the combo system and seamless hybrid of swordfights and gunplay created a visceral ass-kicking combat experience that set the scene for some mind-blowing sequences down the line. I loved the setting of the game, which is a Norse mythology-influenced futuristic world of "cybernetically enhanced" beings. I loved how the developer snuck a bit of RPG into my action game with the inclusion of character customization and five character classes. I loved pretty much everything about this game: the atmosphere, the enemy design, the mechanically simple but tactically complex battles. I couldn’t wait to play more.

The flaws hadn’t kicked in yet. There wasn’t time to see the flaws. There was so much new material in the game so far that nearly everything I encountered seemed like a breath of fresh air. I learned that my character came from a city of gods among men, and I wanted to learn more. Another wave of enemies was always welcome: I could try out another one of my character’s combos. And when I first set foot in Cyberspace, which is a mystical, Elder Scrolls-esque place, I was intrigued by the possibilities that could arise from interaction between that world and the real world ("real world" in terms of the setting of the game, of course). But the flaws were there – they were just overshadowed at the time.

They started to creep in soon enough. The environments in the second level started to look homogenous after a while, and I started wishing for a more varied level design. The novelty of the combat system was wearing off, and battles were becoming less like exciting bouts of finesse and more like taxing tests of perseverance. And because the thrill of battle was waning, the game started to feel formulaic: I’d go to one area and battle a wave of enemies, then go to another area and battle another group of enemies, then repeat the equation once more. This is about the point that I started thinking about that 6.5 and 6.0.

The game got more disappointing in the third level because it largely followed the same formula set down by the second level – it just had a different environment and a different set of enemies. It was at this point that I started to realize the story was confusing and disjointed, and even the reason why my character was sent on the mission was unclear and seemingly pointless. I finished the third level with a strange feeling that I hadn’t accomplished much. By the fourth and final level, I found myself completely bored by the game (I finished the game, of course, but I wasn’t thrilled about doing so). In the end, I really only liked the first fourth of this game.

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