Good:
- Pretty good graphics
- Good Voice acting; especially Baldur.
- Combat can be fun at times
- Loot collecting is addictive; lots of cool weapons and armor
- Interesting Story setting.

Bad
- Too many enemies / difficulty too high, but...
- Dying is unpunished and pointless, making for a careless easy game.
- Valkyrie / death cut-scene cannot be skipped; lasts nearly 30 seconds.
- Very repetitive, very few monster types.
- Areas are too big.
- Combat doesn't always work as intended and health drops are too uncommon.

Too Human is one of those games that makes you want to cry because if they had just made a few minor adjustments here and there the game could have pretty damn great; as it is, it is a playable, slightly enjoyable, broken mess of bad design choices. But let's start with the good stuff, before I dish out the dirt on the game's horrible problems.

Now this might just be a personal preference thing, but I really enjoyed the graphics and art s.tyle of Too Human. I enjoyed the cool sci-fi motif that covers every thing in the game. In fact I really enjoyed how they took the story of Baldur of Norse Mythology and made it fit in that world of technology. This is also impacted by some good voice acting. Baldur's voice is perfect for the character and he is by far the shining star. The story does end a bit abruptly but this series is designed as a Trilogy of stories so I am giving them a break.

Like I said in my Impressions article, the combat can be really fun; I loved sliding from Goblin to goblin and just laying waste, but unfortunately as you progress, the other enemies take much more effort to take down and the combat becomes more a chore. But the reason you are dealing with the combat is so that you can pick up the piles and piles of loot icons that drop after each fight. After you get to a certain point you might start seeing stuff over again but at a higher level, but there is a lot of stuff that you can grab.

The only problem I guess is that most of your good armor and weapons come from blue prints and cannot be just happened upon as a drop from enemies. But if you love collecting stuff, the loot might just be enough of a draw to get you to keep playing, just waiting to see what kind of awesome weapon or armor set you will find next... I know that it was for me.

Next, though, we have the things that will but a good strain on your loot lust and almost destroy Too Human's enjoyability. The first has to do with the combat system, which includes death. First off there are way too many enemies for one character to deal with and in final stage, I don't even know if two characters could deal with the swarms of enemies. This makes the game way too difficult... IN THEORY. In actuality, the game is insanely easy. Why? Because dying in the combat is for all intents and purposes: POINTLESS. You aren't punished at all, sure you lose a couple hundred points of durability on your equipped weapons and armor (which have 1000's of points), but all the enemies you damaged stay at the same health and you respawn sometimes within view of where you just died. You may as well be invincible, that would make the game better in the state it is in now and at the very least it would save you some time as the death scene with the Valkyrie and such takes nearly 30 seconds and cannot be skipped.

I guess it is a double edged sword: if the deaths where brutally punishing, then the game would be infuriatingly difficult, so the pointless death system saves many a temper tantrum, but they needed to find a happy medium in all honesty. The thing is, it isn't really the sometimes shaky combat controls that will kill you it is the combat's reliance on you getting RANDOM DROP HEALTH ORBS to keep yourself afloat during the fights. This is broken because you seem to get them more often when your health is full then when your health is low; blow's your ****ing mind doesn't it? This makes the game frustrating, especially when the enemy you killed seconds before dying drops one and you have to sit there for 30 seconds just staring at it.

Finally, the game is a bit repetitive, you will be fighting the same enemies for the whole game, until you get to last level where you fight the undead. There are about 8 - 10 different enemies in the whole game and you will see 100's of each before the game is over. I complained about the amount of enemies at times, well that is actually not so bad when you have to walk around big empty sections of the level without anything to do, the levels look impressively big to be sure, but I think they could have been shrunk a tiny bit here and there.

Overall, I can't believe how feel about Too Human... On one hand I think it is an okay game with a lot of problems (and promise, might I add); yet, on the other I think I might like it, because I can't stop thinking about the game and my next loot drop. I like it, but I don't like it, I like it, I don't like it... Funny, that actually explains Too Human pretty well: every time you are starting to like what you are playing, one of those problems comes up and ruins it.

This is a game where you will have to decide for yourself if you want to play it. I don't feel like I can make a proper recommendation, because the objective me, hates the game and its stupid problems, but some other part of me actually kind of likes the game. I'm too conflicted.

There you go my final thoughts on Too Human. I just bought, played and finished the first episode of the Strong Bad game in 5 hours; it was a pretty fun little game, but you have to be a fan of the show to get the most out of it. I also picked up Ys Book 1 and 2 (TG16) on Virtual Console because of the review I saw on RetroWare TV; it's a pretty cool little RPG. That just adds to the already huge list of games that I need to play as I am only 4 hours in to Tales of Vesperia (360), plus I have Super Mario Galaxy (Wii), Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii) and I have only played an hour of Metroid Prime 3 (Wii)... I have a lot to do because next Tuesday I will be playing a ton of Hockey videogames and probably not much else.

I will talk to you soon with more articles, probably Impressions articles; maybe I will even do a special on my anticipated games of fall 2008 since we are head for that pretty soon. Talk to you later. The Now Loading Broad-Sword of Loading Complete!

Time to wrap things up for August 2008, with my usual Month-In-Review Feature. August wasn't the biggest month, there where only 4 posts, but there were a couple of big updates with Impressions and finished articles. Let's just get going.

August 7, 2008
I played through the crazy indie game Braid. It is a pretty fun, but, short puzzle platforming game. This is a must play, don't worry about the 1200 point price, you need to play this.

August 18, 2008
It was a couple weeks since I had made a post and I updated you on what I was playing. In this case Call of Duty 4, NHL 08 and tons of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

August 19, 2008
I wanted to play Ratchet games, so I decided to pick up the PS2 port of Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters. In this finished article, my final impressions where that it wasn't all that great compared to the previous Ratchet games and I was kind of disappointed.

August 29, 2008
I gave Too Human a shot, when I picked it up on August 22nd. It is a decent game, but it has a few serious problems that keep it from being totally amazing but I am having fun with it so far and I will probably have a Finished article coming soon.

There you have it August 2008 in a nut-shell. Big time action is coming to the blog starting in September when a few pretty awesome releases happen; I will have coverage of Tales of Vesperia, the 2009 NHL games, possibly Infinite Undiscovery and I will have coverage of some of the new Wii games that I have gotten. So there is a lot to come so stay logged. Loading Complete!

How's it going, it has been awhile, but that is because I was pretty busy last week, but I have spent the week playing a bunch of stuff including the game that I am going to talk about for a bit here. That game is Silicon Knights' Too Human. Here's the story, I didn't really care about Too Human, then I watched a few videos and I was pretty excited about it, then I played the demo and it killed my enthusiasm... I then saw the game getting 5.5's and 6.5's and then I figured my impressions of the demo were right.

But... I had to check Too Human out for myself, this is what I think about the game and its many short comings. I am going to get this out of the way first, it is possible to enjoy Too Human, I have mostly enjoyed what I have played so far; the first two areas and about 10 hours in. But that is what makes Too Human so frustrating, you'll just be having fun and then one of the game's problems will go and ruin it. But I think it is best to start off with what is good about Too Human before I go and rant and nit-pick it nearly to death.

The one of the best things about Too Human... wait let me rephrase that... one of the best AND worst things about Too Human is its combat. I found it insanely fun to just slide from goblin to goblin, but the more powerful enemies are much more of a chore to fight. Even fighting trolls is fun, you take out their weapon and then jump on it's back to kill it. There are also a lot of cool advanced techniques to the fighting that you might miss if you don't read the "Adv. Combat" section of the pause menu. As you slide from one enemy to the next, your attack efficiency increases and you begin to move faster and do more damage. Plus, you can link a juggle attack where you launch your enemy into the air right out of a chain of slides by double tapping the stick instead of holding it. When it is working right, I was pretty happy, but when it doesn't... well, we'll save that for the bad section.

Next, we have the collecting of loot, this is probably the game's biggest draw, you enter one of the game's areas and every so often an enemy will drop something, either armor, weapons, or runes. Also you will monoliths which act as treasure chests which also may contain the other two drops; weapon/armor blueprints and Charms. Blue prints allow you to build unique armor/weapons as long you have the bounty (gold) to fund it. Charms are kind of like mini quests of sorts, you must complete a goal and then fill it with a specific set of runes to complete it and earn its effect. The gear that you find all have crazy names like: "The Firey Broad Sword of Caching" and stuff like that. Some gear also have empty Rune slots that you can use to out fit them with the buffs that you want which is pretty nice. There are also runes that you can buy that allow you to color your armor; so even if you have a mis-matched set, at least it can be all the same color. These are of course random drops so you never know when you are going to get that ultra powerful piece of RED rarity gear or that pair of gauntlets that will complete your set, so you just have to keep hacking.

Finally the graphics are pretty nice and some of the voice acting is pretty good as well. But unfortunately all of these good things are close to being completely hampered by, what you would simply call bad game design.

All of these thing tie together in to one big group of could have done better choices. The first is the fact that you can't recover health easily, or more so readily. You just can't get a damn health drop when you need it, though the game loves to drop 5 or 6 of them when you are sliding around smoking goblins and don't even need them. The next is, this game was clearly designed with co-op first in mind, because the amount of enemies usually border on a few too many for a single player to deal with effectively. Especially, those damn Dark Elves which like to shoot at you from long range. Which also ties in to the fact there is a c.lass designed just for healing, the fights can sometimes be completely overwhelming for a single player. This is where you can also get frustrated because the combat doesn't like to work 100% of the time. Baldur does not like to respond to your commands sometimes, he just likes to stand there and swing his sword in place while you are losing health, when all you wanted to do is slide from enemy to enemy.

The final and most annoying game design choice is what happens when you die... get a load of this... first Baldur falls, then you watch him lay there for about 5 seconds while the Valkyrie loads up, so you can then watch her take about 15-20 seconds to pick you up and take you to the glowing light (aka Valhalla). Only to respawn within eyesight of that same glowing spot with nothing but 100 damage to your gear; even the enemies have the same amount of health as at the point of when you died. Point is: dying is so pointless that you may as well not even be able to. 100 damage to your weapon/armor with 2000+ damage points (which only drains when you die) is pointless, you are probably not going to die 20 times in a single stage and even if you did you will probably get a new loot drop to replace the broken weapon.

That is all I have to say about Too Human so far, it isn't super polished, but there is fun to be had with the game, it isn't a total write-off like some people are making out. I'll follow up with a Finished Article after I complete the single player and see if my feelings change.

Now for the unrelated stuff, first I picked up a Nintendo Wii on Monday, I wasn't really planning on getting one, but I had the money and I really wanted to play Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3 and Smash Bros. Brawl. Plus, having access to the virtual console is nice, I've already downloaded a few games; including Kirby's Adventure, Mega Man (1), Blades of Steel and River City Ransom. I will have more about the Wii titles that I picked up in the next few days, so look forward to that. I have also picked up Tales of Vesperia (360) and earlier today I grabbed a few retro games from my local Pawn Shop: UN Squadron (SNES), Shatterhand (NES) and Kickle Cubicle (NES); Shatterhand is particularly good. With those four games, I have surpassed the 300 games mark in my collection which is something I never could have imagined when I was a kid.

I have plenty to keep me and this blog busy so stay logged. If Baldur is a god, why does he need human soldiers to come with him on an expedition? Loading Complete!