One Hundred and Ninety-Nine Minutes of Too Human
In the end, I didn't make it to five hours.
I've never played a game with a more incomprehensible plot. I've also never played a game that provided less context for the plot. Time-shifting, dimension-shifting, forward, back, sideways-- is really should've been called"WTF: The Game."
Combat is incredibly repetitive, as you might expect from a game that owes more than a little to Diablo. And the combat mechanics (left stick is directional, right stick chooses attack), while they worked decently with large numbers of enemies (everywhere), seemed to break down in boss battles, where more precision is required.
Yet, somewhere in here, there was a good game, maybe even an excellent one. If Too Human had been released in 2005, as a launch game, I think it would have been well received. In three years, though, expectations for both gameplay and narrative have increased substantially. In today's terms, too much of the game is just clunky.
I do think the game is getting reviewed more poorly than it should be because Denis Dyack couldn't keep his mouth shut and antagonized so many people in the last few years. If this game came from an obscure Russian team and had no developer ultra-hype prior to release, I think its average review score would be 5-10 points higher.
Like I said, there are moments, and if you are a huge fan of Diablo, you should check out the demo. But it's impossible to recommend this game at $60 when Fate (on the PC) is only $20, and Fate is a better game in every way.
Not Fate II--that's a different development team entirely.
If Too Human proves anything, though, it's that Fate designer Travis Baldree, even though he gets one-fiftieth the attention, is a much better designer than Denis Dyack.
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