Impressions of Too Human (2008)

I'm about six hours into Too Human and I can't tell if I like this game enough to keep playing or I should just do reading for Western Civ.

I like the concept of the game - a cybernetic Norse mythology dark future. Frankly I think that's pretty neat. The main character is some bald, grizzled, tragic hero guy...wait.

• Side note/mini rant: While I am a huge fan of grizzled, bald, tragic heroes in film, literature, and games even I am getting a little tired of the stereotype. How about some character development here folks? Do we need another Mass Effect/Gears of War/Splinter Cell/old Bruce Willis protagonist? I am certainly not saying let's return to the shit shovelling country boy who saves the universe genre or the anime little girl with a big gun but let's try to mix it up a little bit. Maybe we need Shane Black to start writing video games.

Too Human has a decent story, the graphics are kind of awesome, the combat is action-y and I get killed fairly often since I suck. The RPG aspects are fairly sweet - there's a lot of equipment/rune/blah blah blah that appeals to me. One thing I have to commend this game for is the equipment screens/menus are slick and easy to navigate.

Another awesome awesomeness Too Human has is the ability to change the spoken language and add subtitles. German is totally dope even if I don't know what they are saying. The downside is the subtitles aren't in every scene for all dialogue. Great idea and I wished that more games had this option. J-RPG's would be much better if they had the original voice actors.

The downside to Too Human is that I am already getting bored. I run into one area, fight a bunch of enemies, gather loot, optimize (aka shuffle) equipment, run into another area...this is the problem with linear RPGs.

I will give it some more play and reserve final judgement but for now I'm gonna give it a thumbs up. I don't think it's worth a $60 price tag but it's definitely worth checking out.

p.s. James you will love this game.