I probably should have done this with the Callout blog, but then that would have resulted in multiple new blogs and I really just have time for one.

teirdome proposed the following in a comment to my Too Human: Day One blog...

I think the key to finding real enjoyment in the game is trying to do the little things. For example, try not dying, even though there is little incentive besides an achievement or 4 for it. You will have to do things like maximize your armor and actually give a crap during fights to not take damage.

Personally, I think that the problem with Too Human is that it listened to gamers (big no-no). People said they were tired of having games hold their hands, so they removed any semblance of a tutorial (as per Dyack in an interview). People complained about death having too great a sting in other loot gathering games, so they made the penalty 20 seconds of your life wasted.

I just find it interesting that the game is so polarizing. I personally had a lot of fun with it. The depth is there if you look for it, the problem is that the gamer is never encouraged to brush past button mashing of a new variety.

It's very sound advice and I agree with what the comment is trying to say as far as that goes. My response is as follows. The thing is, teir, is that I do try not dying. And I've been pretty successful at it. It's that the act of trying not to die doesn't prove entirely entertaining. The act of fulfilling the charm quests isn't entirely entertaining. That's what's un-motivating for me; I probably should have made that clearer.

In any case, I hate to chalk it up to a je ne sais quoi, because that's a cop-out, but right now I just can't put my finger on it. It's not like I dislike the game, either. I'm just... unmoved by it.

It may sound silly and petty, and I'm almost embarrassed to say it, but if they would just let me press a button to swing the sword, it might change things in the slightest way. The way it is now is definitely accessible but also... kinda... lulls me to sleep (not literally).

I'm starting to think about it, and it alllll comes down to the most minute of minute differences. I hate that it does because, again, it's almost petty, but right now it's all I can come up with in my quest to understand why -- for example -- I'm not "bored" by Titan Quest, which is largely similar.

In games like Titan Quest on a PC, you just click on a unit and hold till it dies dead. Not exciting. Sometimes though you need to be quick and precise about clicking correctly. It definitely doesn't require the precision of a first-person shooter, but there's still a tiny element of perception there. If enemies are surrounding me, I need to click around me. I can just click haphazardly, yes, but there's still this element of, "Crap, I gotta be quick about this."

With Too Human, as long as I'm pointing in a general direction of an enemy, Baldur will just slide over and make with the awesome. I found that if I slowly rotate the stick in a circular motion, I can cut through a swath of enemies that are surrounding me. No stress, no fuss, no muss. And maybe there's something to be said about that, but in my case, it results in me just not feeling "attached" to my strikes, and I don't feel any sense of urgency.

It sounds really stupid, I know, but I can't help how my brain processes these types of input. Believe me, right now I so badly want to love the combat. It LOOKS cool, aside from some janky strike animations, to see a pile of enemies just get demolished by Baldur's best Chuck Norris impersonation.

Now, the air combos do inject a bit of fun into the equation. The double-tapping is me actually doing something and feeling like I have a say in what goes on in the battle. But at the same time, like I said, double-tapping just feels clumsy. It's not that it's hard to do. It's not that I can't do it. It just feels clumsy. It's like how you have to jiggle the Wii remote to get bonus damage when jumping on an enemy in Super Paper Mario. It's easy to do. It's easy to time. It results in crowd-pleasing (literally) graphical feedback. But it feels clumsy, as if you're trying to shake something through a sieve. It doesn't feel graceful.

Why does a button press feel more graceful, when all it amounts to is someone's thumb smashing down on a raised object? The only thing I could guess is that the button-press is a much quicker action, one that comes more naturally when the thumb is called to do multiple things in succession. I never took an ergonomics course in school so maybe I'm just insane and am pulling all this outta my butt. But it's just how my hands, eyes and brain feel about it. Double tapping an analog stick in a direction doesn't feel natural; pressing a button does. It's the same reason I would never play Mortal Kombat with an analog stick -- playing as Raiden (back, back, forward! back, back, forward!) would leave me in fits. (EDIT: I just had a thought. What if... what if I could play Too Human with a controller that had two arcade joysticks instead of analog sticks...? That might push the combat from doofus to w00t... perhaps it's simply a matter of the input device as opposed to the mechanics.)

There's no question that there's a lot to remember in order to create great-looking battles. I definitely get that. But quantity doesn't equate to comfortable feedback. I can get by with it; I can definitely DO it; but my brain just doesn't jive with it.

I wonder if this makes any sense to anyone, or if I'm as insane as I think I am. I think it's the latter.

I still have half the game left to complete. I'm hoping that by game's end, the combat will grow on me. As it stands, I'm firmly in the middle of loving or hating it -- but I think I should stress that I am enjoying some of the time I'm spending with this. It should also be noted that I'm a fan of not having a tutorial forced on the user. I like the pop-up tutorial boxes that come up in-context. A tutorial should be an option, but in lieu of one, what Too Human gives me is just fine. Also, as much as I would like to co-op, I'm playing this from work, which means hotel room internet, which means a browser is required to "activate" it on whatever device is trying to use it, which means I'm hosed for ANY online play.