An innovative game that falls short of its potential.
The Downs: Horrible, frustrating targeting system; bad use of status-effects; poorly coreopraphed cutscenes; no local multiplayer.
The Bottom Line: Despite a few problems, definitely a fun game to play through more than once.
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PLOT/STORYLINE: Very creative plot, which is based heavily on Viking/Norse mythology. The great thing about it, though, is that you can know nothing about Norse mythology--like me--and still get a good deal of enjoyment out of the plot. The storyline does not give you the same feeling of interest, however. There are countless loose ends within the game that don't get tied up until the very end, if at all. The mediocre cutscenes during the game seem to come at awkward times, and don't do a whole lot to move the story forward, often forcing the player to fill in the blanks afterwards. The game also ended VERY abruptly, much to my dismay.
GAMEPLAY: I actually really enjoyed Too Human's gameplay, despite a few shortcomings. Very "Devil May Cry-like", in that Baldur is equipped both with a melee weapon as well as a gun (two pistols, or a rifle). The levels were fun to move through, and the almost constant onslaught of enemies to destroy kept me wanting more. The infrequent requirement to travel into Cyber Space in order to get a door open in the "real world" was an added bonus.
CONTROLS: The combat system is very interesting, leaning more towards a Geometry Wars-type set up, in which the player flicks the right thumbstick in the direction of attack, as opposed to the standard button-mashing combo system. This innovative approach to the hack'n'slash genre makes for some very fun battles at first, especially when combined with Baldur's ability to "slide" certain distances to out-of-reach enemies. The horrible targeting system sort of hampers the "funness" of it, though. I can't count the number of times I found Baldur simply standing in one spot, flailing his weapons out in front of him, even though there was an enemy CLEARLY in targeting/sliding distance. On that note, Baldur rarely attacks the enemies you want him to, often sliding right into the more dangerous foes, namely the explosive ones. Knowing that, I think any gamer would resort to using long-ranged attacks when he/she sees such an enemy approaching. But the targeting system for guns is even worse than it is for melee. If you can ever actually get Baldur to shoot at the enemy you want him to, he will continue to shoot it, even when it has been reduced to a bullet-holed corpse. If these explosive enemies DO explode near Baldur, they effect him in a variety of ways (slowness, freeze, poison, etc.). This can be extremely frustrating, because the status-effects seem to last FOREVER, and can very well reduce Baldur from full health, to no health.
GRAPHICS: The in-game graphics are fairly decent. They did a good job of making Baldur's armor look really good, no matter what permutation you develop (there are countless combinations of armor types, which is nice). The environment was very well made as well, especially the Aesir HQ, which is GIGANTIC. The surfaces are very detailed, and highlighted in all the right places. The cutscene graphics are exactly the same, but fall short camera placement. I must have missed at least a quarter of each cutscene looking direcly at Baldur's enormous shoulder pauldron as opposed to the actual focus of the scene.
The best part about the graphics are the Valkyries. They come down from the sky to pick up Baldur's corpse and take him to Vallhalla (a.k.a. re-spawn you so you can try again), and it's probably the most gorgeous character model I've ever seen. Even that gets old, however, when you have to watch the animation of the Valkyrie floating down, lifting Baldur, and carrying him back up EVERY TIME YOU DIE. I can't even imagine what the devs were thinking when they thought it would be okay to force the gamer to sit through the animation, especially considering the number of times Baldur will die.
MUSIC/SOUND: The music is awesome. The epic opera/choir-type songs really kept me involved in the game, especially during big battles. It really gets your heart pumping. The sounds were okay, but not great. A few of the magic-type attacks sound exactly the same, despite being different attacks, and the mundane metal-on-metal noise got old after slashing through the first 1000 mechanical goblins.
MULTIPLAYER: No clue. For some reason, there's no local multiplayer available. If you want to play co-op through this game, you will have to do it online, which I haven't subjected myself to. I have no idea why this game doesn't include local co-op; that would probably boost its overall score at least 1 full point.