Too Human Hands-On

By Alan Bell

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Dennis Dyack's studio Silicon Knights, the people behind Gamecube-exclusive (and super awesome) Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, have been steadily (I was going to say quietly but whilst there are many things Dennis Dyack can be described as, quiet isn't one of them) beavering away at the 360 exclusive Too Human for more than nine years. Read that again. NINE years. Originally announced (and shown in 1999) for the PlayStation, Silicon Knights went Nintendo exclusive and switched to the Gamecube the next year. That ultimately never happened as Silicon Knights ended their relationship with Nintendo before the title was finished.

Jump ahead to 2005. Silicon Knights announced that they'd partnered with Microsoft to develop a trilogy exclusively for the 360 platform - based on the Unreal engine. Long story short, Silicon Knights ripped out the Unreal engine, sued the crap out of Epic (the Unreal guys) and made a big song and dance of it in the gaming media. Skip ahead to now... in just eight short weeks, Too Human will be in stores. Microsoft have furnished us with a copy of the near-finished game to get a handle on and it is this which we will be discussing today.

Too Human is, for the uninitiated, an action RPG. If that description conjures up memories of Diablo 2 (or stirs the still-warm excitement surrounding the announcement of Diablo 3), that's good - and bad. For Diablo. Because whilst the basic concept is the same (cruise around the place, carving up bad guys, claiming epic loot and advancing the story), the combat is very, very different. In Diablo, the combat was that which enabled all the looting. Click, click, click... you get the idea. Not much to it. Click on a dude over and over (click and hold was the major enhancement that Diablo 2 brought to the table), then when everything's dead, gather up the loot. I'm not ragging on Diablo - don't get me wrong, it's one of the greatest games ever made and is still installed on my PC to this day. What i'm instead hinting at is that there's much, much more that can be done to this "loot enabling" mechanic of combat.

Enter Too Human. In Too Human, you control a God. Baldur, of Norse mythology, is what you make of him - before you get to the first gameplay cinematic, you'll need to choose what class he is from a fairly standard set of five classes: a tank, a hybrid, a healer, some ranged dps and a melee dps class. Combat for the melee guys (which is where the focus of the game is) is handled in a very unique way - most of your attack will be dictated by your movements of the right stick. Press it towards the guy you want to attack and if you're in melee range, you'll start swinging. If you're not but the enemy is still not too far away, you'll slide towards them at great speed and attack.

Switching between enemies mid-fight is not only possible, it's encouraged - depending on the strength of the foe, strategic use of jumping, dodging and even sliding to another, more distant, foe is what is going to keep you alive. Don't give them long enough to hit you is the basic premise here. Further to this basic mechanic is the core concept of juggling. If you can get a guy in the air, you can jump up and "slide" to him, and you'll continue the attack in mid air, earning a bonus combo meter (more on this in a minute) for being so skillful.

Ranged combat, which non-ranged classes can engage in - albeit no where near as effectively - is handled with the triggers. If you have pistols equipped, each is controlled individually by the left and right triggers. If you've got a rifle-type weapon equipped, right trigger fires the main gun and left trigger will fire the alternative fire of that weapon (typically a grenade). Whilst firing (holding the trigger(s)), moving the right stick will switch targets, allowing you to handle the masses of enemies you encounter with almost as much grace as a melee character. Ranged characters can still engage in melee combat but they are definitely most effective when gunning down hordes of enemies from afar.

The combat is intense, frantic and loads of fun. It's not quite carried off with the level of polish that only God of War seems to achieve but then, this isn't an action game - it's an RPG game with an action-based combat system. As such, it's incredible. Whether core action RPG gamers will take to this (high action, high adrenaline) system remains to be seen, but if you're in any doubt, make sure you try it out. This is easily the most engaging action RPG combat system ever made and by no small margin at that.

An RPG of any sort would be nothing without a compelling loot system and Too Human is no slouch here either. Loot is simple (no annoying tetris games to play in order to arrange your inventory), and you can "vendor" items at any point, destroying them via the Salvage system to both make more room in your bag and grant you some more of the game's currency, "bounty". Bounty, which can be collected from fallen foes as well as in chests etc, is used both to repair and purchase items, as well as crafting.

There's multiple tiers in rarity of the various items, from white to green, blue, purple, orange and, allegedly, red. We didn't see any red in our travels and only a couple of orange items were kind enough to show themselves but blue and green were fairly plentiful, with the odd purple item eliciting a shiver down the spine that any hardened item-based RPG fan (a-la World of Warcraft or Diablo 2) will immediately recognise, and crave. The items all look great too, really changing the way your "bald space marine"-alike looks. There were a couple of issues with the fact that he wears this armour in the cutscenes (like, the camera clipping through his pistols in one shot, that sort of thing) but for the most part this visual variety is very robust, looking and feeling great.

Crafting allows you to construct the very rarest and most desirable items, which drop only as plans. If you're lucky enough to find a plan for something, you can elect to spend some of your plundered bounty in order to construct the armour or weapon you found plans for. There's even a preview system where, like in World of Warcraft, you can see what you'll look like when wearing an item before you elect to spend hard currency constructing it.

Armor and items can also have sockets in them, into which you can elect to place runes that you find (or buy) on your adventures. Runes vary in rarity and usefulness so a keen eye and a good understanding of your class and your playstyle will lead to solid improvements - just remember, you can't take them out so be very careful when making your choice and socketing your items.

As you might expect, Too Human features a tiered skill tree, into which players must spend skill points (acquired when levelling) in order to customize their character. As you advance further and further down the tree, you start to close off other options - forcing you to choose your destiny and commit to it. However, should you feel you've made a mistake, you can respec at any time - without having to head back to town to do so. Each path in the skill trees seemed very compelling, with some serious time spent tossing up the options.

Too Human is also very visually compelling - easily the best looking Action RPG ever made and rivalling the best game visuals full stop in many places. Sometimes things can fall a little flat in this regard (time spent in cyberspace, for example, is a little disappointing) but for the most part the graphics and framerate are solid (some slight drops in very, very hectic combat situations only). Keeping in mind that this is a preview build, it's likely that this will be further improved by the time the game goes gold.

So, August is pretty close according to the calendar but after playing this build, it feels so very, very far away. If you're amped about Diablo 3 (face it, who isn't?) and you want something to fill the gap, keep a very close eye on this one. Too Human is going to blow people's socks off when it hits and certain forumers (sup Neogaf) had better get their best cutlery out because I sense a lot of crow in their diets when it hits on August 19. Too Human is coming and it's the real deal - I just hope Diablo doesn't feel old in its wake.

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