Slight change of direction…

This blog is now about gaming in general.

What? It’s my domain, I can do what I want! –raspberry-

Hopefully there will still be WoW posts, but I need to rant about other games occasionally, too, and don’t want to use my RL blog for that purpose.

So, I’d like to talk about Too Human in this post.

Ok, so by this point, it’s been out for almost an entire year. I had been quite looking forward to the the game before release, but given it received mixed reviews and I was strapped for cash, I gave it a miss. Yes, reviews aren’t everything, but when you’re not making much money, you can only afford to buy the best.

Now that it’s been out for quite some time, the price has plummeted accordingly. I managed to nab it and Fable II as part of 2 for £30 deal after deciding to treat myself since I’ve had way too frickin’ much overtime for the past couple weeks and I was out of stuff to do when not working.

The story is absolutely fantastic.  It’s kind of surprising just how well the blend of Norse mythology and futuristic technology works. Going into the game with knowledge of the old Norse tales adds a good level of depth to it. I liked how they worked even minor things into it. For example, in the manual, they call Idunn’s cybernetic enhancements (which grant the Aesir immortality) the “golden apples of Idunn.” The “real” Aesir are somewhat unique amongst gods in that they were not naturally immortal – instead, one of their number, Idunn, cultivated golden apples which helped the Aesir maintain their immortality.

But the gameplay? Jeez, that really cheesed me off. Firstly, I found the controls very, very clunky. If you wanted to execute powerful finishers, you have to smash both analogue sticks in the direction you want to attack. This is actually slightly more difficult than it sounds for any directions other than forward, and aerial finishers are kinda hard to pull off at the end of a chain of normal swings.

Then there are just some really awful enemies. In the second and third stages, there are large mantis like enemies. Unless I missed something, there’s almost no way to avoid their attacks beyond attacking from afar with a Rifle. I was playing a Champion class, the strength of which lies in aerial attacks and pistols. Those bastards were tough.

The final thing is just how awful my luck with loot was. To regain health, you have to rely on health orbs dropped by defeated opponents. I found that when I was missing only a sliver of health, loads of the things would drop, but if I was low on health and dying of poison, nothing. This was hugely frustrating, especially given when you die, you have to sit through quite a lengthy scene where a Valkyrie comes to spirit you away.

Apart from that, the combat can be fun when you get into it. Something I loved was that one of the three melee weapon classes in the game was staves. It’s kinda rare for staves to actually be used for hitting things in games. Usually they just sit pretty and give stats. Thus, I mostly used staves on that play through. Also, the special abilites were a lot of fun. For example, by building up points from fighting, you’d gain combat levels, up to a maximum of three, used to cast “Ruiners.” With one combat level, mine was a fairly small explosion, with two, Baldur does an impressive backflip before charging at the foe as a fiery raven, and the third summons massive explosions over a truly huge area. Win!

Certainly isn’t a game worth the £40 it cost on release, but for £15, it was an absolute steal. Now I just need to wait ages for the sequel – dying to see how the story continues (though I have a vague idea.)

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