Too little, too late

by ERIK LEIJON

The year was 1999. The Western world was collectively gnashing their teeth over a potential Y2K information technology disaster. New York Yankee pitcher David Cone threw a perfect game against the Montreal Expos. A brazen shirtless punk named Jonas was fronting an alt-rock band called Rubberman. It was also the year St. Catherine’s, Ontario-based Silicon Knights broke ground on their follow-up to Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, entitled Too Human (X360/Microsoft, Silicon Knights). It may have taken nine years and two defunct consoles later, but Too Human has finally arrived.

Like a Tupperware of leftovers hiding in the back of the fridge since the Clinton administration, Too Human would have been great prior to the best before date, but not unlike Doom creator John Romero’s overhyped act of hubris—the similarly oft-delayed and under-delivering Daikatana—something very wrong happened to Too Human after the conceptual phase.

NO VALHALLA: Too Human

Too Human’s raison d’être is two-fold: the desire to create an engaging and unique storyline blending sci-fi and Norse mythology, as well as to redesign the dungeon-crawling, item-looting action-RPG style of Diablo. That neither of these goals were achieved was clue number one that Too Human was no Valhalla.

The storyline laboriously unfolds, where the biggest twists largely centre around explaining who everyone is and how they know each other. It’s clear Silicon Knights wanted a robust, cinematic-style adventure, but in nine years, developers have acquired better tools to mix cutscenes with gameplay. Each chapter takes a couple of hours to beat, yet there are very few breaks in the action. Be prepared to fight the same handful of generic enemies literally for hours on end, and for the few cutscenes to be overly cryptic and frankly boring.

The gameplay similarly suffers from being too late to the dance. The weapon and armour upgrading menus utilize a similar system to BioWare’s Mass Effect, where equipment can frequently be tinkered with based on repeated item pick-ups.

Acquiring new weapons is one of the few thrills in Too Human, as immediately after picking up a new gun or sword, there’s a noticeable improvement in one’s ability to kill. A few minutes later though, when the next horde of identical-looking creatures arrive, you’ll notice how your foes have similarly upgraded and mitigated any positive vibes you were feeling.

Because the weapon upgrades don’t do much and the newfound abilities are horribly ineffective, your first fight against 100 colour-matching mechanical spiders plays no different from the last. Also, be prepared to die a lot—since there’s no block button, enemies are too good at sniping you with missiles from afar, and no matter how good you become at rolling, you’ll eventually get caught in a cheap hit corner.

Other than a long-winded death scene, there’s no tangible punishment for dying, so there’s no reason to play defensively or to upgrade your defensive abilities. As cool as upgrading your character is—including the tree branch method that allows for loads of personal customization—there’s no reward for putting in the effort, since every fight unfolds the same. There are moments and gameplay quirks that suggest Too Human was a highly ambitious project, but the final product is too little, too late.

More from Montreal

A couple of brief updates concerning our biggest local players. Ubisoft Montreal’s Far Cry 2 looks primed for release this October for the PC, PS3 and XBox 360. That same month, EA Montreal will be rolling out Boogie Super Star for the Nintendo Wii. I’ll let you guess which one features African-based warfare and which one features Natasha Bedingfield.