Too Human...too hyped??

With all the hype and games around E3, only one is playable by us at home. This one took ten years to make. Ten years in the making...ten years. As of July 14, we are finally able to play Silicon Knight's(Metal Gear Solid) Too Human on the Xbox 360, at least a few levels. At 1.4MB of space required, the game took a solid 45 minutes to download. The opening scene puts us in a room with many corridors and a giant tree in the center. A woman's voice speaks, greeting you as Baldur. The voice continues describing the 3000 year war that has been going on in an ice age of sorts. In this war, cybernetics have taken way of characters, both good and evil.

Upon beginning your campaign you get to choose your class of warrior. Your choices are Berserker, Defender, Champion, Commando, and Bio Engineer. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses which are described upon highlighting each. Unfortunately being a demo, we omly get to be a Champion, the most rounded of the bunch. The game begins with nice movie of course. The graphics seem a little grainy, but it is just a demo thus far. In a ship, you and your party is drop zoned into an area that is said no humans have returned from. Your character isn't exactly excited about this clarification.

The game is strictly third person. At the bottom left of your screen, you have the level of your character, life, ammo, weapon selection and experience percentage. All the things you need to win a war. Getting used to the controls is tricky. I immediately noticed that there is almost no control of the camera. Your d-pad allows different camera angles, but none are really too different from each other. Your left bumper centers the camera for you, but that's it for being in action. When you are not in combat, you can hold the left bumper and use the right analog stick to look around. Without the left bumper being held, your right analog stick activates your melee weapon. The direction you move the stick, the direction your melee button swings. At first you are armed with dual pistols, each controlled by your right(primary) and left(secondary) triggers. The a button jumps, the b button rolls, the x button is supposed to be a war cry and the y button is your spider skill and the right bumper activates your ruiner.

You run around for a while in these ruins, which don't look too bad. Seems like your enemies like statues. You run around a little more, break a few boxes which contain bounty(dollars) and other such goodies. Alas you'll witness your first enemy. It looks like a cross between a halogen lamp, a sunflower, a puma and Shredder of TMNT. As you fight, you'll use combination of your trigger attacks and your melee attacks depending where your enemies are. Each enemy is also labeled with a number for how much experience that kill is worth. Your first enemies die pretty easily.

As you go on throughout the game, kills award you with experience to level your character up, and skill points. From the pause menu, you can use your skill points to strengthen your character. Whether it be melee, gun, juggle or battle cry, a maximum of 10 points will can be used per class. As you level up each class, your character will be able to perform different moves. Also in the pause menu, you will be able to accessorize your character. Some enemies drop weapons and armor which you can upgrade in mid combat. Other times you can smitherize such items. Sometimes you will pick up weapons that you cannot use immediately because your character's skill level is too low.

So how is the game? It is labeled as an RPG of sorts, I find it more of an upgraded hack and slasher. Sure there are bosses with different weaknesses, but instead of mashing buttons, I'm mashing my analog stick. Some of the bigger enemies use the God of War technique, which requires you to press a button combination to finish them off. The duel pistols allow you to go at it Hard Boiled style, but it's nothing new that we haven't seen already. I actually prefer to use the rifle over the pistols. The graphics and sound are next gen, but nothing blows me away. There are some physics errors here and there. The plot seems to jump back in forth, almost confusing me at first, but leads into why your character can do certain techniques. The controls are probably the hardest thing to get used to, but once that happens, it becomes second nature.

All in all, this isn't the greatest game I have ever played. The action sequences are fun, but repetitive. It did entertain me and I do look forward to more of a story line than what we are provided. I can say this, it is not a game for all. If you are looking for the next best thing, I would keep looking. If you want something less realistic than GTA IV, and more action than a Dynasty Warriors game, this is your best bet. Would I buy it? Probably, would I play it again after I beat it? Probably not.

Look for Too Human to be on shelves August 19, 2008 at the usual Xbox 360 game price of $59.99.