I am on a journey to beat 360 random Xbox 360 games. Here's my next adventure.

Game number 18 was Too Human, an action RPG set in a futuristic sci-fi world where ancient Norse mythology is still prominent. You play as Baldur, one of the Aesir (gods) of the world. You need to go out on missions befitting a god and protecting the humans of this world.

The main “theme” of the game is what makes a human a human. All of the Aesir were once humans, but have become gods through the use of robotic enhancements to their bodies. There are multiple points in the game where Baldur seems reluctant to continue to enhance his body. This is further shown with the game’s main villain, Loki, who seems to have undergone the most body enhancements (making him the least human.)

Okay, so that last paragraph sounds pretty intriguing and could have provided the basis for a really interesting game… but Too Human sucks. THERE ARE 4 MISSIONS IN THIS GAME!?!?!?! There is not enough time to get invested into the characters, dive into the plot, and become immersed in the world. Some of the dialogue is actually interesting… but most of the events here come across as just reasons for getting Baldur from one mission to the next. This is further exacerbated by the ending of the game not being about fighting Loki, instead leaving us with a cliff-hanger hoping for a sequel.

I think this game should have had more levels, with more plot, that were shorter. Each of these 4 levels is sooooo long. You will get dropped off in an area and start walking down a series of linear hallways fighting literally thousands of enemies. The first level was actually pretty decent because it had multiple hidden areas and branching paths, some of these leading to difficult challenge rooms. I don’t want to say that these didn’t exist in the other levels (bc they could be there), but I didn’t ever find a challenge room after the first level.

So, you may wonder what the actual combat feels like, since that’s pretty much all you do for 90% of the game. It essentially devolves into 2 things. First, you swing around the right stick and your character zooms over to an enemy and bashes them until they die. Second, you shoot enemies (dealing minimal damage). If you kill enough enemies then you will also build up a combo meter. The combo meter essentially displays how many times you can do your super powers. These powers range from a damage boost to an AOE damage attack. These powers are not extra combat abilities that you can freely use. Instead, you will be flopping your swords around for the entire game.

Some enemies are stupid and just sit there auto attacking you, but there actually ends up being a solid variety of enemies and some of them require thought and strategy. For example, there are spider elites that will give all nearby enemies a damage shield and do a big AOE attack against you. Those guys need to be taken down early so that you can attack the other guys.

That being said, there are a lot of times where you will die and not in a way where you probably need to get good at the game, but in a way where the enemies just ganked you too hard and the game is almost forcing you to die. I died a ton of times playing Too Human, but its not a difficult game. That’s because dying has no penalty… except to piss you off.

When you die, you get revived, with no loss to gear, dps, nor health; furthermore, the enemies still have taken all the damage that you dealt in your past life. It’s honestly really stupid. What is the point of the game that you cannot lose? This was one of my biggest issues with the Bioshock series (which I haven’t played in forever… so if this isn’t what happens there plz forgive me) because I always get right back up and mow down all my problems. I think that a game should have checkpoints or a life counter or something so that your character’s life has meaning. Oh yeah, when I said dying only serves to piss you off, I was referring to how you have to watch a 30 second cutscene whenever you die. It is unskippable and the same thing every time. You may say to yourself “30 second isn’t that long” but I had to watch it 30-40 times throughout my playthrough. That’s 15-20 min of my life just watching that cutscene.

On the positive side, I do like games with tiered and leveled loot, like Borderlands, and that is present here. Additionally, all of the gear that you wear is cosmetic and will change the appearance of your character. That is always a positive point for me when playing a video game. I don’t see why your inventory has to have a limit… but its not too much of a problem because you can set your display to auto-scrap items below a certain rarity. Not only that, but you get to specifically set what rarity you want to scrap your items at. I think more games should have this auto-scrap feature because it saved me a lot of time that I would have been spending scrapping items.

I want to take a second to point out the most interesting part of this game: its development. Shout out to @Ureshi here, but he commented on my last review talking about Too Human’s development and how it was repeatedly pushed back and cut down. I spent a lot of my day looking into this and I would recommend watching a youtube video about it. It’s a really interesting piece of video game history.

Overall, I don’t think you should really play Too Human. It’s a bad action RPG that contains a middling story; however, it was based on extremely interesting concepts. I really wish I could play the game that the developers originally intended on producing… It's a real shame that this game couldn’t have been better than it ended up being. (4/10)

I spent 7 hrs, 43 min, and 55 sec playing Too Human.

I have spent a total of 213 hrs and 8 min on the Road to 360 challenge so far.

Next game: John Woo Presents: Stranglehold