[tt] NYT: In a Game for Xbox 360, It's Norse Gods Against a Plague of Robots

[Premise Checker]

In a Game for Xbox 360, It's Norse Gods Against a Plague of Robots
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/arts/television/16huma.html

Video Game Review | Too Human
By SETH SCHIESEL

I can't remember the last time a game grew on me as Too Human has. I
also can't remember the last time a game with so many problems and
frustrations, one that could have been so much more polished in so
many ways, was nonetheless so much fun.

Most big-budget console games these days take at least a dozen hours
to play through. Players rightfully demand that much entertainment
for the $60 they generally have to shell out to buy them (a price
that makes video games the most expensive packaged media around).
But the bald fact is that you can usually tell if a game stinks
within the first half-hour. And if the initial experience is not
making you happy -- the animation is jerky, the controls are sloppy,
the story is unbearably insipid, the interface is unintelligible or,
worst of all, it is just plain boring -- it almost never gets
better.

Likewise, most great games grab you by the imagination from the very
beginning and don't let go until you realize that the sun is coming
up. But Too Human, the new action role-playing game developed by
Silicon Knights and published by Microsoft for the Xbox 360, does
not fit either of those models.

The basic premise of Too Human is a meld of science fiction and
Norse mythology. In Too Human the deities known as the Aesir have
been rendered as cybernetically enhanced godlings with the charge of
protecting the human race from a plague of insectile robots. The
player controls Baldur, son of Odin and brother of Thor, with
Heimdall, Hel, Loki and Tyr all playing important parts in the
story.

The opening noninteractive movie is exciting, but after that the
game makes an almost intolerably bad first impression because most
of its myriad flaws are on display from the get-go.

To quote directly from some of my initial notes while playing the
game: "A soldier behind me just said, 'Why in Odin's name are we
here?' I find myself asking the very same question. ... Nice
production values, but the controls are kind of clunky and
disjointed. ... I can't control where I'm looking; the camera is
horrible. ... No map? ... If I have to spend 30 seconds watching
this same Valkyrie lift my body to Valhalla every time I die, this
is gonna get real old real fast. ... The design is obtuse; it's not
run-and-gun, and it's not really strategic either. ... I'm getting
all this loot, but it doesn't explain what the stats on the items
mean; like what does 'efficiency' mean on a two-handed hammer?"

After about 90 minutes I was convinced that the more than a decade
that Too Human spent in production had been utterly wasted.
Incredibly, Too Human was shown in 1999 as a game for the original
PlayStation. (Sony is now up to the PlayStation 3.) Then Silicon
Knights made a deal with Nintendo, and the game moved to the
GameCube. (Nintendo is now up to the Wii.) By the time I saw my
first demonstration of the game, about three and a half years ago,
it was slated for the 360. And after playing the opening levels, I
literally had my head in my hands, wondering where it had all gone
wrong.

But I persevered -- it's my job, after all -- and slowly this little
tingle began at the base of my neck. The phone rang, and I didn't
answer it. I started nodding to myself as I blasted the legs out
from under the next hulking death machine with my plasma rifle. I
spent 20 minutes in the inventory screens optimizing my load-out,
debating which ability-granting rune to insert into which piece of
armor. I started getting the hang of the controls, which came to
remind me of the arcade classic Robotron, with one joystick
controlling movement and the other independently controlling the
direction of weapon fire.

I began to appreciate Too Human's rendition of cyberspace: a
verdant, pristine wilderness filled with gates and bridges meant to
represent complex data structures. I found myself likening it to the
scenes in William Gibson's "Count Zero" in which a fabulously
wealthy tycoon has ensconced his identity in an almost tactile
digital representation of Antoni Gaudí's Park Güell in Barcelona,
Spain.

In short, I started having fun. From the notes: "O.K., so the
controls are a little weird, but the action is fast and furious, and
the actual combat seems fairly well balanced. ... Gorgeous vast
landscapes, evocative and creepy. ... Does a very nice job of giving
the player a sense of constantly increasing power; the intermittent
rewards and overall pacing are nicely done. ... I like how the game
rewards exploration; you can go down the main path, but if you poke
around a bit, you can find more cool stuff. ... The noninteractive
scenes are great, better than the scenes in Mass Effect if not quite
as awesome as Metal Gear Solid 4. ... The whole back story and world
are very richly imagined."

The game franchise that Too Human owes most to is Diablo, the
seminal PC action role-playing series from Blizzard Entertainment.
And to be clear, Too Human is no Diablo. Blizzard would never have
let a game get anywhere close to the door with even a fraction of
Too Human's interface hassles, not to mention that Too Human's
online component is positively anemic compared with Blizzard's
online services.

But in its core gameplay and in its ability to keep you firmly
planted in the chair or on the couch -- the game took me about 20
hours to complete -- Too Human winds up the best console game in
this often-neglected genre. (Remember, Diablo is for PCs, not
consoles, at least for now.) It's a shame that Too Human makes you
work so hard at the beginning to get past all of the things it gets
wrong. But by the end I found myself wanting to play the
already-planned sequel.

Just as long as it doesn't take another 10 years to make.