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“`I’ve played the demo upwards of 10 hours. Not the full game. The demo! What makes that even more outrageous is the fact I hated or at least was indifferent to my first hour with it. But then on my second playthrough things started to click, and by my third somehow Silicon Knights had put a needle in my arm and I’ve been addicted ever since. And apparently I’m not the only one…
How?
Well I let the camera do its thing, decided Gears 2 would always look better and promptly discovered the incredible depth in the combat, loot and skills that were not obvious on my first viewing. Oh and I discovered all five classes. Yes the very old-school buggers at Silicon Knights decided you’d have to find the Easter Eggs in the demo to play all five!
But the purpose of this three-part article is to seek forgiveness for my earlier judgements in far greater detail. My failure was to judge a book by its cover, and by what misinformed others were saying, rather than by the contents within.
Too Human is like a bottle of fine wine! You could drink the glass and complain about some sediment, or you could drink the bottle and marvel at its unique full bodied flavour. We firmly recommend the “bottle approach” (3-4 playthroughs) before you make your mind up and, in my case, become thoroughly addicted (or drunk?).
So bear with me as I make my first two confessions and eat some very humble pie . . .
1: Surrendering the Camera.
There’s been a lot of talk about the camera, with some going so far to rather ridiculously declare it a game breaker. For the first hour I may have agreed, as I was completely and utterly confused. Every time I wanted to look at something I’d hit the right thumbstick as you do, which would immediately draw my weapon and then inevitably lead to another volley of verbal abuse at the imaginary Denis Dyack grinning ear to ear at me from my LCD. “What the hell? This is BS? Why can’t I control the bloody camera?”. But then it dawned on me…
The camera wasn’t the problem, it was me!
Conditioned to the third person genre, my first instinct is to use the right thumbstick as a free roam camera. But the Too Human control scheme is different, the camera isn’t poor, it’s just a massive shock to the gamer’s habitual system.
It’s not quite to the level of God of War’s own third person fixed camera, but it nonetheless offers an incredibly cinematic view of the action that is far more customisable to a player’s preference than its inspiration. Whilst my clear preference is for the zoomed out views (strategic and isometric), I can see some enjoying the more zoomed in angles with the slower Defender and Commando classes. And contrary to the claims of others, I’ve yet to have any Ninja Gaiden like experiences where the camera made me blind to the combat. When I’ve wanted to change the perspective a quick tap of LB has proved adequate.
My only remaining gripe is that when I don’t have my sword out, I can’t hold LB down and move the camera freely as I move around the epic levels. And I’d love to, not because it’d enhance gameplay as some claim but rather because I’d like to immerse myself in the Cyber-Norse art design and gawk at my character’s beautifully detailed armour and weapons.
But then I might be getting greedy. Diablo, God of War and Skate (I’ll explain later), never let me control a completely free roam camera either, and yet all were excellent titles in their own right and as such make any complaints here seem superficial. As it is the camera achieves what it sets out to do, providing a cinematic experience that allows the player to surrender camera control and focus on the surprisingly enjoyable combat.
2: Goodbye Point and Click, Hello Thumbsticks!
The best way to not understand Too Human’s combat, is to watch the gameplay videos. They give you an idea of the pace and hack & slash appearance of combat, but they in no way convey the depth and variation within the gameplay itself. Unfortunately, I like many others saw the DMC like moves and the sliding from one enemy to the next as a simple process of pushing the right thumbstick in the desired direction and letting the game do the rest. And given the lack of any real tutorial or instructions I did exactly that, as I imagine many others did, for the first hour. Not only was it repetitive, but it felt cumbersome, uninspired and required no more brain cells than Diablo’s point and click control scheme.
But then I discovered in the menus a tab labelled “advanced combat”…
It was like one minute I was playing Fight Night as a button masher, and then the next minute I’d been exposed to a wonderful world of complexity hidden in the right analogue stick, full of various jabs, hooks, uppercuts, parries and haymakers. In Too Human’s case that means slashes, slides, fierces, juggles and finishers along with a melee radius attack referred to as a ruiner.
In fact I’ve since read the manual and all up there’s 11 distinct melee moves a player can use in whatever combination they see fit, which far exceeds the melee combat of any dungeon crawler you care to mention. Add the fact that each melee weapon type (sword, staff, hammer) handles differently; you can fight in the air or on the ground; and it’s all subject to the impressively varied handling of the classes, from the featherweight Berserker to the heavyweight Defender; and the surprising level of depth behind one analogue stick becomes quickly apparent.
And yet that’s only the melee combat!
Baldur also happens to have a penchant for projectiles. There are two unique attacks in the form of automatic fire and more powerful secondary abilities (grenades, charged shots, missiles), which are given further meaningful depth by their weapon type (pistols or rifles) and ammunition (slug, plasma, laser). In fact it’s an awful lot of fun in an almost Smash TV fashion to just run and gun like it’s a third person shooter, and I can imagine many a player who enjoyed Mass Effect’s Soldier class doing exactly the same with the Commando class here.
The backbone of combat is the combo system.
The more advanced and linked your melee and projectile combat is, the higher and quicker your combo meter rises, which in turn not only boosts the XP you gain but allows you to use your special abilities. These abilities are unique for each of the five classes with each class getting to choose one each out of three spiders, three battlecries and a sentient (35 abilities all up). And it’s this core gameplay mechanic between building the combo meter using melee/projectile attacks and using the combo draining special abilities that keeps the combat interesting and engaging throughout. It also is at the heart of getting your hands on the most valuable loot that is often located in challenge arenas that require the more advanced techniques to succeed.
It no doubt takes a while to get used to and I’d recommend the Berserker as the easiest place to start. But if you give it some time and patience Too Human reveals itself to have a wonderful mix of the hard and fast arcade ethics of titles like Smash TV and Geometry Wars, with the deceptive complexity of similarly successful right thumbstick games such as Skate and Fight Night.
Personally I’m surprised to find that Too Human, let alone any title, could conceivably satisfy action gamers whilst also attracting the dungeon crawling crowd . . . But I welcome it with open arms!
Dieser Beitrag wurde bereits 1 mal editiert, zuletzt von »El Pazerino« (30. Juli 2008, 14:25)
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Original von BlackNecro
Mit beiden Stikcs kämpfen? Man braucht den linken doch nur für den Endschlag, oder? Abschluss-Move im Spiel genannt.
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Original von El Pazerino
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Original von BlackNecro
Mit beiden Stikcs kämpfen? Man braucht den linken doch nur für den Endschlag, oder? Abschluss-Move im Spiel genannt.
NEIN, man kann damit fette Kombos machen, auch in der Luft.
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Original von Mo Metal
Also wen man kurz mit beiden Sticks in eine Richtung tippt, dann schießt man diesen blauen Schuss mit dem Wolfsgeheule...der ist ziemlich stark![]()
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