Gaming World Forums
General Category => Entertainment and Media => Topic started by: Rowain on September 14, 2008, 01:49:10 am
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OK, Too Human is the stupidest game I've ever played.
Please note, it's not THE WORST, it's just the most stupid. Like, I am baffled by it, I am baffled by the design choices and that someone thought this was a GOOD IDEA.
If you didn't know, Too Human is from Silicon Knights, a Canadian developer headed by the MAVERICK (this is the popular adjective the industry has applied to him) developer Dennis Dyack. It has also been in development for a billion years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_Human
Seriously, it started as a PLAYSTATION 1 GAME and debuted at E3 in 1999.
Too Human was originally in development for the PlayStation as a 4-disc action-adventure game. It was shown at E3 1999[6], and a teaser trailer was shown at SpaceWorld 2000 showing what appeared to be a re-building of the PlayStation game. Development halted when Nintendo announced an exclusive partnership with Silicon Knights, and the game was moved to the Nintendo GameCube in 2000. Prototyping for the game took place on the GameCube, but the staff at Silicon Knights soon devoted their efforts towards two other releases, Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem and Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes.[7]
In the May 2005 issue of EGM, Silicon Knights announced a partnership with publisher Microsoft to develop a trilogy revolving around the Too Human universe exclusively for the Xbox 360. The game was originally being developed using Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3, but is now being developed using an internal engine. On July 19, 2007, it was announced that Silicon Knights was suing Epic Games due to "breach of contract", including "inadequacies" of Epic’s support, service, and cooperation with Silicon Knights concerning Unreal Engine 3.[8][9] On August 9, 2007, Epic Games countersued Silicon Knights, claiming that they were using their engine as they pleased without any cost. If Epic wins the case, Silicon Knights would be forced to pay in excess of $650,000.
I sort of wanted to like it. No, that's not true. I DEFINITELY wanted to like it. A) It's sci fi, or at least seemed to be. B) It's epic and I like epic videogames sometimes. C) It is a dungeon hack and slash with supposedly flashy abilities and shit and I love a good dungeon hack and slash game. So, it seemed set to be a sci fi epic hack and slash... with online coop. What could go wrong????
Well, I played the demo that was released at E3 in July. it was pretty... mediocre. The menus were laggy, the combat felt stilted, and the dialogue was cheesy. But I guess I lied to myself and figured they'd iron out a bit of this before the August release. At least the programming issues anyway.
TURNS OUT THEY DIDN'T.
Again, I am simply baffled with Too Human. How is it in 2008, on the XBOX360, that a GAME MENU can lag this bad? Everything about navigating the menu is clunky and sluggish. How do you develop a game for a decade and still botch the interface this badly? Also, the actual itemization is sort of dull, with tons of generic WHATEVER WHATEVER PAULDRONS OF THE WHATEVER, that are typical in dungeon hacks. But Too Human manages to make them feel even MORE generic, with dull bonuses that barely feel like an improvement. Sweet, +2% to my slash resist!!!
The gameplay in Too Human is flat fucking busted too and you've probably heard about it. I was dumbfounded by everything here too. Who thought it was a good idea to have you slashing through hordes of generic rushing monsters while also sticking a bunch of other monsters in the background shooting annoying shit that knocks you down everytime it hits? Oh yeah, and there are no portable healing items. if you get hit with a damage over time ability or just take a shit ton of damage, you better hope you stumble across an orb of health!!
You'll die, and you'll die a lot. The game will throw stupid, unbalanced and utterly frustrating hordes of enemies at you. And that opens you to the single most obnoxious thing I've ever seen in a videogame and you have to watch it, every single fucking time you die. You can't skip it, you can't turn it off.
Fuck you Dennis Dyack.
The game essentially fails at everything it attempts, in differing degrees of severity. The story is sort of stupid, riddled with awful, cheesy dialogue and mediocre voice acting. Any momentum is builds is crushed with a lame, overacted scene. The graphics are really nice in places, but marred with some bad textures and models and a godawful camera. The UI is sluggish and a pain to use. But worst of all, the gameplay is busted. I've played worse, to be sure, but I've never been this confused at the failure of a developer before. Why didn't anyone NOTICE these problems during the extensive development process?
The only hope is that IF the supposed trilogy does come to be, Dyack and his crew at Silicon Knights figures out how to make a halfway decent game in the process of bringing their lame ass cyber viking vision to fruition.
Discuss Too Human.
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Yeah I really don't understand how 10 years of development could fail so bad.
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Yeah I really don't understand how 10 years of development could fail so bad.
HAIL TO THE KING BABAY!
On a serious note, I'm completely baffled that Silicon Knights is still alive. Selling the LoK license to Eidos gave them enough cash to survive during the development of Eternal Darkness but those guys have to be hanging on a thread (although Konami probably gave them big bucks to do Twin Snakes).
Surprisingly enough, Too Human was like #5 in the August software sales at 200,000+ which is pretty good for a small developer.
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Silicon Knights has atendency to take forever on games (Eternal Darkness for the n64 originally but at least it was awesome), they just need to try to make better shit and not be retarded.
I just want more fucking eternal darkness.
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Two of my roommates have it and have convinced themselves that it was a decent game. I watched them play it and, recently, watched Yahtzee's review of it and yeah... not something I'd be interested in playing.
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anser: Do'nt Like It Do'nt Play It
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Laggy menus, bad balance, etc. can all be chalked up to a lack of sufficient time, consideration, and beta-testing (which is RIDICULOUS for a game which has been in development since before the XBox 360 was even on the market, by the way,) but the valkyrie thing simply baffles me. I can't see any reason why the developers would see this as a good idea. If you want to penalize the character for dying ingame, do it through the game mechanics like every other successful game out there! Take half the player's money! Lower his HP to 1! Give him a temporary status ailment! Don't make the player sit there for twenty-five seconds watching a cutscene that isn't even interesting after the first time you see it! That must absolutely kill player immersion. It's frustrating enough to die, but it's even more frustrating knowing that each and every time you do the action will stop abruptly and twiddle its thumbs until it feels motivated enough to get to work again.
I can't see how after nearly a decade of production no one brought up the fact that the valkyrie thing is annoying and completely unnecessary to the game's mechanics. Hell, after a decade of production, this game shouldn't suffer from any of these above problems -- as far as I can see, all these problems could be avoided by spending a little more time in the planning and testing phases, and time is certainly something they've had enough of.
Considering how well Eternal Darkness was designed (the insanity effect has to be one of the coolest ideas I've seen in a game,) I have a little trouble believing that this is from the same studio.
Speaking of which, I think they would have fared better if they had been developing another Eternal Darkness all this time. There's a whole other Elder God (or whatever) out there (the yellow one,) and I'd love to hear from him before the studio dies.
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10 years huh, no wonder it's crap. The longer somethings in development (unplanned or suddenly extended without notice, or something else) the less and less of a chance it's ever gonna be good or see the light of day. I forgot what this effect is called, but some of the causes is assigning new people to the project or replacing others mid-way in, budgets, and overhauls, etc., etc.
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Haha yeah, I tried the demo on the 360 and man.
I died once and was like OH COOL A CUTSCENE, I GUESS I WASNT ACTUALLY SUPPOSED TO BE ABLE TO BEAT THOSE HUGE GIANT 5000 MONSTERS but no it was actually an unskippable death cutscene.
Good job computer game making nerd guys.
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cant believe no one mentioned Yahtzee, he just did a review on Too human....
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Well it's not like they worked on the /same/ game for 10 years. I remember Too Human for PS1 looked like some kind of Shadowrun/Blade Runner kind of game - or maybe Deus Ex would be the best comparison
I know Marcus didn't mean it but Mother 3 is a lot different because if you look at the N64 demos something always corresponds to something that ended up in the GBA version. Seriously.
Also did they steal the weapon/armor names directly from Progress Quest or what
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cant believe no one mentioned Yahtzee, he just did a review on Too human....
Two of my roommates have it and have convinced themselves that it was a decent game. I watched them play it and, recently, watched Yahtzee's review of it and yeah... not something I'd be interested in playing.
Granted, Yahtzee is pretty cynical, but he pretty much got this one right.
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I'm not really INTO videogames like I used to be and I seriously thought Too Human came out ten years ago.
Seriously I have an old video game magazine (EGM I think?) where there's a preview for it.
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Yeah I really don't understand how 10 years of development could fail so bad.
Wait until you play Duke Nukem Forever...
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shut up duke nukem forever will rock because expectations for it are so low it cannot possibly be worse than them!
Also I saw screens for this game a short while ago and MY GOD it looks like the blandest piece of shit ever. Like the most mediocre of contemporary sci-fi. I'm not supprised at all that the game itself is ass.
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shut up duke nukem forever will rock because expectations for it are so low it cannot possibly be worse than them!
I had low expectations for duke nukem forever until they released that railer at E3 that was made of like 4 gifs and some 15 year old sound clips. Now I'm totally psyched
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I had low expectations for duke nukem forever until they released that railer at E3 that was made of like 4 gifs and some 15 year old sound clips. Now I'm totally psyched
That was not a duke nukem forever trailer, that was for three games some other company is making.
I've only play the demo for a little while, but i can't believe they try to claim its a cross between Diablo and DMC. I can see the Diablo part, but it feel anything like DMC to me.
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well this sounds like a cool game!
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I just want more fucking eternal darkness.
You know though that if they tried to do the mind-fuck stuff from eternal darkness; "Oh, your memory card is corrupted and needs to be formatted! JKLOL!", you'd see it coming. it's a good thing that they aren't trying to overuse that to the point that it becomes cliche.
too human was a step in the right direction, but far too generic for a decade of work, and obviously originally designed for the ps1.
just be glad there are companies like valve who can be consistently innovative
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Man, I've been following track of this game since it was announced for the gamecube. WTF... all games nowadays disappoint. :(
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Heh yeah I was greatly anticipating this game and even bought it on day1 I mean it's an action sci-fi RPG created by the guy who made Legacy of Kain and Eternal Darkness, how could this NOT be good? Well I dunno but I'm pretty sure that in the same Bizarro World this came from the Advent Rising trilogy was finished and Superman 64 is voted the best game of all time.
EDIT: After thinking about it I can't help but wonder if this game would have seemed better if it came out when it was originally planned to on the PS1.
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You know though that if they tried to do the mind-fuck stuff from eternal darkness; "Oh, your memory card is corrupted and needs to be formatted! JKLOL!" you'd see it coming. it's a good thing that they aren't trying to overuse that to the point that it becomes cliche.
nah considering i played through the game four times to get all four endings no. The memory card shit was more of an annoyance like let me play the game so that's whatever but that creepy noises while your insane and the FUCKING BATHTUB SCENE (I was in seventh grade when i played this game and it was late i was tired it scared the fuck out of me i didn't play for a week).
EDIT: And i don't mean like the same exact thing I just think they should do more Lovecraftian horror
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I am pretty sure that if they released a patch that fixed the game's loot distribution/menu system and changed what happened when the player dies that it would be a pretty fun game and a lot of people would love it. People complain about the game a lot but really the only recurring game-breaking criticisms are that the game gives you so much loot that you stop caring and that the only penalty for dying is being bored to tears (for a game like this being sent back to a previous checkpoint with less money or damaged equipment would probably work).
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I haven't played Too Human yet, and I probably won't unless forced. But my one friends treats the game as if it gives him a blowjob while he plays. (He thinks its the best game ever)
But I would LOVE another Eternal Darkness-esque game. The bathtub scene STILL freaks me out and I've seen it about 6 times. It's more the sudden noise than the image though. And like Alec, I've beaten the game 4 times, and have never had the "Erased memory card" event, or the BSoD event, and I played with low sanity the entire time.
Oh, and if they make another Eternal Darkness game, please don't do what they did with Call of Cthulhu, where you kill yourself if your sanity dips too low.
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I am pretty sure that if they released a patch that fixed the game's loot distribution/menu system and changed what happened when the player dies that it would be a pretty fun game and a lot of people would love it. People complain about the game a lot but really the only recurring game-breaking criticisms are that the game gives you so much loot that you stop caring and that the only penalty for dying is being bored to tears (for a game like this being sent back to a previous checkpoint with less money or damaged equipment would probably work).
If they fixed the auto targeting too, I'd be OK. But the problems stem deeper than that, the animations and camera are downright terrible sometimes, and, as I said, the story and dialogue are cheesy as fuck.
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Well if thats the case, then I say make the graphics more fun and the game play more Devil May Cry 4-ish lose the Valkyrie or atleast put her in boss battles or battles of actual importance. And lose the 5000 mobs every second step, and if it refuses to lose it then atleast study and learn from the game that did it the best, Diablo.
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If they would remove the fucking control stick combat or at least try to polish it in the next game, I will accept that game for what it is but for what this game is, it sucks! It kind of reminds me of a cyberpunk diablo in a way with terrible controls and aiming issues. Possibly the worst part about this game is the fact that if I am in a crowd of enemies, I have fun sliding from enemy to enemy destroying them. However, the fun is ruined when there is an enemy that explodes on touch in the crowd. This wouldn't be such an issue if the targeting system didn't suck, which ends up targeting the exploding enemy instead of the enemy I aim my control stick at!
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yeah I rented this today from blockbuster because that THE DARK APPRENTICE or whatever the new starwars game was named is sold out and I was really fucking bored.
this didn't help though, the storyline is so fucking shitty. like, BEYOND normal vg scifi shit shitty. WE ARE CYBORGFROM THE FUTURE YET WE WORSHIP ODIN WHAT THE HELL KIND OF SHIT IS THAT
I haven't gotten through it very far yet so maybe theres more to it but its really vague and stupid.
the controls are the worst imo though how the fuck am I supposed to hack and slash if the only thing to melee combat is holding the stick in one direction or using it like I WANT TO and just continuously throwing motherfuckers in the air
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yeah it's like they didn't think combat out at all. Later on you get knocked down and rushed by insane hordes of powerful enemies, and there is no strategy to it. You just keep dying/chipping away at a few more enemies/dying/chipping away etc until you clear a section. Your only real defensive ability is to roll, various classes get some other defenses but the skill trees and skill system are so counter intuitive and clunky that combat is just flatout frustrating. It doesn't help that there are two types of enemy AI: "all out rush clusterfuck" and "stand way back and launch knockdown missiles at you". You're either being swarmed by hordes of enemies or being knocked around by a handful of dudes, or EVEN WORSE, a combo of the two.
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Now that wouldn't have been so bad if the emphasis of the game was dodging shit and just dancing your way through ravenous hordes of monsters with killing as few enemies as possible and getting hit as few times as possible. Seriously I would find this more fun if the game mechanics were designed around that.
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yeah it's like they didn't think combat out at all. Later on you get knocked down and rushed by insane hordes of powerful enemies, and there is no strategy to it. You just keep dying/chipping away at a few more enemies/dying/chipping away etc until you clear a section. Your only real defensive ability is to roll, various classes get some other defenses but the skill trees and skill system are so counter intuitive and clunky that combat is just flatout frustrating. It doesn't help that there are two types of enemy AI: "all out rush clusterfuck" and "stand way back and launch knockdown missiles at you". You're either being swarmed by hordes of enemies or being knocked around by a handful of dudes, or EVEN WORSE, a combo of the two.
over 10 years of development and no block button....