Too Human, huge letdown?

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TheToE!

[H] Brewmaster
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I did not have much hope for this one after playing the demo. Reviews seem to agree that it was a huge letdown. So many years of development, the devs have got to be disgusted/disappointed. Why would you work that long on something, know it's crap and still release it? Is it likely they were pressured by the publisher or what? This is in now way meant to be flamebait, I'm just trying to wrap my brain around why a game that has been in development so long could turn out so bad.
 
Publisher pressure. Besides... there's a difference between crap and flawed / average.
 
Psychotext said:
Publisher pressure. Besides... there's a difference between crap and flawed / average.
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I guess crap is too strong of a word, as there may be some that find enjoyment in this game. I was looking forward to it a lot though, then the demo came out..
 
I wasn't too interested in it until the demo actually. After I played the demo a few times it clicked and I had a lot of fun with it. There are flaws but they can be overlooked if you just want a fun Diablo II/Phantasy Star Online loot-fest.

The combat is deeper than it looks at first glance and hopefully the story will make sense in the full game.
 
I really enjoyed the demo and will probably pick this up. I don't listen to "expectations" I play the games and enjoy them for what they are.
 
I don't trust reviewers, ever.

I played the demo and absolutely had a blast with it. It's a Must Buy for me.
 
If you played the demo and liked it ... buy the game. If you didn't like the demo ... don't bother. Ignore reviewers. Them not liking something has no bearing on whether or not you like it, especially considering how many of them are paid to give games good reviews, or bad, as the case may be.
 
Its all Epics fault for delivering an incomplete engine.

;)
 
TheToE! said:
I did not have much hope for this one after playing the demo. Reviews seem to agree that it was a huge letdown. So many years of development, the devs have got to be disgusted/disappointed. Why would you work that long on something, know it's crap and still release it? Is it likely they were pressured by the publisher or what? This is in now way meant to be flamebait, I'm just trying to wrap my brain around why a game that has been in development so long could turn out so bad.
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I doubt they believe it to be a failure, since the dev seems to think its good themselves in their interviews. Anyway... Lair is much the same, and from both of these games (if this turns out to be a failed game) and if they both were thought to be failures on release, then I think its because they used so much money on it and they really want something in return rather than throwing it in the trash bin and say, oh well we only lost millions and millions of dollars.
 
I'm picking my copy up today, I loved the demo!

This game is getting pretty mixed reviews, but overall I expected that. The game is a jack of all trades, and doesn't really shine in any of the major genres. However, I'm a dungeon crawling maniac and thats what I'm looking for. Too Human is a great crawler...

Here is a list of reviews so far.. like I said, pretty mixed.

Ars Technica: BUY
Strategy Informer = 8.5/10
IGN: 7.8 (video review)
IGN UK: 7.5
Gameplayer: 7.0

NZ Gamer: 7.5
GameInformer: 6.75 & 7.0
Games Magazine (Greece): 9.3
Neo+ Magazine (Poland): 8.6
Maxim (Russia): 10
Playboy Magazine: 6.25
TheHDRoom: 7.9
GiantBomb: 6.0
GamePro: 8.0
Gamespy: 5.0
PlayTM: 8.8
Gamespot/Cnet: 5.5
PlantetXbox360: 8.7
TeamXbox: 6.5
1up: C- = Average (42 Metacritic, 60 GameRankings)
GCHD: 8.0
Eurogamer 6.0
Eurogamer.de: 7.0
WorthPlaying: 6.0
VideoGamer: 7.0
MSXboxWorld: 7.5
Wonderwallweb: 7.0
GamingRing: 6.0
OXM: 7.0
Pocket-lint: 7.0
TVG: 8.0
 
TheToE! said:
I did not have much hope for this one after playing the demo. Reviews seem to agree that it was a huge letdown. So many years of development, the devs have got to be disgusted/disappointed. Why would you work that long on something, know it's crap and still release it? Is it likely they were pressured by the publisher or what? This is in now way meant to be flamebait, I'm just trying to wrap my brain around why a game that has been in development so long could turn out so bad.
Click to expand...

So... is this based off the demo or the actual game?
 
TheToE! said:
I did not have much hope for this one after playing the demo. Reviews seem to agree that it was a huge letdown. So many years of development, the devs have got to be disgusted/disappointed. Why would you work that long on something, know it's crap and still release it? Is it likely they were pressured by the publisher or what? This is in now way meant to be flamebait, I'm just trying to wrap my brain around why a game that has been in development so long could turn out so bad.
Click to expand...

Its actually been scrapped several times, and SK has said several times that the latest incarnation of Too Human has been in production just shy of 4 years, not 10. This is a very misunderstood point, people just floating the 10 year development cycle around like its truth.

Too Human has not been 'in production' for 10 years. Its been in concept for that long, with many builds over several platforms but it was all scrapped and rebuilt starting about 4 years ago.

I loved the demo, and I plan on playing all classes to level 50. :cool:
 
Psychotext said:
Publisher pressure. Besides... there's a difference between crap and flawed / average.
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I don't think this is really the case here. When any piece of software is in development much longer than expected, it inevitably undergoes significant changes over and over, and very often these just layer on top of each other. The end product can become somewhat diluted and inefficient, since people are more likely to rework something than to just throw it out and start over. If anything, publisher pressure might have forced them to continue along their original path and produce something closer to what they originally imagined. Then again, maybe poor planning or design on the development side necessitated such changes...

Anyway, just some thoughts on software design in general :) Missing development targets by a lot always happens for a reason and its almost never a good one.
 
Seems like a larger than normal standard deviation with the reviews in this game, as I suspected. Playing through the demo gave me the impression that this would be a love it/hate it type game. I loved elements of the game, but I felt many of the gameplay elements were implemented poorly enough to make me feel that it was too inane a button-masher for me to bother.
 
Spaceman_Spiff said:
If anything, publisher pressure might have forced them to continue along their original path and produce something closer to what they originally imagined. Then again, maybe poor planning or design on the development side necessitated such changes...
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Lack of focus isn't the worst problem with Too Human though... it's buggy and unpolished. Publisher / financial pressure is what forces you to throw something like that out of the door rather than keep working.
 
ROFL...I'm playing it right now and I'm loving it. Was just coming here to say how much fun I'm having.

The controls take a bit to get used to, I actually thought they sucked the first run through the demo, but playing it a couple times made me change my mind and now in the full version its pretty snappy.
 
I'm liking this game for one reason:

It's showing me which review sites I shouldn't trust.

What, you posted a good review of Too Human? Thanks for letting me know you're not worth bothering with!
 
I think the people who like it are biased because not many good games have come out in a while.

I did initially like it from the demo and played through all five classes yet looking at the skill trees and playing the different characters I was hoping there would be more in the full version.

I was also expecting more than two player multiplayer which was a let down.

The shooting is just that and it is hard to target an individual if any of the robots cluster, the same goes for the melee unless you are willing to sustain some damage to run right up to the correct one but most of the time you are sliding and jumping to kill things as fast as possible.

All the characters shoot and use the 6-8 ish melee moves (based on how you differentiate them such as slide juggle seperate from slide and juggle?) which makes little difference, the biggest differences noticed are the defender who can't be knocked down and the bioengineer who regenerates life. The rest of the characters only differentiate in how much damage they take and the damage they deal with the melee and ranged.

There is a lot of loot and you get to upgrade your guy with constantly better items. The thing is that you don't need to really try to get items to advance like you would in other games, it is simply enough to just take what the game gives you and move on. There is a strange paradox going on in that it gives you all the items you need to continue (what seems very easily) through the game yet appeals to self titled "loot whores" but when you can get through the game easily where is the incentive to go back and get more loot? Maybe it's just me.

The attacks look devil may cryish but there are not nearly as many as stated before 6-8 and they are done by flicking the sticks, some people say it's hard, it's very easy to do the attack you want, hard to select a specific target if the enemies are close together, at least it's realistic in a sense...

I know for myself I really wanted to like the game and was really itching to pull the trigger (I did on soul caliber 4 and I don't even like fighting games, just since its been so long since I bought a game, I do enjoy it though much more than I thought).

It's good enough to pass the time and easy enough that you are not going to yell at your friend for messing up, and there is no death penalty (aside from rusting your equipment about 1/300th of it's durability) so you can just grab another soda and try again. But as far as a "must buy" or "really good" I have to strongly disagree, you can beat the whole game during a rental and it does not give much more incentive to reach max level or get more items.

I know it's hard to wait since there haven't been any really fresh games, but I can see a lot of used one going on ebay in two weeks if you can wait and you can save $20+ dollars but I suggest renting or game flying it.

Don't yell at me, just my opinion. If you like it more power to you.

Personally I'm looking forward to castle crashers, it seems to be cheap and effective, like the other things in life I like. (liquor, food, and of course hookers...preferably dead and in the trunk of my car)

If you aren't independent I would think twice about splurging on this over games coming out like:

forced unleashed
gears of war 2
guitar hero world tour
rock band 2

and any other big titles coming out.

If you like the demo you can expect more of the same and it's probably worth picking up.
 
So you tell me, Psychotext: how many truly GOOD games get mixed reviews?
 
Daggah said:
So you tell me, Psychotext: how many truly GOOD games get mixed reviews?
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Blue Dragon got very similar scores and is considered an exceptional game buy most consumers. Its all about taste, if you don't like Too Human ... don't buy it. The reviews are so unbalanced its comical to read.

Where one reviewer will knock the storyline, another will tout it as the best component. Its clear that Too Human fits the jack of all trades, master of none label. This makes it very hard for reviewers to pit it against direct competing titles.

For every bad review, theres a good one. For every 'against Too Human thread' there is a 'I cann't wait to play Too Human' thread. Its a love/hate game, they come around every so often. The controversy itself and decent marketing is going to easily push over 1 million copies.
 
Daggah said:
So you tell me, Psychotext: how many truly GOOD games get mixed reviews?
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You mean how many blockbusters get reviewed with an 8/10 - 10/10 scale? Some of my fave games of all time got 7s and 8s... so I tend to take reviews with a huge pinch of salt. Especially with niche genres. If you like a game, who gives a shit what someone else says about it? (This assumes of course you get to play a demo / rent it first)

My issue with your post is that you hold reviewers opinions in such high regard that you'll dismiss any that don't agree with the flock. Either that or you have such generic tastes that you've never like a game that another person didn't... which I seriously doubt.
 
Psychotext said:
Lack of focus isn't the worst problem with Too Human though... it's buggy and unpolished. Publisher / financial pressure is what forces you to throw something like that out of the door rather than keep working.
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Possibly, but good, streamlined design makes it easy to refine something. When something is convoluted and disjointed it becomes exponentially harder to make it gel as a finished product.
 
Psychotext said:
You mean how many blockbusters get reviewed with an 8/10 - 10/10 scale? Some of my fave games of all time got 7s and 8s... so I tend to take reviews with a huge pinch of salt. Especially with niche genres. If you like a game, who gives a shit what someone else says about it? (This assumes of course you get to play a demo / rent it first)

My issue with your post is that you hold reviewers opinions in such high regard that you'll dismiss any that don't agree with the flock. Either that or you have such generic tastes that you've never like a game that another person didn't... which I seriously doubt.
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The problem with this is that it assumes that I'm only going off of reviews.

I'm not. I tried the demo, and the game sucked. Hard. I'm not one of the ones who bought into the hype - I had never even heard of Too Human until recently. It was completely under my radar until like a week before the demo was released.
 
I just picked up my copy and there were tons of other preorders sitting in the drawer. This is the smaller Gamestop in my area and they had over 20 preorders alone.

It's no Halo 3 in terms of preorder numbers but I think it's going to do alright. I've reserved games like Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3 and Overlord that didn't get that many preorders and they all did quite well.

I talked to a few people in there while I was being rung up and everyone that's played it enjoyed the demo. I sat and talked tactics with the cashier on how he handled parts of the demo as a Berzerker and I told him how I did it as a Bio Engineer.
 
Daggah said:
The problem with this is that it assumes that I'm only going off of reviews.

I'm not. I tried the demo, and the game sucked. Hard. I'm not one of the ones who bought into the hype - I had never even heard of Too Human until recently. It was completely under my radar until like a week before the demo was released.
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I played the demo, and it rocked! HARD! See, I can do this too.
 
Which part of the demo rocked hard? Was it the repetitive environments, boring enemies, lame story, or crappy controls that had you hooked?
 
Daggah said:
Which part of the demo rocked hard? Was it the repetitive environments, boring enemies, lame story, or crappy controls that had you hooked?
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For me it was the generally mindless killing of hundreds of bad guys, the decent graphics, and the loot; those were the parts that rocked hardest. The controls aren't bad, but they do require an adjustment for most of us who are used to controlling the camera with the right stick.

You seem kind of overly pissed at this game. Did it do something personal to you (steal a girlfriend, break your Xbox, etc.)? ;)

edit: It's pretty tough to judge environments as being repetitive based on a 1hour demo, and if anything they were varied. There was the main hallway to battle enemies in, the cyber world of the NORNS, and Valhalla. That's 3 distinct environments in 60 min; sounds like someone might be regurgitating reviews...
 
pothb said:
I doubt they believe it to be a failure, since the dev seems to think its good themselves in their interviews. .
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do you actually think they dev;s would sit there and say it is complete crap, garbage, don't buy it... trusting the devs is the same as trusting most review sites.
 
Daggah said:
Which part of the demo rocked hard? Was it the repetitive environments, boring enemies, lame story, or crappy controls that had you hooked?
Click to expand...

It was the great environments, enemy slaughtering, story, unique controls, skills trees, massive loot tables, Norse mythology, cyberpunk... combined with that 'diablo' feeling that sucked me in. You do realize that your opinion is just that?

You didn't like it, we get it.
 
Daggah said:
Which part of the demo rocked hard? Was it the repetitive environments, boring enemies, lame story, or crappy controls that had you hooked?
Click to expand...

I actually thought the demo was really fun, and three playthroughs revealed that the controls were much more precise than they are when you first pick them up and flail away with them (like I did first playthrough). I thought the environments were pretty cool actually. I totally wanted the backstory on the ceiling railway carrying giant stone statues.

And no, I'm not buying the game yet. All the low dumbass reviews will keep the sheep who only buy omghaloisa10/10 games from buying it, driving down the price for cheap people like me. Thanks!
 
I picked it up and was sucked in for 5 hours until I looked at the clock and it was 2am and had to put it down so I could get to work this morning.

It has that Diablo-like addictive combat down really well. One thing that bugs me is there are no potions and only the Bio Engineer can heal the party. I am playing as the Bio Engineer so I can heal in coop and I still can't keep up in parts of the game where they swarm you with an insane amount of monsters but haven't gotten the gear to take them on yet.

I checked my stats and I've died 30 times so far but I was going head first into most of the combat situations until I got into a pretty good groove and whittled away at monsters with grenades and my rifle before going in with my hammer.

I can't wait to get back to it tonight.
 
Daggah said:
Which part of the demo rocked hard? Was it the repetitive environments, boring enemies, lame story, or crappy controls that had you hooked?
Click to expand...

Well its obvious someone hasn't played the game yet.

The environments are actually pretty varied and look great, the enemies are a little stale compared to some, the story is actually pretty engrossing, and the controls as have been mentioned ad nauseum requires practice and getting used to. Took me two run throughs of the demo to get them down and a couple more runs to actually have them feel comfortable and natural.

Now its second nature and I don't even think about them at all. Makes sense for this game to have them.

Enjoying the game a lot atm and think it was worth the money since the replay value is pretty high.
 
Thing is... there's very little point in explaining why you like a game to someone that doesn't like it. Much like it's utterly ridiculous for someone who doesn't like a game to say that someone else is wrong for liking it.

I don't like Too Human, but I sure as hell wont criticise someone else for having fun with it.
 
It's equally difficult to explain it to someone that will make judgment against an entire game based upon a short demo.
 
Are there any comparisons for this game? I'm really on the fence about getting it, but I don't know!
 
Rurik said:
It's equally difficult to explain it to someone that will make judgment against an entire game based upon a short demo.
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Its kinda funny how some people say something like this, while others say its just as foolish to base their opinion off reviews. But, what other option is there? There's lots of good games out there, and there just isn't time to play them all, unless you don't have a job or anything else going on, in which case you probably don't have any money anyway.

What's stupid is people talking all authoritative and condescending about something that they haven't experienced themselves. If you've played the demo or read reviews and decided its not for you, no big deal, just let it go. Of course, everything is like this on the internet, so I guess its not surprising.
 
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