Too Human Preview

[GameBanshee News]

The guys at Eurogamer were able to spend some hands-on time with Silicon Knights' Too Human and have put together a preview based on their experience.

There's depth here, but it's the RPG elements, which announce themselves gradually over the opening hours, that draw you in with greater urgency. There aren't that many enemy drops, but there's a mountain of loot to recover on your violent adventures, some of which can be applied and re-crafted through the hub level's cybernetics lab, or simply invested in new equipment, and there's an elaborate skills tree to explore, which differs depending on which of the five character classes you chose at the outset.

The interface for this looks complicated, but always signals which items are the best at any given time, and there's a healthy mixture of logic and choice behind the decisions you make on these screens. For instance, armour items often have slots for runes, which have modifying properties that may suit your play style, and after a couple of hours you're invited to choose one of two broader progressions to pursue: cybernetics or refined, combo-heavy human attributes.

You have to pay attention to get to the core of the game's expectations, though, because while you're getting your head around all this you're being thrashed constantly with head-spinning in-engine cut-scenes plotting the machinations and politics of Too Human's elaborate fiction. There's your dead wife to consider, and a god on trial, and Thor's secret feelings for Freya, and whether the mystical three-bodied NORN spirit (part wench, part crone, part tranny) is right about your Wyrd. There's lots of shouting about who gets to go on missions, and lots of traipsing around the hub between cinematics.