Was Too Human Really Worth the Wait? Does it Deserve a Sequel?
Silicon Knights was first founded in 1992 by Dennis Dyack. They’re known for making Blood Omen: The Legacy of Kain, and partial development of Metal Gear Sold: The Twin Snakes. More recently, they’re known for creating Too Human for the Xbox 360. It’s also probably the most famous game by them considering it took almost a decade to make and didn’t have the greatest response. After a decade did the expectations get too high or did Silicon Knights fail to deliver? Do they deserve to make a sequel?
Too Human released August 19th 2008, and their was much anticipation for it. The reason why is Silicon Knights started developing this game in 1999. It took 9 years to develop and release. It started off as a project for the original Playstation. After only a year the game was handed over to the Nintendo Gamecube in 2000. Then of course were it ultimately ended up with Microsoft in 2005. It was at E3 that Microsoft debuted the first trailer of Too Human. It had some good response, but mostly negative. So they completely re-hauled the core design of the game. When the new trailer was shown gamers were a lot happier and Too Human became a game on everyone’s radar. In all it took nine years to develop and went through 3 generations of console to finally reach us in 2008.
Too Human is a hack and slash action adventure game with hints of role-playing. The game uses a free-flow system with the analog sticks to do melee attacks, the triggers for your guns and the X and Y buttons for your special abilities. The overall controls were simple and once you got used to them you had a lot of fun. There’s 5 classes that each has their own style of play and abilities. Each character had a point system and could upgrade through the use of charms and enchantments.
The story is based off of Norse Mythology but with a futuristic twist. You are Baldur fresh from your untimely death, and you are on a mission to protect the humans from the synthetics as well as catch Loki. The game only consists of 4 levels and they get repetitive after a while. Despite the fun gameplay and good story the game is hard to keep replaying. After nine years you would think their would be more to the game, which is what I think disappointed gamers so much when it came to this title.
In a lot of eyes Too Human did not live up to its expectations. Gamers thought they were going to get a lot more after a decade of development. Though the game had solid gamplay, story and decent online co-op; it still was considered one of the big flops of 2008. The game wasn’t bad though, just wasn’t what people were expecting. The expectations were definitely too high for this game. Development had to go through three generations of consoles and then had to completely re-haul before release.
I believe Silicon Knights did deliver a good game. They deserve to make a sequel, and should get the chance to start the next chapter of the story. Now they have a final product of a game it won’t take a decade. They would just need to build off what they got.
Everyone deserves a second chance, and Silicon Knights are no different.
Michael Proestos
June 25, 2011 @ 2:41 pm
Eh, if it was bad why give the developers another chance? They had years to develop it and failed in nearly every way. Should we give Duke Nukem another chance because it sucked? Or what about Vampire Rain? Surely the developers can do better next time.
Trenten Chalmers
June 26, 2011 @ 4:38 pm
Well thats the thing it wasnt a bad game, it just wasent what was expected. Remember it had to go through development for 3 differnt consoles to. It deffinatly deserves a shot at a sequal and then if it dosent improve its done.