Far Too Human
July 30th, 2008The Too Human demo has been out for a bit now and I’ve now played through it with all of the classes (to find out how to do this, check out this YouTube link… it’s pretty simple). While the demo has convinced me to buy the full game, two of the classes just felt completely worthless to me: the Commando and Bio-Engineer.
Let me give you some quick examples. My first time through the demo with the Champion I obviously had no idea what I was really doing, but by the time I got to the second “timed challenge” (which gives you 40 seconds to kill an onslaught of enemies), I was able to complete it. With the Berserker and Defender, these timed challenges were incredibly easy, and I beat them with at least 10 seconds to spare. In my last play through with the Defender, I never died (in fact the closest I ever got was about 1/4 life left) and my combo meter was always maxed out (I think) at 3. When playing with the Commando and Bio-Engineer, I couldn’t complete any timed challenges, I died 2-3 times, and I’d be lucky to get my combo meter up to 2. The Defender, by the way, has the added advantage of seemingly not falling over when all those annoying missiles blow up near you, a huge plus in my book as rolling out of the way or shooting them down can be tedious.
Now, there’s obviously a lot of factors that are influencing my thoughts on this: personal preferences, length of the demo (classes start specializing more the longer you play the game, I’m guessing), and basic lack of skills or understanding of how to best play these particular classes. I don’t have a problem if any of these factors led someone else to another class, but it just seems like there’s something very fundamental about the game that makes the Commando and Bio-engineer poor choices unless you just want a rough ride through the game. Based on the demo, the gunplay in the game just isn’t nearly well implemented enough to be used as a sort of primary weapon, and the Commando and Bio-Engineer rely far more heavily on guns and grenades. In that sense, one could potentially look at the Commando and Bio-Engineer as two different “Hard Modes” for the game.
In any case, I’m wondering whether anyone else has given the demo a chance and what their own thoughts on these classes are, particularly if you found them to work pretty well. I’m also sort of curious as to whether people think unbalancing classes to create a “hard mode” class is a good idea, although I’m a little skeptical of it if that’s sort of the idea in Too Human since it’s also a Co-op game (and who wants to be the weak one when playing with a friend?).
Posted in Commentary, Impressions, Jeff, Xbox 360 |
July 31st, 2008 at 12:00 pm
I’ve had no issues with the classes. I especially enjoy playing with the Bio-Engineer for his hammer with the area of effect launch. For this very reason, I’d have to disagree that he relies heavily on guns and grenades. I use them only occasionally as a Bio, and not anymore than any other class.
Basically, I move around until the enemies group together and then I use the double tap juggle to launch multiple baddies into the air. Then, I jump up and ping-pong my attacks between the enemies while they are in the air. It is great fun. Never had any problems completing the arena challenges with either class as well.
July 31st, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Zcythe-
Hmm… maybe I need to see some videos to understand how to use those classes better, or perhaps it really is just a matter of preference. I just found that skating around swinging your weapon was a lot easier when everything fell over in basically one hit (as was the case with the Champion, Berserker, and Defender) than with the Commando and Bio-Engineer. Both the commando and Bio-engineer use grenades, which I sort of thought was more exclusive to them, which is why I said that they relied more on guns.
August 4th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
Jeff,
It is possible that the other classes are support classes. Where a Defender could be considered somewhat of a tank or damage sponge the Commando and Bio-Engineer work better in concert with the Defender, possibly dishing out large amounts of damage while the Defender takes all the punishment.
I actually have yet to play the hacked demo and have only played the first 2 unlocked classes.
Also, I believe that many people lose something by never changing their equipment around. Zcyth mentioned the hammer with its AOE launch, but you can acquire a hammer with the other classes and it had the same AOE move which appears to be tied to the weapon and not the class.
I’ll have to check back in after I play the demo “unlocked.”
August 4th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
inc-
That’s fine, except it’s also supposed to be a single player game. They should be powerful enough to play solo as well.