The 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?).
I have to say that if the game is as good as this trailer is beautiful, Ubisoft has a big winner on its hands. The inclusion of a Sigur Rós song for this trailer was a good choice, although their music always has such a powerful meloncholic affect on me. I wonder if the game will actually evoke this same mood. Hopefully, the trailer is not deceptive in this sense, but the artistic style is certainly appropriate for it.
You’ve probably heard by now that one of Sony’s biggest theoretical exclusives, Final Fantasy XIII, is coming to the 360. To be honest, even before I owned a PS3, this was never a huge concern of mine. To begin with, I knew the game was basically never coming out. And as much as I liked Final Fantasy IV, VI and VII, I never really got too into any of the other ones (got close to the end in VIII, barely started IX, played a little bit of X… X-2 and XII are on my shelf unplayed).
But, yeah… I know there are a lot of Final Fantasy fans out there and this will make probably half of them ecstatic, a quarter furious, and a quarter who don’t care. Either way, this is, at the very least, a major psychological blow to Sony and a big coup for Microsoft. A friend of mine was literally trying to sell his 360 to pick up a PS3 MGS4 package because he figured he could play MGS4 and (what he most wanted) Final Fantasy XIII whenever it finally came out. Based on this news, that is no longer going to happen and he is keeping his 360.
There is a bit more information that’s coming out regarding Rock Band 2 now, and while everything is mostly positive, I guess most people are thinking that it may not be quite as big an update to warrant a “2″. Instead, 1up, for instance, is wondering why, outside of the obvious instrument improvements, a lot of the new features couldn’t have been released in a title update.
Now, if you’ve been reading our site for awhile, I think you know how often I like to complain about how things are priced. But I’m just really not sure what the problem is here. Most Madden games are basically roster updates, yet people continue to shell out $50-$60 every year for them. Regarding Rock Band 2, let me break it down as simply as possible for people:
Bungie has announced that there will be a free map download for Halo 3 available on Monday. But, not only that, the Legendary Map pack will be reduced in price from $10 to $7.50 a few months after its mid-April release.
Hmm, I believe somebody recommended step-down in price every few months back in November. Strange how that works out sometimes.
Call of Duty 5 details have come out, and it looks like we’re returning to World War II. This has of course prompted a whole host of complaints from sites like Destructoid, who argue that WW2 is played out and that we should be looking at other conflicts for inspiration. I’d agree that there are plenty of games like this out there, but this complaint strikes me as largely unfounded.
First off, why are there so many WW2 games? For one, it’s because the war was one of the few with undeniably, unambiguously ”good” and “bad” guys. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone - Pat Buchanan aside - willing to argue that this wasn’t a “good war.” As a result, you can mow down hordes of other human beings without feeling too terrible about yourself. And you get a nice warm glow inside when you accomplish your objectives. Second, it’s epic: there just aren’t any other wars out there in the modern era with the same kind of epic scope and scale that World War 2 has… even WW1 was relatively uninteresting trench warfare for a significant portion of its duration. As a result, there is a lot of ground to mine. Third, it’s got neat gadgets. WW2 was where many of the tools of modern warfare, like the tank and air combat, first came into their own. Therefore, designers can make a fairly diverse and interesting experience out of combat. And finally, it’s got a happy ending: the right people won. Good gameplay scenarios in an epic battle between good and evil: sounds like it should get a lot of attention.
Additionally, there just aren’t that many other attractive scenarios. The most obvious US battles of the last 150 years or so would probably include the US Civil War, World War I, Korea, and Vietnam. Yet the first has quite a few games of its own. And the latter three just aren’t very inspiring: Korea had an ambiguous outcome, and it’s not nearly as widely known as most other fights. And Vietnam is such a cultural touchstone, with so many political connotations, that it’s tough to come up with a real game that isn’t also a political statement.
Also consider the fact that even now, companies are able to advance the WW2 game in any number of ways - from CoD’s original European-focused titles, to RTS’s like Close Combat and Company of Heroes, there are plenty of recent games that do more than simply parrot their forebearers. If the genre is stagnant, let’s hear complaints. But “no more WW2″ is reflexively negative without due reason.
And lastly, it would be remiss to note that the Pacific theater is one that hasn’t been touched on in nearly the same detail as Europe. The fact that CoD 5 is targeting this area seems like a great reason to consider it optimistically. The CoD series hasn’t let us down yet.
This is old hat for many of you, but I recently picked up AC on sale at Best Buy… and I can’t bring myself to play more than 5 minutes of it. I just can’t bring myself to care. Everything about it, from the cutscenes to the lengthy training video to the pointless story, grates on my consciousness like nails on a chalkboard. I know Jeff actually enjoyed the game, but it still amazes me that there are heralded games that so actively repel me. I don’t despise it as much as I loathed Elite Beat Agents, but the hatred is replaced by an apathetic void that compels me to throw it into a corner and never touch it again.
Are there games that you hated from the moment you laid eyes on them?
After a brief stint at the top of XBox Live, GTA IV is no longer the most popular multiplayer game on XBox Live any more. It’s been overtaken by both Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3. That didn’t take too long.
In all fairness, the multiplayer in GTA IV was only one aspect of the game that was so popular with reviewers, and my sanity has been partially restored as it is no longer ranked as the best game of all time.
Am I the only one that read that and thought, “Gears of War had squad commands?”
I guess this happens on occasion with games… I made my way through Mass Effect without knowing about a lot of things (and while I knew there were squad commands, I don’t think I ever used them). Still, I don’t think I ever knew that Gears of War had them (unless this is a mistake by Joystiq). Funny how that happens sometimes.
Some guy with far too much time on his hands has apparently matched up photos of New York with screenshots of Liberty City. Behold the power of unemployment.
Also, some dating advice that applies to the real world.
