Mats Lindh

Silicon Knights have finally managed to get Too Human out for a release, and I spent thirty minutes tonight trying out the demo from Xbox Live. I’m probably one of the few people who actually are quite interested in games but never knew much about Too Human before trying it out. I had read a few reviews and their conclusions seem to cover most of the elements of the game.

It’s not hard to see that the game had a lot of potential. There are large number of enemies. There are RPG elements. There are loot to get. Fat gear. Skills. Runes. Classes. And a very high speed gameplay that mainly includes pointing your stick against the enemies and watching them die by your enormous sword. I love gigantic swords. No penis jokes, please.

Therefore it’s sad to see it brought into yet-another-troubled-attempt by several questionable design decisions. First of all; don’t fuck with the right control stick. This moves the camera. Period. Most games use it that way, we expect it to work that way. In a game where there are 20 enemies approaching you from all directions at the same time, moving the camera is important. Instead, the game decides what to show you. You can reset the viewport, but hey, I already have a control stick that actually could let me move the viewport around. That would be fantastic.

OK, we’re in a magical world where the camera works perfect. No troubles at all (well, we’re not in Too Human any longer apparently, but ride with me here) and everything is perfect. Suddenly you’re somewhere else. What. Hm. I can control my character, but .. hey, this is not where I’m supposed to be. The developers thought that a flashback was a cool idea to explain something about the motivation for where I’m going and what I’m going to kill, but telling me that they were going to show a flashback or do something else.. Well, not so much. Let the sequences play out in the history, not at arbitary locations along the road. It sucks. And why on the earth was I teleported into a green land, just to have to run through the parts the camera just moved backwards from?! I’ve already seen that greeeeeen shit, man.

If Too Human ever gets the planned sequel (it’s supposed to be a trilogy), I’ll provide the name for free. Invisible Wall. The demo is full of them. There are invisible walls everywhere, and magically you can’t fall off anywhere there are any height involved. You can’t jump over simple obstacles, even though your character has the jumping capabilities of a squirrel on speed. I hate invisible walls. They’re invisible. They’re walls. They’re just HEEEY! YOU CAN’T SEE ME BUT I’LL JUST FUCK THE ENTIRE IMMERSIVE PART OF THE GAME UP. AND I’LL DO IT AGAIN. AND AGAIN.

The weird part is that the demo actually were a bit fun. Not WOOOW THIS IS GREAT-fun, but the occasionally things worked nicely. I’m even going to consider buying it when it gets dirt cheap because of vendors over stocking on the hype.

I just hate invisible walls.

Christer (thanks a lot, fscker) included me as his 123-meme nemesis. Crap.

But hey, I’m all for propagating stupid internet memes, so I’m in. To quote from Christer’s page:

1. Pick up the book closest to you
2. Open page 123
3. Find the 5th sentence…
4. …and publish the next three sentences
5. Link to 5 other bloggers and tell who linked you

Well, the closest book as I were reading quietly along on my RSS-reader was “Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions” by Gary Klein. We’re heading over to page 123 right now! Searching for the fifth sentence (hey, the chapter is called “Nonlinear Aspects of Problem Solving! I like where this is going!):

Constructing a course of action is the component most people think of as the output of problem solving: generating a plan for achieving a goal. Regardless of how the option is generated, it will need to be evaluated, often using mental stimulation. The evaluation process can lead to adoption of the option, result in selecting between options, or identify new barriers and opportunities, thereby triggering additional problem solving.

So there you have it (in fact, it was a complete paragraph. Yey for that!).

I’ll hand the meme over to Kristian, Ole, Jan-Petter and Thomas (see Christer, I even have more people to hand it over too. I pwnz0rz.).

Although Christer may be in Chicago for php|tek, at least I’ve gotten a head start at Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness. You’ll never catch me now! BWHAHAHAH! I’m playing the Xbox Live version, and so far it’s been quite fun. It’s a battle/encounter-based JRPG, with the bells and whistles that involves. The combat system is a based in real-time, and it gets quite hectic at times. I’m going to track down the real culprit here!

As a small break from all the programming related posts, I present you with an amazing photo set at flickr showing real life New York-locations compared to those available in Grand Theft Auto 4. The level of details that the people doing the 3D models for GTA4 has managed to get into the game is simply remarkable. [via Boing Boing]