Mats Lindh

Valve has decided to switch Norwegian customers over from the U.S. dollar to the euro; in itself a minor move which just requires us norwegians to multiply with another number when converting the price to Norwegian kroners. Here’s the catch, though: They kept the same numeric price. So anything that cost $49.95 a couple of days ago, costs €49.95 today. Converted to Norwegian kroners, that’s a price increase of over 45%! It’s now cheaper to buy the game in the store, get the box, the manual and everything than purchasing it over Steam.

This sounds like bad news, but it actually opens up the market a lot for the OTHER great services such as gamersgate, gog and other digital content providers, as they suddenly has a lot more competitive pricing. I had no problem paying a dollar or two extra for keeping my games in Steam, but now we’re talking 50% or more just to get it in Steam. Not going to happen.

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.

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!