Slashdot Mirror
Too Human Meets Mediocre Reviews
Earlier this week, the long anticipated action-adventure game, Too Human, was finally released for the Xbox 360. After being in various stages of development for about a decade, the game made its US debut to overall lackluster marks. Gamespot weighed in with a 5.5/10, while IGN gave it a slightly more favorable 7.8. Developer Denis Dyack from Silicon Knights defended the game, saying players didn't yet "get it," and that it was "so innovative that we have put some people off." The game's reception in Japan has been similar.
Just because you have the skills to develop a game, does not mean you know how to develop a gaming experience.
There are developers that know how to develop entertaining gaming experience, and their are dev's that just know how to make games without a decent ability to judge whether or not what they are developing is exciting, interesting and entertaining and doesn't suck.
This is a big problem in the industry as far as I'm concerned, there is just too many clueless people (pub's and developers) about how to build entertainment. I think the biggest problem is still the technology. There is so much time and money consuming technical engineering that it overtakes the money and time needed to develop the entertainment aspect. Too much on art and engines, not enough on developing interesting things and connecting them with skill.
Striking a balance is hard, I agree, but that's the business you're really in: Entertainment. Game developers have to be good at knowing entertainment as well as engineering. It's hard, no doubt... and sometimes you just want to keep trying just doing your own thing (which is also valid) but if you want to do your own thing, you got to go back to small time games and understand what aspects of both the art, and the interaction of the objects, makes the game. Some indie game developers know this, they know what is wrong with the industry.
On the basis of 3 hours or so play, it's a pretty but generally uninspired 3d Diablo clone, at heart. Sure, it mixes Norse mythology with sci-fi, but that's hardly new. Just ask John Romero - I seem to remember him at least partly doing that in Daikatana (although if, like most people, you only played the demo, you won't have seen those bits). It's also really easy, the enemies seem to auto-scale (a la Oblivion), which is a feature that should be consigned to the dustbin of history, and the camera is annoying. Personally, I'd go for a 6 on 10. Maybe a 7 on the basis of the graphics.
Is this just another case of Derek Smart thinking his IQ is at least twice what it really is?
Meet is slightly problematic, though. While native English speakers will no doubt understand the title without trouble, it can give the impression that the reviews themselves are mediocre. Receives would have been a better choice in my opinion.
There's a demo on Marketplace that allows you to play as every class (through an easter egg, intentionally left in by Silicon Knights). I think a lot of reviewers expected the world from this game. I expected a dungeon crawler/action RPG similar to Phantasy Star Online and Diablo. I'm very happy with the end product. Personally, I'd give te game an 8.2, or in letter grading terms, a B-. It has some problems - namely, the length, some camera issues, and a weak story - but the core gameplay is FUN. And that's what's important to me.
"It's a reverse vampire...they....they crave the sun!"
But then, the whole review thing is silly most places. If a game gets less than 9/10 then it's a bad game. 8.5 is a bad score it seems. A game scoring 6-7 is still in the upper half of the quality scale
Another poster below reveals the reason for the upper-half-only review thing you get with 10-point scales:
Personally, I'd give te game an 8.2, or in letter grading terms, a B-.
When you're using that scoring system, 1-5 is an F, 6 is a D, 7 is a C, 8 is a B, and 9-10 are an A. C is defined as "average," so anything less than a 7 is "below average" and 6/10 becomes a bad game.
It seems kind of silly to me. The whole "percent to letter grade" thing makes some amount of sense in school, but when reviewing, it means that you limit yourself to the upper half of the scale, and make anything below a 5 essentially meaningless.
But that's why you see review scores treated the way they do. Everyone treats them as a test grade from school, and a 6/10 is a low grade on a test.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Didn't Eternal Darkness get pretty average reviews when it was released? It's pretty fondly looked at now, being the best example of Lovecraftian style horror on consoles (the gold factory and everything after in Call of C'thulhu stops that being the best)
Okay. Let's get valid. It's just another FPS. It has no discernible story (when it's not a paper-thin attempt to link the games with backstory no one seems to bother caring about), most of the time it's just the same old "shoot everything that moves, and if it doesn't move, pick it up and use it to shoot everything that moves." It doesn't break any technological ground (it's not even 720p on the 360), nor does it bag the cliche's for something fresh. It's not the be-all-end-all revolutionary game for consoles that MS marketroid hype has made it out to be. It's fine if it's popular, and it's certainly find if you like it or if millions like it.
;)
Is it fun for some people? Sure. But don't excuse all criticism of the game as some snooty "back in my day" sort of claims and relegate all people who don't like the game in some sort of club that hate things because they're popular.
Give me an Oblivion or Too Human over Halo any day. Does that make me less intelligent than the Halo crowd? If it makes them sleep better at night... go for it.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
Fine, I'll give you some valid reasons. Halo isn't a bad game, it really isn't. However, it's not a good game either, it's mediocre. I was excited as hell for Halo before Microsoft bought out Bungie. I remember seeing the original videos and pictures and though it was going to be an amazing game. Even after Microsoft bought Bungie I wasn't deterred, I bought an Xbox solely for Halo. When I played it I found it wasn't that good. It wasn't original, it wasn't unique, it was just there. Thanks to Microsofts huge PR push it became an instant hit though and spawned two sequels and soon an RTS. It's widely proclaimed to be one of the best FPS games by Halo players, which leads me to assume they have little experience with FPS games that came before it. I'd even rate Goldeneye for the N64 (to keep it console only) much higher than Halo. Don't get me wrong, playing Halo 3 multiplayer with friends while drinking a few beers is fun, but not fun enough to buy the game.
It's not that we're hating on kids, but they are a new generation of gamers. One which I think are more concerned with pretty graphics than gameplay. I still go back to old games and love to play them. Of course I can't get the Halo gamer types to pick them up at all. So in this regard I agree with the GP that they wouldn't get Grim Fandango or Fallout or even games in the same vein.
Note that I'm not saying Too Human is good or bad. I played the demo and found it moderately fun, but didn't get the urge to buy it from playing the demo.
Eh, the only one of the three Halo games that I enjoyed at all in terms of story was the first one. It wasn't the best story I've ever seen in a video game (let alone an FPS) but it did take several different bits of its characters and worlds from different science fiction novels (Ringworld, Starhammer, etc.) that I enjoyed which made me somewhat more appreciative of it. You can spot a lot of things in Halo's story that are based on various other science fiction movies or novels as well, which makes it a lot of fun to recognize the inspiration behind certain parts of the game. The whole story feels like an homage to some great science fiction.
It also looked fairly good for a console game at the time it was released and due to the Xbox having a hard drive to store parts of the game on, had very short load times that were few and far between. This was a far cry from games that were on the PS2 where the loading times seemed to drag on forever in comparison. For its time the enemy AI was fairly impressive and the harder difficulties would keep players looking for a challenge interested in the game. The game also felt quite at home on a console as well. Movement was at a slower pace when compared to something on the PC which allowed it to compensate for having to use console controllers. It eventually allowed online multiplayer experience, which really helped to drive the popularity of the series as it was one of the first times that console users could play against other gamers from across the country.
However, the second and third games had crap stories with uninteresting characters and generally poorly designed dialogue and plot elements. As someone who enjoyed the first entry in the series, I found myself generally turned off by the second and even more-so the third. They still had solid multiplayer though and I think that's what most fans of the series were interested in to begin with so no one really bothered to weigh the game so heavily on its story. They're still decent games as far as console shooters go, but aside from the first I've never felt the story in any of the games to be anything more than mediocre.