Too Human Meets Mediocre Reviews 195
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.
Some dev's are clueless... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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What you're
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"What's entertaining is subjective."
I'd dispute that, I bet if we did statistical studies, evidence would emerge of a consensus of a baseline of what is considered fun vs what is not. Politics ("subjectivity") is now becoming a science in and of itself:
http://www.linktv.org/video/2142 [linktv.org]
I'm sure we'll soon have a science of fun, the studies are not there yet, but I'm certain we'd find statistical consensus of what fun is, and what isn't interesting if we had many decades to do serious research.
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But when we normalize it and build it by consensus, it won't be fun anymore. And we'll have to find a different kind of fun, a new baseline.
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I'm sure we'll soon have a science of fun, the studies are not there yet, but I'm certain we'd find statistical consensus of what fun is, and what isn't interesting if we had many decades to do serious research.
It's called "ludology", and there already is decades of research and tons of papers and books written about it. Jesper Juul's "Half Real" is a good starting point, which largely looks at previous research in the field and relates it specifically to video games.
I should note that I disagree with him on some points, and some of that is due to the fact that you're just dead wrong about entertainment/fun not being subjective. For example, I find chess and baseball both incredibly dull, and would happily never p
Re:Some dev's are clueless... (Score:5, Insightful)
Between World of Warcraft and the Diablo series, Blizzard has proven that there are tens of millions of gamers who game SOLELY for the objective of collecting incrementally improving loot.
If Too Human fails, it means it's just a bad game.
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I love WoW, and played more than my share of Diablo (both of them), and I don't think you're being fair by saying that we play "SOLELY" for the loot.
I'm in a guild with very nice and interesting people, some of whom have become good friends, and I like to play with them just for the sake of messing around. When we down a raid boss for the first time, the thrill of watching the last few % of his life bar go down, hoping that it will get to 0 faster than my mana bar (I'm a healer) is much more enticing than t
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"Blizzard has proven that there are tens of millions of gamers who game SOLELY for the objective of collecting incrementally improving loot."
Those games are actually proof of the fact that Blizzard are good at making games which appeal to a wide range of people for all sorts of different reasons. It's the designers who think WOW or Diablo's success are "SOLELY" due to one or two factors that end up producing stuff which only appeals to a sub-set of people who play Blizzard games in a particular way, thereby
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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.
These are actually different jobs in game development. The Game Designer needs a passing knowledge of something like Maya or Max in order to place objects into the gameworld, but for the most part, Designers are the ones in charge of the skillful creation of entertaining content you outlined above.
The other positions which play into the technical knowledge vs. fun tug-of-war you mentioned are engineers and producers, for the most part. Engineers are in charge of maintaining and upgrading aspects of the en
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These are actually different jobs in game development.
Which is quite irrelevant the whole of a game is all connected in the end, if someone fucks up on the assembly line they can cause the whole thing to collapse, don't believe me? Go read some post mortems at gamasutra.
The other positions which play into the technical knowledge vs. fun tug-of-war you mentioned are engineers and producers, for the most part.
This is the whole point though, the tug-of-war, the technology is still a barrier. How many failed or bad games are pushed out or cancelled? A lot.
My real point is just that your tirade is... slightly uninformed.
My real point is that, you have no point you just don't understand what I said, and because some of what I said rubbed you the wrong way, you jus
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You don't have to believe me or internalize any of what I said, of course. But your post's central thesis was that
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.
I actually work in game development, and I can assure you that that is not the case across the board. Perhaps it is at Silicon Knights - they had a bit of an engine fiasco with Too Human, after all - but that's not what you said.
With Civility,
-Drake
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You don't have to believe me or internalize any of what I said, of course. But your post's central thesis was that...
No my central thesis actually was:
Just because you have the skills to develop a game, does not mean you know how to develop a gaming experience.
I actually work in game development,
Which doesn't mean a thing, what I mean is sure you work in game development (I respect you for that big time btw) but just because you work in game development doesn't mean you know the truth about everything in game development. Why would John Carmack be speaking about new engine technologies to enable artist to naturally do what they do best and abstract the tec
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anyone can make accurate observations. Or would you like to deny that?
I do. Granted, I'm feeling particularly pedantic right now.
There are several reasons why not everyone can make accurate observations. I choose to name two of them. (1) Not everyone is in in the right physical or social situation to make an observation. (2) Not everyone has the proper foreknowledge to understand what they are seeing/experiencing.
Sorry, couldn't help myself.
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"I do. Granted, I'm feeling particularly pedantic right now.
There are several reasons why not everyone can make accurate observations."
But this is irrelevant to my claim, I was in a position to make such.
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"The reason most knock-offs fail, is because people have already experienced that gaming style and flavour, juts changing some of the scenery will not drive people to basically buy the same game."
If this was the case, it would be impossible to sell add-ons to existing games, most of which do little more than add some extra scenery and rules to the original while maintaining the same (successful, otherwise they wouldn't bother releasing an add-on) game play.
The real reason most knock-offs fail is due to the
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Innovative? (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
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What don't you like about the enemy autoscaling? I thought Oblivion was nice in how you can more finely define how hard the game is, even while you're playing it.
Re:Innovative? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Innovative? (Score:4, Insightful)
That sort of nonsense was why I gave up on Mass Effect. There may have been a great story in there, but awkward controls of the landing rover and VICIOUS enemies early on preventing the story from becoming entertaining. To each his own. Make it a toggle if you must, but getting rid of it means many people who don't spend 12 hours a day in front of a console will miss out on the story and the hard work developers put into the game.
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I think that you are looking at two different things:
Feanturi: being able to arbitrarily go to any place in the game and be competitive makes it hard to have a progressive and coherent story. This leads to boring games without good story lines.
Doctor_Jest: having the difficulty for a place in the game be such that you need to be level X to play it forces you into meaningless activities purely to gain levels. This is boring.
It's at least conceivable that one could address both concerns in the same game.
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does not follow. The main story trunk could easily be made so that you are sufficiently powerful to go some place once you need to for the story.
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Doctor_Jest: having the difficulty for a place in the game be such that you need to be level X to play it forces you into meaningless activities purely to gain levels. This is boring.
If all of the areas that a low-level player could handle are somehow less meaningful than a more difficult area, then that's just bad design. There's absolutely no reason that low-level areas and quests should have to be "meaningless". There should be plenty for a low-level character to do without having to grind for levels to get to interesting content.
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because since I finished Oblivion, I've wanted something to continue that open-ended realistic world feel, but nothing's come close...
It's called Oblivion + lots of mods! There's a ton of mods out there that add huge amounts of content to Oblivion. They make it into an almost totally different game. Much deeper. Many more interesting quests and storylines. All-around better gameplay and a much prettier world to explore. It's just ridiculous how much new content has been created.
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I'd rather have the ability to flesh out the story rather than be frustrated by a bloody insane enemy in a game that stops me from enjoying the story until I go to a few ruins and grind levels.
There are two solutions I like better for that:
One, have difficulty levels. Or cheats. Let you play on easy, the rest of us can enjoy the challenge of an insane boss.
Two, watch a movie. Or a TV series. Or read a book. If all you want is to see a story fleshed out, there's a way to do that without any challenge at all.
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Adjust the difficulty if Mass Effect is kicking your ass. Or do some other missions and come back later. The key to winning a fight is using Lift so the enemy can't hit back, so bring a biotic or two :)
Mass Effect's scaling is harsher because most powers can be available starting at level 1. Some powers are just no fun to be hit with when all you have is a point in Pistols, Basic Armor and First Aid. The Benezia encounter was the worst thing I've ever encountered because I had no real hint of the danger. Fo
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That's interesting. In my experience the auto-scaling actually destroys much of the story.
In Morrowind, I really liked how the world didn't revolve around me. The world just was. It didn't seem like it needed the player to justify its existence. That really increased my immersion in the game. I also really felt that my character was developing. Challenges (both in and out of combat) that I couldn't handle before eventually became doable, and later trivally easy. That really complemented the story in which y
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Perhaps game devs should consider making i
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Yes, your way forward would be great. One of the first 3rd party mobs for Oblivion removed the autoscaling. Just a pity I bought the 360 version, eh?
Makes it bland (Score:3, Insightful)
Autoscaling is to games as loudness war is to music.
Re:Innovative? (Score:5, Insightful)
Autoscaling has MANY issues.
Badly tuned autoscaling can result in the game progressing very strangely. You start good and kill enemies with a moderate challenge at the start. But the game believes that is too easy and ramps up the difficulty until you die a couple times, at which point it sets difficulty back to easy. You get a very strange cycle where difficulty progressively rises then abruply falls.
In games like Oblivion it manifests in a different way: It's hard to judge the player's power. For instance in Morrowind (Oblivion's predecessor) you can make items that will continously heal yourself and by performing certain tricks make yourself absurdly powerful at low levels, sometimes without trying very hard. Or, you can follow a very suboptimal progression if what interests you is say, commerce and roleplay. As a result, you get a game that's either absurdly easy or absurdly hard.
Another problem is that you get worlds where EVERYTHING gets harder. At level 1, a rat did moderate amount of damage. At level 20, it now also does moderate damage to a knight in shiny armor, and a keen vorpal longsword of burnination +5. The lowly thugs you had issues with at level 3 now level 15, wear shiny armor and have magical swords, and inexplicably demand your lunch money. It doesn't make any sense for a warrior in the top 1% of the world to hang around a crossroads and mug people. They could go hire themselves for a much better price.
Even the scaling is done well, the result is still strange. The cave where low life robbers are hiding is still challenging at level 15. The citadel is possible to storm at level 5. If it wasn't for the requirement of having the right items you could probably go fight the big bad at level 3, as autoscaling would ensure he'd be possible for you to defeat.
IMO, games like Oblivion should be planned differently. Instead of autoscaling there should be a progressive increase in difficulty as you get away from civilization. The rats in an inn's cellar should be doable at level 1. The bandits on the crossroads should be moderately challenging at level 5. The hideout in the woods far from the road should be pretty hard at level 10. And if you decide to storm a castle, you'd better be armed to the teeth.
It should be perfectly possible to make a game where you can explore even at low levels. Cities should be generally safe. Roads less so. The further you get from civilized places, the less safe it should be. It doesn't have to be frustrating, if you find you're barely surviving you should be able to return to safer places.
Not at all surprising (Score:2)
I downloaded the demo on XBox Live a few weeks back. It was okay, I guess, but judged purely on the demo I'd say the 5/10 score was fair. It was a fairly mediocre third-person shooter with Viking Space Marines and cinematics so melodramatic that I was embarrassed to have them play when someone else was in the room.
I heard so much buzz about this game in the months/years leading up to its publication. Can someone more knowledgeable about some of the history help me understand this? Was it simply based on
Re:Not at all surprising (Score:5, Informative)
I think most of the "buzz" surrounding Too Human was mostly about how long the game has been in development and Silicon Knights' very public fallout with Epic. After spending a lot of money on Epic's Unreal Engine, SK then claim it was delivered unfinished and un-usable, and that promised enhancements were ignored while Epic used the time and money to finish their own competing game. Ultimately, Silicon Knights sued Epic and then say they rewrote the game and authored their own complete game engine. The whole lawsuit thing is a bit of a spectacle, especially since no other dev houses seem to have anything bad to say about Epic's Unreal Engine.
I'd say this is less hype about Too Human itself and more about watching this train wreck unfold.
Seems pretty fair... (Score:2, Insightful)
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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 [slashdot.org] 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 a
Eternal Darkness. (Score:2)
Don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
If game players "just don't get it" then you have made a bad game.
Re:Don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, not necessarily. If you released Grim Fandango or Fallout today, I bet there'd be a lot of Halo kiddies who wouldn't "get it."
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Re:Don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
BioShock
Deus Ex
Half-Life
Half-Life 2
System Shock
System Shock 2
Thief
Thief II
Half-Life 2 and BioShock are the only ones that were released after Halo.
Whatever credibility you might have had just vanished. Poof. Gone.
The only thing I remember about Halo's story is that someone's going to activate Halo and it's going to kill everyone, and then Master Chief stops it.
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BioShock
Deus Ex
Are not FPSes. Or at least, Bioshock isn't, and from what I understand of Deus Ex, it isn't. They're hybrids.
Half-Life
Half-Life 2
Have terrible story.
System Shock
System Shock 2
See Bioshock.
Thief
Thief II
Also not FPS'es. If those are FPS, then Assassin's Creed is an FPS.
Whatever credibility you might have had just vanished. Poof. Gone
Whatever. It isn't my fault if you don't like the characters. Entertainment is subjective that way. I don't have a problem with you disagreeing, but when you presume to speak of "losing credibility" because we disagree, you need to get off your high horse.
The only thing I remember about Halo's story is that someone's going to activate Halo and it's going to kill everyone, and then Master Chief stops it.
Then pay attention? Without even reading the bo
Re:Don't get it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Then I guess Halo isn't an FPS either. After all, it deviates quite a bit from the model established by Doom.
HL2 is debatable, unless you count the Episodes, but Half-Life's story is told very well.
Assassin's Creed is a third person game. Thief and Thief II are first person.
It's one thing to say that no other FPS game has had such good characters, but to compare Halo with all other games ever released? Sheer madness.
I paid attention to the story as much as I've paid attention to it in all the other games I've played. It just wasn't memorable.
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Then I guess Halo isn't an FPS either. After all, it deviates quite a bit from the model established by Doom.
That isn't the metric of FPS. The metric of FPS is whether you primarily run around shooting things in a first-persion POV. In Bioshock, that simply isn't true. You use plasmids as much as guns, and you hack things left and right. Bioshock is an RPG that happens to use guns and a first-person POV.
Half-Life's story is told very well.
Ha! The story itself aside (which I don't think is very good), the Half-Life series has the worst storytelling of any game I've ever seen. One day Valve will realize that the first-person POV is an ineffective way
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What do you do in Doom? You run around and shoot at things. What game defined the FPS genre? Doom. FPS games are whatever Doom says they are. Halo is not an FPS game.
In Halo, you drive and fly vehicles, hit enemies
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Are you intentionally trying to sabotage yourself by establishing your profound lack of gaming experience?
Are you intentionally trying to sabotage yourself by demonstrating that your intolerance for others' opinions is so great, that the people who have them must be outright lying in your mind?
Your narrow definition of an FPS game does not work and was most likely improvised on the spot to magically explain why Halo has the best story ever told in any FPS game.
Same question. Furthermore, I fail to see what the hell is wrong with my definition. You have a problem, come up with a better one, don't flimsily say "you just made that up!!!".
No, you just have poor taste. Most likely you have played very few games and have little if any experience with film and literature.
No, I just have different taste than you. Art is a subjective thing, so no one is ever wrong. Learn The Rules 101 before you start talking. And a
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What? You're simply demonstrating a lack of experience.
Your definition was obviously invented on the spot to counter the fact that in terms o
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But you have to admit the genius of so narrowly defining what makes X so great that it excludes everything close to it (do more stuff than Doom, be more brainless than everything else). It's like those car commercials that announce the ALL TIME BEST SELLER in its class. What class is that? Full size, mid size, compact, long bed, short bed, hybrid, diesil, gas, extra cab, blah blah blah.... Fucking marketers.
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Halo's storyline is on par with Bungie's first FPS, Pathways into Darkness. Bungie's second FPS Marathon (and sequels) blow away Halo in the story department.
System Shock II and Thief both have far better stories, as well as better mechanics. Pure FPS they ain't, but that's what makes them so outstanding
And FPSes have
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Marathon was ok, but it suffered from too-complex syndrome by the end. There's a level of complexity which is good, but too much is very counterproductive.
That, and terminals are not exactly a good way to develop a story. I'll give them something of a pass here, since it was in the early days, but still, bad story-telling hampers the overall experience, even if I can appreciate the story despite the bad story-telling.
Re:Don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Clearly you have never visited forums populated by gamers, such as Steampowered. The average gamer is so stupid that no amount of science and philosophy can explain how they're able to even turn on a computer.
No, but it's got a really shitty fanbase.
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As I said a bit above, Halo's achievement is not in graphics, gameplay, or anything like that. It's solidly average in those areas (although Halo 3 doesn't have bad graphics, I guess). The real gem that Halo has is story. The story in Halo blew anything that I had experienced before that out of the water, there was no comparison. The story in the sequels has lived up to a similarly high level. There still is no comparison between Halo's story, and the story of other FPS games on the market. That's what make
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People have been using that argument for pretty much as long as videogames have existed, and it is just as dumb now as it was then. There never was a period when graphics didn't matter, or a period when crap shovelware games didn't exist. It's really all rose-colored glasses and extremely selective memories.
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There never was a period when graphics didn't matter, or a period when crap shovelware games didn't exist.
True, but there was a time when games had variety. The by far biggest annoyance of todays games is that they simply all play the same and even if a game comes up with a new idea, its instantly cloned in every other game, so that nothing stays unique for long. It simply doesn't matter if I play a Gears of War, a Uncharted or a GTAIV, its all the very same game mechanic and even a Metal Gear 4 isn't far away. And if that weren't enough, there are of course a ton of sequels, so you will already be quite famili
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That's not true either. Today you can easily find just about any kind of game you can think of, and many more in genres you have never even heard of. Cloning has also been part of the industry for as long as it has existed. The main difference is that d
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Nonsense.
For both of those titles, Halo kiddies would "get it", they'd just wouldn't like them - just like any other adventure / RPG games.
"Sure, that's nice... but those types of games are slow and boring..."
Those games were innovative in many ways (content, mostly) - but their gameplay mechanics were pretty conventional.
"Sins of a Solar Empire" is probably a better example - the change is subtle enough that it can take you completely by surprise if you keep expecting an RTS, or an empire-building game lik
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Halo kiddies couldn't play them because they lack the necessary intelligence and attention span. They can only understand pretty colors and shiny objects that blow up. I've seen players co
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Halo kiddies couldn't play them because they lack the necessary intelligence and attention span. They can only understand pretty colors and shiny objects that blow up. I've seen players complain that the RPGs of the late 90s are unplayable because they are so "archaic," because you need to read an instruction manual to play them and because the graphics are so outdated.
Today's Halo kiddies aren't that much different than the Street Fighter 2 or Tekken 3 players of the late 90's. Most of them just wanted to bash stuff and they didn't give a shit about games like Baldur's Gate or Fallout either. Why should they? Games to them are recreation, something you do with your friends to kill some time after school. American CRPGs on the other hand are an acquired taste for a narrow audience and I don't think less of anyone who doesn't enjoy them.
As far as Halo players lacking
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Don't say that about Fallout. It is still unmatched as a roleplaying game.
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In the case of Fallout however you couldn't even blame them, since the game expects quite a bit of in-depth knowledge of role playing right before it even starts. One of the major annoyances for me with those RPGs is that the skill setting happens before the game even starts. How shall I know what good any of those dozens of attributes is when I haven't even set a single foot in the gaming world?
I agree that todays games have tons of faults, but some old school games really require a lot of familiarity with
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I also played the shit out of Quake for years, but that never stopped me from playing all kinds of other games.
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Grim Fandango has boring things like dialogue and story, nobody wants to see that shit. Let's blow something up! And Fallout? Simply way too hard and complicated.
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That, or you've done a really poor job of teaching players about your great game.
Either way, it is, most likely, your own damned fault.
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Try it for yourself (Score:4, Interesting)
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Where do people get the idea that letter-grading is some universal law?
Where I come from, in percent:
80-100 = A
70-79.9 = B
60-69.9 = C
50-59.9 = D
<50 = F
Elementary school fails at D, high school fails at F, bachelor's post-secondary fails you in a course at F and in a diploma/degree if you get too many D's, and grad school fails at C.
The more you know.
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Where I come from A = 90-100, B=80-89, C=70-79, D=65-69, and anything else is an F. The +/-'s break up pretty evenly in that range, so this is a B-. I went to school all over the US.
I'm sure across the world it varies...but I call it a B-.
Reviews aren't everything (Score:2, Interesting)
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It's so innovative, I mean, come on, (Score:2, Funny)
Good games are gettable! (Score:2)
A decade? (Score:2)
How can this game have been in development for a decade, the Xbox 360 isn't even nearly that old (including the dev kits)?
Re:A decade? (Score:5, Informative)
Are reviewers on crack? (Score:2)
Are reviewers on crack? Or is it just the readers?
Why the hell is a 40% increase in score (5.5 * 1.4 = 7.7) only "slightly more"? I think if I were given a 40% raise I'd consider it more than just "a slight raise". What would it take to be "more" favorable? 60%? "Much more" would be 80% and "they downright liked it" would be a 100% increase?
Whatever happened to the olden days of reviews when kids weren't on my lawn, 5.5 was a
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That's in the words of the individual who wrote the summary, not in the words of those reviewing the game. Chances are good that they (along with myself) would say that 7.8 is significantly better than 5.5.
players didn't yet "get it" ? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd call that a failure.
If players don't get your game, maybe it's not them, maybe it's the game.
and to say it's "so innovative that we have put some people off." Yes, I think that's it. Too Human must be too good. Way to toot your own horn Dyack.
This thing stinks of robotic frogs all over. But I'm going to try the demo anyway. Maybe I'm wrong.
I've played it and it's got potential (Score:3, Informative)
The problem is it isn't finished.
The Good:
Most amazing armors I've ever seen.
Great new combat controls. Yes, they did get it right for the most part.
The levels are truly beautiful. The main city is ridiculously awesome.
Norse mythology translates pretty damn well to a futuristic world. Great backdrop.
The gameplays and levels are all very finished.
Every single asset in this game is awesome... but why is it getting sub-par reviews?
The Bad:
Only 4 types of enemies. Seriously?
Only 2 player co-op makes many class abilities lame.
All that great gear, and the gear interface is slow and cludgy.
Most of the classes play pretty much the same.
Co-op strategy isn't really necessary, although it makes the game much more fun.
Plays a lot like PSO. You walk into a room, the same bad guys spawn as the last room, repeat.
Death is a major problem. The death mechanic in the game take all of the sense of accomplishment out of boss fights. Wasting my time is a very bad game mechanic as a "death" punishment.
There isn't nearly enough story for an "epic trilogy". Seriously, I got that much story in one mission in Oblivion.
So here's the thing. All the assets are there, they just need to work on making them more accessible and more inviting. Also, they need split screen or shared screen co-op. That would make this a killer game.
Re:Bad grammar (Score:5, Informative)
The title follows the conventions of use in English. It won't confuse any native speaker.
Just as films can get "good reviews" and "bad reviews", a video game can get "mediocre reviews".
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having "Too" in a title reminds me of having "Extreme" in the title, but not as horrendous.
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Blame Nietzsche. It's a reference to his book Human, All Too Human.
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The key here, I think, is 'native speaker'. My ex-girlfriend, born in Russia, raised francophone in Quebec, speaks English well enough that you'd never know she wasn't anglophone. There's a slight accent if you listen for it, but it's subtle enough that you don't notice it after a day or two.
She frequently used to ask me how to say something, or why something means something, or ask me to check over her writing. Frequently, I'd find mistakes which I would consider 'elementary', in the sense that they are th
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I'm not a native speaker either, but it actually took me a while to recognize what the OP was complaining about. While I'm not an expert on all the world's languages, in the few that I'm fluent in, one can say something like "bad marks", "poor evaluations", and even "mediocre reviews" and it will mean exactly what it means in this headline, and not that there's something wrong with the reviews.
Re:Bad grammar (Score:5, Funny)
Meet is used all the time in English! Superbowl teams meet victory! I go to the grocery to meet food! Transplant patient meets new kidney!
It's a perfectly cromulent word in this situation.
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The titles imply that that the reviews itself are mediocre. English isn't my native tongue but this was easy to spot.
I wish I was so smart that I couldn't make sense of something like that until somebody corrected it.
Mediocre Grammar (Score:2, Offtopic)
English not being your native tongue would explain why you mistakenly assumed that the meaning-as-written of this sentence should follow logically from the meaning-as-written of other sentences written similarly.
English is oftentimes by its very nature ambiguous, but the problem is made worse by the fact that it's not always consistently ambiguous.
For example, to rephrase the title to mean what you thought it sounded like it meant, one would probably say 'Too Human Meets Reviews Which Are Mediocre'.
To phras
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I've been looking forward to this game since it was announced for release on the Playstation! I'm just thrilled that it actually came out, although the demo was enough to prevent me from even renting the game.
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But, like most "new" things, it's not much of a lukewarm reception... people either love it or hate it. *shrug* I