Denis Dyack is rather fanatical about Too Human. That's established. Lots of people have low expectations for Too Human, and this upsets Mr. Dyack. That's established. Denis Dyack likes to go on tirades conflating positions like "forum moderator" with "CEO" and speaking like a high school student who's just discovered Ayn Rand, in style if not content. That's also established.



What hasn't been established yet is how the game that's apparently sent him over the edge will actually fare in the court of public opinion.

In an unexpected twist, the demo dropped this morning. After playing for an hour myself and soaking in comments from around the information superhighway, the verdict is... uh, hung jury?

Honestly, it just feels like a total B-game. Getting loot pushes all the right buttons for me, as always (yay, pants!), and there's fun to be had in flinging enemies in the air and shooting them, but so many other problems exist that it never completely transcends its flaws to become truly engaging. The camera controls are annoying at best, and the graphics are thoroughly mediocre. The cutscenes and story on display in the demo are, um, interestink interludes (the kind you smirk at like a five year old who's trying to tell you a story). The equipment and skills, while fun to tinker around with, don't knock my socks off or anything, and the level design is bland.

Perhaps most problematic is the fact that, for such an action-oriented game, it just feels sort of slow. Here you are, killing a throng of enemies, and aside from whenever you skate over to one who's far away, it feels like you're just mucking through a swamp. The run speed is especially mind-numbing whenever you just want to move on to the next fight and you have to jog a bit to get there. Yet, despite these issues, I really did want to keep playing (must... unlock... armor) once I reached the end of the demo. I'm pretty sure I'm going to make a place for it on my Gamefly queue.

It's not bad, and it's not particularly good. It's just some game, you know?