Denis Dyack kept things short and sweet at yesterday's Xbox 360 Spring Showcase event. He wanted to make sure we had plenty of time to play through some co-op on Too Human.
The game is releasing on August 19 in North America, but the once four-player co-op has been trimmed to two because, after play-testing it for awhile, he realized that there was too much going on with that many players.
Later, Dyack told me that the engine still supports four player co-op, but that things were getting too confusing on screen once you factored in the four players, their special attacks and spider-bots plus the army of creatures that would spawn to deal with them.
None of the game's maps are randomized, he told me, but the creatures that spawn in them are. The game will take a player about 15 hours to get to level 30 and 50 to 60 hours to get to level 50.
"I don't know how long it would take to see everything, I don't even know if that's possible," he said. "Too Human may look like an action game, but don't be fooled—it's actually a very, very deep role-playing title."
I did enjoy my time with the game, but still feel like I'm not quite getting it. G4's Adam Sessler and I worked through a chunk of co-op, playing through levels side-by-side and I could see how having two more players would make things unnecessarily convoluted.
What I couldn't see, in my short time with the game, was it's depth. There were hints that deep play was present, especially in the weapons upgrades and spells, but 20 minutes or so in a co-op match isn't the best way to explore that.
The action element of the game seemed to handle fine, though I never really got a sense of my character's power. Slapping the stick left to right to clear out robotic trolls and goblins was pretty slick, but it felt at times that the action on the screen was disconnected with my movement. I guess I didn't always feel like I was actually in control, it was almost as if the game was, at times, on auto pilot.
The sound, which was impossible to hear in yesterday's setting, could certainly help with some of that, but I think that either I need a better understanding of the nuance of the controls or that, perhaps, there is no nuance to the controls.
Too Human is certainly an interesting looking game, and the art design is slowly winning me over, but this is just going to have to be one of those titles I have to really sit down and play for quite awhile before I can figure out how into it I will be.