Too Human: Co-op Play Journal
A much ballyhooed feature of Too Human leading up to its release is its online two-player co-op. Feature rich games look great on bullet-points, but the relative worth of such features is in the actual execution. Too Human’s, thankfully, appears to be well executed.
Any player can invite another person from their friends list into one of Too Human’s four large levels. You can also host a game or join one with any random player online. Choose your specific level and how the loot will be distributed, then you’re off. The levels are stripped of the story elements, the cinematics, and present nothing but combat.
And it’s really, really hard.
So hard, that I kept exclaiming to my online partner how hard it was, after I died over and over again. (I wanted to assure him that I really wasn’t as bad as I appeared.) And this was with two similarly leveled up characters - apparently weak characters will get slaughtered if they pair up with high level characters, because the game scales up the difficulty to match the higher level player.
The trick here is that enemies inflict much more damage, and you’ll have to be quite aware of your surroundings and moving about rapidly to preserve yourself. As a bonus, however, leveling up in co-op feels like it’s about 10 times faster than it is in single player. So, if nothing else, co-op is a great way to build yourself a maxed-out Baldur.
I’m not one who gives much of a hoot for co-op or multiplayer features to begin with, so I wasn’t expecting to be moved much by Too Human’s. Unsurprisingly, I wasn’t terribly enamored by it. That said, it was a solid and fun experience, with a notable feature that plays to one of the game’s greatest strengths.
Combat is about as you’d expect it, and characters aren’t nerfed in anyway to accommodate co-op play. In fact, many of your combat abilities match up perfectly with a second player. Launch an enemy up into the air, for instance, and your partner can then leap up after him and combo him in the air. For that matter, you can also shoot the same enemy from below or move on to another foe.
Clearly Silicon Knights wanted to highlight this feature as there’s a specific achievement for team play, attained by one player shooting off the chest plating of a troll so that the second player can mount for the kill from behind.
Suffice to say that co-op play can be fun and creative at the same time.
But easily one of the neatest features I’ve seen in some time is the ability for players to swap gear. Too Human focusses heavily on loot drops and outfitting your character with increasingly more powerful gear. Everything from swords, staffs, hand guns and rifles, to helmets, chest armour, footwear and more are available. Although you have limited space, you can hold on to much of what you don’t even use.
You can actually gain items that your character class can’t use at all. These are prime items to swap with your co-op partner. By simply standing close to one another and pressing the back button, a swapping menu appears that allows either party to que-up three separate items. With agreement from your partner, you can swap the matched items.
Given that there are quite a few rare items to be found, there holds the potential that your partner may just have what you’re looking for. Then again, maybe not; on subsequent plays it becomes glaringly obvious that much of the loot drops aren’t so random after all, suggesting that there may be a limit to just how useful this equipment swapping function really is.
At the very least, Too Human’s co-op is a pleasant diversion and worthy extension of the game proper.
peachey @ August 28, 2008