When the combat works, it's fun to bounce from enemy to enemy, knocking them into the air and then juggling them with pistol bullets, or to use your dual wielded laser pistols to target two different parts of a massive troll at the same time. Unfortunately, the combat doesn't work as much as it does work whether it be due to the fierce/finisher attacks not being chosen correctly, the ranged weapon lock on not working, the fact that Baldur can't block, or the camera's insistence to show you a vantage point of the battle that makes it impossible to see your enemies. With the combat mapped to the right stick, you have no camera control and while you can press a button to center the camera on Baldur, if the game doesn't want the camera to be centered, it will immediately revert back to where the game wants it to be. If that means that you can't see what you're doing, or it that pushing both sticks towards your enemies becomes an infuriating lesson in spatial geometry, oh well, the camera gets what the camera wants.

Luckily Baldur can't die and instead is brought to Valhalla by an armor clad Valkyrie only to be deposited at the beginning of the room a few seconds later. Yes, the death animation can be annoying, but it beats having to do the room all over again, or restoring from a save. The end result is that Baldur can just keep plowing on ahead without losing much progress to the icy finger of death.

The various classes picked when creating Baldur place more emphasis on different aspects of combat with the Berserker preferring dual wielding melee, the Commando liking himself some ballistic weapons, the Defender being slightly ineffective at combat but really good at taking damage, the Bioengineer able to heal himself and his squad at the expense of combat effectiveness and the Champion being good at everything but great at nothing. Unfortunately, because you can't really die, and each battle is pretty much the same, there's no real difference between how you play the game with the different classes, unless you're playing co-op where playing off of the strengths and weaknesses of your partner can make things more interesting.

Once all of the beasties have fallen, you'll have more than your fair share of junk to wade through. Baldur can equip any type of weapon or armor he wants, provided he meets the requirements. He can also stick runes into weapons and armor to make them better, craft new weapons and armor from collected blueprints and create charms, weapon and armor buffs that require the insertion of runes as well as the completion of certain tasks such as "kill x number of enemies with ballistic weapons". In addition to drops from enemies, Baldur can find loot drops in cyberspace, an alternate world patterned after the lush forests and meadows that existed before the real world was destroyed. Baldur goes into cyberspace so that he can open locked doors and otherwise manipulate the real world, as well as jog for ten minutes at a time through extremely long, verdant green meadows.

Which brings us to the next problem, namely that of pacing. Between the long stretches of hallways between enemy fights, having to run through cyberspace just to drop a bridge, or the constant need to go into either the equipment menu to check your new loot, or the skills menu to assign points to your class specific skill tree, the game is a constant start and stop of activity. Oh sure, you can resist the urge to check on your new and shiny armor, but because the enemies' levels scale with your level, you'll need to constantly equip new items so that you don't find yourself outmatched. Yes the loot can be cool, and cleverly named, and assigning skill points helps you to develop new abilities but because the enemies get more powerful with you, the very last battle you fight feels exactly like the first. If this doesn't bother you, you can jump right into a new campaign with your current character upon finishing, so that you can bring Baldur up to the level 50 cap. You'll get about half way there on your first trip through, an effort that will take 10 - 15 hours, depending on how much time you choose to spend in the menus. However you choose to play, by yourself with the full, messy story unfolding in front of you, or with a friend, bereft of a narrative but beset by twice as many enemies and twice as much potential loot, Too Human provides and uneven and ultimately unsatisfying experience. If to err is human, than the game's title is unfortunately, particularly apt.

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