Too Human Notes

Too Human notes.

Story

We see men coming to resuce someone from a bad lady. We know she is bad because she is scarred and looks half machine.

THe men are ambushed by a huge monster and only the leader and the one who is saved get away as the rest of the grunts sacrifice themselves to let them get away.

We see a bar, looks like a cross between a futuristic titty bar and norse mythology. Holograms and laser lighting crossed with old style tankards. Looks like an outlying factory style camp. We are told of a body being found chewed up and people are nervous. COmplaining about the Aesir who seem to be failing to protect them.

A man in a robe turns up and stands at the bar. Two regulars hassle him and it turns out it's our hero. As he is dealing nicely with the two idiots we see a huge beast pass the window. It bursts in. It's a huge robot and it start chewing people up and sending out bladed flyers that also chew people up. The hero fights it with guns which seem to do no good. Neat reloading system where he holds the gun to his belt and a special area teleports or conjurs into existence new bullets, pity it couldn't just teleport new bullets into the gun once the previous one was fired. That would negate the need for reloading in the first place.Anyway Baldur chops off the beasties arm and it runs away.

Start fighting on the icy waste level.

One of the fallen grunts gets picked up by a valkyrie and taken to Valhalla.

Baldur has a flashback. We are asked to go and see Heimdall.

On a floating platform high up in a lush land.

Heimdall who seems to be in charge of Aesir corporation tells us about Hel dissolving some pact. The arm that we recovered from the bar is something unknown. Baldur wants to go and find it with a task force. Heimdall thinks it a bad idea. But lets him go.

On the menu we are told of the world tree, which seems to be a codeword for a cloud computing internet type body. The wells are the computer hardware.

Seems the eemir are decendents of the first computer software, eventually over many thousands of years reaching sentience. Norns,

We find ourselves on a ship. The ship lands an apc. Baldur is here along with a bunch of soldiers including the usual rookies and vets. All cliches so far. The troops land and come out into a fortress.

Gameplay

We are asked to choose a character. Choose bioengineer.

On being given control we find that we swing in the direction with our hammer when we point the right stick. Camera seems to do it's own thing which is just so weird and unnatural feeling. The left and right triggers shoot bullets and grenades.

jump with a and roll with B. We can use the left bumper to centre the camera behind baldur and if we hold it we can look around in a limited fashion.

Right bumper and Y don't seem to do anything yet although right bumper makes a nasty sound.

Graphics

First area

Architecture is grand, detail is satisfactory but not stunning. Not dire but not really blowing anyone away here.

First level.

We walk through a huge area which seems to serve to aid us in learning the controls. Then on into the level proper.

As we enter a machine spies on us from above. Just as someone ironically tells us that the place has been dead for centturies.

One of the grunts calls the enemies goblins.

We meet a few and they attack. pushing the right stick in the direction of an enemy swings at it and pointing bladur at them and shooting with the triggers does what it says on the tin. We quickly polish of the first wave. The grunts of which about four or five are following seem to be attacking too but probably aren't doing much.

Another wave of enemies and now a cut scene.

One of the fallen grunts gets picked up by a valkyrie and taken to Valhalla.

Baldur has a flashback. We are asked to go and see Heimdall.

On a floating platform high up in a lush land.

Heimdall who seems to be in charge of Aesir corporation tells us about Hel dissolving some pact. The arm that we recovered from the bar is something unknown. Baldur wants to go and find it with a task force. Heimdall thinks it a bad idea. But lets him go.

Back to the fighting, we fight one of the bigger beasties that was at the bar.

Back to the flashback. Freya is to take us to the norn to ask about the beastie.

Freya holds a candle for Baldur. But he seems to have already been married, what of his wife?

On to the norns and the tree of life.

We go into cyberspace. The norns appear as three people but they talk as one.

Cyberspace is like a wooded glade.

The norn are three, one old and wise, one young and slutty, the other hard faced and business like, all female.

They give us a blueprint. It seems to be a spiderlike hacking device that resides on Baldurs back and gives us access to the wells we find on our mission.

The spider opens the well for us and we can enter cyberspace and use our ability to push open doors in cyberspace to unlock doors in the real world.

we reach an area with a well and in the cyberspace area there is a rock which can be turned three ways to open three doors. Through each one there is an area with lots of baddies to fight and one way to progress.

More waves and waves of enemies. Find some more wells and open up more areas. Some little bonus areas too.

In one cyberspace area we encounter an area which is covered in purple fronds and all broken up. There are what look like skulls and bones littered around. The norns tell us that it's another cyber life form that is their enemy.

Eventually work our way to an area with those barges of the dead, have to ride on one to progress.

End up fighting Grndl1 hah. Eventually kill him and it's back to the city.

Have to say the bioshock/prey syndrome is in full effect, keep hammering the boss as style doesn't matter, if you die you just come back again.

2nd Days Play

Back at the city we are in an area where we can wander around and find shops to buy armor etc.

ON entering the medical clinic a doctor tells us that we are looking better. SHe is sorry that nothing could be done for our wife. Wonder what happened to her then.

We are given the choice to select a cybernetic path or a human path. Each path opens up upgrades that are only available to each. Since this is called too human taking the human path seems to be the way to go.

I sit in the chair in the hospital and buy some new armour.

Little flying drones tell us where to go to progress the story.

we have to go to the feasting hall next.

In the feasting hall we have a long cut scene where Baldur has dinner with the other gods. Heimdall and His rescuer are friendly then Thor comes in and is a big yob as you would expect. Thor teases Baldur and brings about a flashback where we see evil lady, possibly Hel talking about using Baldur as a specimen for something.

Freya and Thor have a spat when she suggest taking Baldur to see the Norn. Saying that it's women's work.

Freya gets the better of him in the verbal pissing contest.

Freya and Baldur are then seen walking. Freya tries to hold his hand and Baldur gets another flashback. He pulls his hand away and Freya asks if he is alright. Baldur asks if his wife suffered. Freya looks away and Baldur realises that she isn't telling him a straight story. On pressing her she tells him to go to Heimdall.

Baldur storms into Heimdalls office and demands the truth. Seems they were all not telling him the whole story to protect him. Seems someone called Hode killed Neanna and has now gone over to the machine side.

Baldur wants revenge and says he is going after Hode. Heimdall says that another Aesir is already on the way to fight him, Baldur forces Heimdall to let him take on the mission.

We see Heimdall and Thor visiting the prison where they have Loki held captive. Seems that Loki is to be tried for a crime. ALso Hode must be in on the same crime however he got away.

We see Loki being held in a machine vault cell, however he is being tortured all the while in a virtual hell.

Level 2 Ice forests.

We see baldur giving the troops a pep talk, gist is that Hode is toast, today a god will die.

Into the level proper. Big ice caves. Lots of baddies waves, bigger monsters and tougher enemy types.

There are halo 3 style jump pads.

Big spider type enemies introduced.

we find a well and the Norn comes to us, although there is only one, the slutty one. This does not seem right as we were told they always come as three. The slutty one does something obscene with a knife while she speaks to us and shows us a vision of all the Aesir watching Loki being turned into a half man half machine with the seeming blessing of all. Loki it seems was volunteered to be a test subject, maybe what has happened to him is our fault. Is it our fault he went bad?

We are asked by the norn, or is she to always remember the past.

Also seems the the environmental state of Midgard is our fault.

USing the well finds us a way to open the door we couldn't pass.

We progress through the machine city level now, lots of huge circular areas with many robots and larger robots. In some areas it's easy to get overwhelmed and die often.

Reach a big area where you have to shoot supporting struts to drop a huge platform down to proceed.

Must be nearing the end now, at the end of a long hall there is an area with a well that is on a high platfrom, we have to shoot objects littered around the area to bring it down, quite a long trek between objects and loads of baddies in between.

Finally we catch up with Hode, who is a little bit nuts. He has had his eyes removed and replaced with electronics, he sees Baldur as Loki, seems someone is manipulating him. Seeing Loki/Baldur Hode goes into a flashback and we see Midgard being attacked and lots of civilians dying. Hode is being humanitarian by shooting the injured, not the best policy, hasn't he heard of ambulances. Loki turns up and it seems he has something to do with the devastation. Loki wonders why the aesir must protect humanity and seems to have decided not to. Hode shoots him through the head through a pillar, seems he is a good sniper.

Back to the present and Hode and Baldur have a showdown.

After all that Baldur spares Hode's life and takes his electronics, leaving him blind.

A trip to the Norn sees them analyse the device and learn that Hode was being fed false images and sounds from the device. He essentially was living in a false reality the whole time. Baldur asks if the data can be seperated and leave only the real world images. So we can see what really happened. The Norn tell him that he will need to find equipment blueprints to do so.

We are back at the city.

We are summmoned to a head floating in water, didn't catch his name. He tells us that an ancient emeir weapon called a world serpent has been found in the wastes. If it is possible to collect it. It would provide a boost to science or possibly the war effort if it could be activated.

Looks like the next mission is to get hold of it.

We are given a view of what Hel is up to. Seems she has done something that has given her a terminal condition, she needs to take something from dead people to keep her alive.

level 3 The world serpent.

Thor and Meemeer accompany us on the hunt for the world serpent.

We find the downed ship and thor hammers us a way in. Inside we find a well and are told that we can activate the ship if we find the control room.

As we enter a huge area Thor is crushed under a huge falling piece of debris. Is he dead? I doubt it.

We travel on for a bit until we find a well, only this one doesn't shimmer in the usual way when we enter. Strange.

We appear not in the usual forest glades of cyberspace but back at the entrance to the downed ship.

Thor is standing waiting for us. Hmmm is this real or was the last well the weird one. Are we now in cyberspace or back in the real world.

After a while we find the control room of the word serpent, and after mucking about with a door in cyberspace we let it out to swim away into the ocean. Back in the real world we see the consoles light up in the ship.

Then Loki starts talking to us. He claims to be in league with the machines and be able to send his mind into any network node effectively being anywhere in the world that he wants to be. While his body is still imprisoned. Is Loki able to remote control everything, has he uploaded his consciousness into an a.i. format? Is the loki in the cell the same mind as the cyber loki we are speaking to now? Anyway all hell lets loose and we may have just inadvertently taken down the only barriers that prevented loki from remote controlling the weapon from his cell. Oooops.

Our only option is to try and destroy the weapon by blowing the ships reactor. We eventually find it and trigger it to self destruct.

Looks like the gyroscope thing from contact.

Now we have to get out as Loki is flooding the ship.

We meet a new giant robot and beat it like all the others circle and dodge and shoot the weak spots until it's health wears down. YOu can jump on it's back but that doesn't seem to work for me, it's essentially a quicktime event without the button presses, and as such even worse than usual quicktime events. Have never got it to work yet.

Still you can still kill em with bullets.

We see Loki's men breaking him from prison. Many die and loki is free to show his badass stuff with his staff/rope weapon. Loki escapes.

We return.

Big meeting in the feast hall. We see Thor execute the humans who were captured helping Loki escape. There is much arguing, Freya seems to be the voice of reason here amongst the nutjobs. He cautions going after Hel who is most probably harbouring her father now that he has escaped. Saying that Hel has not attacked them and they will be the aggressors if they attack her to get at her father. The fight with the machines is also not going to well anyway. I am having trouble seperating the machines from Loki and Hel the relationship is not clear. Both Hode and Loki seem to have allied themselves or were in control of the machines earlier. SO are they one and the same side or do the machines and Loki's agenda both meet at the moment. Where are these virus type things fitting in, are the norn really on our side. What is Hel and Loki's real agenda, or are they just cardboard cut out bad guys. ANd who is Odin, we have now heard his voice but have never seen him.

Level 4 Hels fortress.

We leave now to go on the assault on Hel's fortress Helheim.

Hel animates corpses and sends them in as her troops. The dead are attacking us, hell on earth.

We are fighting alongside a few aseir during the first part of the mission and it's quite fun. Lots going on. we see the engine chug a little though.

We are levelling up enough now for us to get weapons that are cutting through the enemy like butter. The hordes are no longer overpowering for the most part.

Though the large flying car fat enemies that raise the dead quickly are overpowering still.

The huge beast called garm that we saw at the start arrives. After killing it We see a cut scene where lord teir sacrifices himself to blow up the beast.

We enter the citadel and make our ardouous way up to the top where we come to Hel's throne room. She tells us that we have been here before, though it seems that baldur has no memory of being Hel's captive. She tells us that she can work true immortality upon men. SHe also says that Ragnarok is coming and the world will End.

It is said in terms or norse mythology and isn't really clear but i think the the gist is that the world of Midgard and the aesir is about to be destroyed. Where is midgard though. Is it virtual or real. I think it might be virtual with the aseir being the only real people in it. The rest being a.i. The norn i think are outside the simulation.

Anyway i might be wrong. Seems like ragnarok is a bad idea from baldurs current point of view however.

we now have to fight Hel.

In a break in the fight Hel brings out our wife. Seems she wasn't murdered, she commited suicide rather than be without Baldur. What happened to Baldur, it's time we knew. She was resurrected by the aseir but kept on killing herself over and over. She seems mad now. Cutting at herself with a knife. Baldur in rage attacks Hel again, seemingly he is too thick to even try and comprehend what is going on here.

After a long and protracted fight with Hel she eventually dies. Our wife comes limping at us again, Baldur seems to think she is one of the undead. I don't get this doesn't he die and come back to life every time. What is the difference with Meena or whatever her name is.

Are the aseir not augmented humans? He is going to end her pain? how won't she just resurrect again. why do some aseir die like teir earlier. Anyway more confusion and fenrir takes control of his weapon and strikes the wife down. Baldur then takes on more undead as they keep on coming.

Nidhog virus. The great dragon, created to clean away what the norn fail to keep alive.

We watch as the aseir nuke Helheim, why didn't they do that in the first place.

Baldur goes back to the city and uses the norn tech to decode the eyepiece from hode. To see what was really being seen. He sees Hode killing Baldur. Why is this fucking relevant, wouldn't Baldur just get respawned? why would getting a bullet in the brain mean a thing?

We go to the feast hall where baldur reveals what he knows. That he was killed and went to Hel. Where Hel had her way with him.

Baldur feels that he should never have been rescued from hel. The breaking of the pact and the start of the agression with Hel was the Aseir's doing in his name.

Baldur storms off in a huff.

We see Loki going off into icy wastes and meeting up with a huge giant.

And that's it, the end. Will we ever see part 2??

Finished the game took 20 hours. 535 achievement points.

Started playing first level again. Got an achievement for completing three secret arena battles. Only level 27 at moment, think it goes up to 50.

Y button does special spider robot attacks depending upon class etc.

X button does healing spells, well on the bioengineer class anyway

and there is also an attack given for reaching the top of the skill tree. used by clicking both sticks.

However these attacks are given way too late in the game. I was on the last level before getting the x and y ones and having played through the game once and one quarter again still some way from getting the last skill. What is that all about? you have to play the game through twice to get each class's full skill set. Probably have to play through thrice with the same character to reach full level up status. 

The game levels the monsters with you, so they are not instantly destroyed by your super weapons earned on level 4 when you go back and do level 1 again. What fun is that, i was hoping to come back and slice through level one again easily, what i got was level one, and i was much better at the game, but it was still as hard as it was the first time.

Hmmm. If a game is always going to be at the same difficulty what is the point in finding better weapons and levelling up only to have the monsters level up with you, no point looking for that better gun, or sharper sword as the ones you are given at the start feel the same as the best.