Good things come to those who wait, apparently. So we've been told. Whether it's a fine wine or Steve Carrell's character in the 40-Year Old Virgin finally getting his end away, the old adage holds that things are all the more sweeter for us having waited a long time to get them. If the old adage is indeed true, then Duke Nukem Forever is going to be the most amazing thing ever committed to disc, and if the old adage is true, then Too Human shouldn't be too far behind it on that scale of gaming heavenliness.

In development in one form or another since last millennium, Too Human is a game that was conceptualised on the original Playstation, found its way to the Gamecube, and the ultimately wound up settling on the Xbox 360. There's been controversy with the Unreal Engine, smack-talk from head honcho Denis Dyack in various internet forums, and honestly, a lot of fans just gave up on the game, and probably just thought Too Human was going to become yet another entry to the vapourware hall of fame.

Yet here it is in 2008, complete and in stores for all to play! How much you like the game is going to be in direct correlation with not only how avidly you followed the bold claims of the game's creator, but also how much you like collecting loot and designing your character. At this point it's worth mentioning that the game has a pretty comprehensive demo available on the Xbox Live Marketplace that should give you a real feel for the game, so if you take nothing away from this review besides a lot of mixed messages and confusing, amorous feelings toward its author, it should be that you need to try the game for yourself.

On the off chance that the Inter-Net is something you just discovered at the public library while looking for the latest copy of Luddite Monthly, you probably won't have much idea of what Too Human actually is, or why it required a three-paragraph lead-in. Put simply, it tells the tale of the god Baldur, son of Odin, who is one of humanity's protectors, sworn to defend them against the unfaltering march of the goblin horde. Of course this isn't some sort of fantasy setting, rather a futuristic sci-fi reinvention of Norse mythology, where the gods are cybernetically enhanced beings, and the goblins in question are actually mechanical monstrosities.

The tale begins with a cut-scene, in which Baldur encounters some angry drunks at a pub...oh, and a Grendel who grinds angry drunks into dog-food in his chest! Baldur stands in for Beowulf while he is off fornicating with a CGI Angelina Jolie, and lops off the beast's arm, which he then takes back to Aesir, the home-away-from-home for all the gods. This is where you start to control the action, and the way the story unfolds in the first chapter is quite clever and will definitely get you hooked.

The problem is that once you're on the line, Too Human doesn't really go anywhere particularly exciting. There are a few flashes of inspiration along the way naturally, but for the most part everything that piqued your interest in chapter 1 doesn't ever come back until the denouement in chapter 4. It's a crying bloody shame really, since the team at Silicon Knights have created a wonderful universe ripe with potential and a techno-mythology that you can't help but be intrigued by. It's really this attention to detail that will propel you through the relatively short campaign, and while the ending is hardly a cliffhanger, the chances are you'll still be clamouring for the sequel ASAP.

Some would argue that a game like Too Human – which is essentially a hack'n'slash dungeon crawl in the spirit of Diablo – probably doesn't need a particularly deep or intricate storyline. There's definitely merit in this claim, and what Too Human does well is give players the option to immerse themselves in the story a little bit more if they want to. During the interludes between chapters, Baldur is free to wander around the Aesir hub, and doing so will allow him to talk to a variety of main characters, as well as overhear snippets of conversation as he walks around. This is almost entirely avoidable if you so wish, but doing so means you'll miss out on a lot of the details that flesh out the story.

Story aside, anyone who reads the words "hack'n'slah dungeon crawl” knows to expect puddle-depth plot; the real meat of such games comes from the actual hacking, slashing, crawling and of course looting! Too Human is a bit of a mixed bag in these departments, thanks largely to a love-it-or-hate-it control scheme. Lacking the mouse that makes most dungeon crawls like Diablo so simple, Silicon Knights were forced to try something a little bit different, and the result is a twin-stick system similar to games like Geometry Wars.

The left stick is used to move Baldur around, while the right is used to perform directional attacks. It's a little more complicated than that though; point the stick in a direction and hold it and Baldur will zoom off and attack any enemy in the area, but tapping the stick allows you to launch an enemy into the air and then juggle them, or utilise a different series of attacks if you also tap the left stick in the same direction. Powerful finisher moves and fierce attacks can only be done in this manner, so while simply holding the stick and rotating it directionally is a great way to cut through swathes of low-level enemies, tackling the more powerful foes will require you to mix it up a bit.

This is fine in theory, but the practice leaves a lot to be desired. First and foremost the twin-stick system means no camera control (unless you hold down the left bumper outside combat), which is going to be a turn-off for a lot of gamers. It doesn't help that the camera sometimes flops around like a dead fish when Baldur is zipping about, and other times refuses to move at all so there's no way to see if there's more enemies to hit behind you or off-screen. Then there's the fact that the controls just aren't that precise, and Baldur will stand stock still and swing his weapons around futilely with a frustrating frequency instead of sliding away to smash some enemy skulls.

With all that said however, when Too Human works, it tends to work pretty spectacularly. The more Baldur smites foes, the faster he moves, until you will be decimating hordes of enemies in a blur of attacks and flailing foes. It can be an incredibly satisfying experience, one that more conventional genre games like this lack when it comes to simple melee combat. Standing at the polar opposite of these extremes is ranged combat, which clearly was never designed to be the focus of Too Human. Enemies can be locked onto quite easily, dispatched quite quickly, and the whole thing is quite boring. For the vast majority of character classes this won't be an issue – you'll mainly use gunplay to soften up mini-bosses or juggle an enemy in the air – but for the Commando class, you're basically trading in those control quirks and issues, as well as all the fun, in exchange for a very conservative shooter experience.

But regardless which class you settle on, you'll be doing a lot of killing, looting and levelling up, which is the real bread and butter of Too Human. Level progression happens quite frequently during the first half of the game, doling out 3 skill points per advancement, which you can then apply to a variety of skills. The skill-tree is really more like a skill-sapling though, with only 3 short stems in 2 small branches to choose from. Part of this is clearly a legacy of Too Human's epic, planned-trilogy nature, but there still seems to be a real lack of variety for some of the classes. There are also a lot of passive skills that simply grant permanent increases to stats, skills or resistances, and to be honest these are hard to get excited about and even harder to see or feel in the game itself.

But where level progression and character development fall down, the abundance of loot is there to pick the game up and dust it off. There is an awful lot of loot to be had in the game – some have even argued that there is too much. Diablo fans and MMORPG junkies will no doubt scoff at that assertion, but it's worth knowing going in that you will spend a lot of time on inventory management and gear selection in Too Human. There are 6 slots for armour and 6 types of weapons (though you'll only have two of these equipped), and there is 6 levels of quality for each of these types of gear too. Virtually all of these quality levels have gear that is randomly generated too, so there are literally millions of possible combinations for your character's kit.

The issue here is that it can be a little difficult to tell at a glance whether a piece of armour or a weapon is actually better than your current kit. Sure, the game will let you know if the new stuff is worth more in dollar values or if it has higher armour or damage, but with a mind-boggling amount of bonuses to be conferred, it can be an overwhelming prospect trying to decide if you're better off with 4% to plasma damage or 10% longer spider duration. Other games in this genre tend to counter these problems by providing you with an abundance of armour sets and uniquely named items, which Too Human does, it just does it too late – most of these goodies don't appear until levels 35 or higher.

In addition to gathering lots of loot, you'll also do an awful lot of dying in Too Human, much of which won't be your own fault. In most modern games dying isn't really a big deal, thanks to generous check-pointing, quick load times and the general sensation that the developers of said modern game have tried to mitigate the frustration as much as possible.

Too Human is the polar opposite of these principles.

Chances are if you've read any other reviews or played the demo, you'll be familiar with the "death scene” in Too Human. Put simply, Baldur folds like a house of cards, and a Valkyrie slowly, sloooowly descends from the heavens, picks him up and slowly, sloooowly takes him off to Valhalla. Then you respawn and carry on like nothing happened, albeit often miles from the action. All told it takes about 20-30 seconds tops, but the problem is more that it happens an awful lot.

It happens because the team at Silicon Knights made a number of really bloody stupid design decisions, like not allowing Baldur to carry healing items, or including enemies whose attacks cause constant damage over time, causing you to watch helplessly as Baldur's life ebbs away and you're absolutely unable to do anything about it. Or maybe it's the rocket-launching enemies who can hit you from miles away, knocking you down and knocking a chunk off your health...hell, maybe it's just the crappy camera and controls causing you to die needlessly. It could even be the occasional enemy who seems virtually invulnerable to your attacks, causing you to play against your class's strengths.

Bottom line: it's unnecessarily frustrating. Yes, it's called a death penalty for a reason, but the fact of the matter is that you're often being punished for the game's shortcomings and failures, not your own. And this unpleasant sensation is something that runs through many aspects of Too Human...the lack of polish, the quirky controls, even the menu system is cumbersome and sluggish, not to mention the exasperating inventory system. You'll struggle to put your finger on it at first, but eventually it will hit you like a divine thunderbolt: Too Human just feels really dated.

When describing the game to friends, the examples that sprung to mind were the likes of Halo or Advent Rising or Knights of the Old Republic...all great games, but all of them very much classics of yesteryear now. And therein lies the rub: if Too Human had appeared on the original Xbox, it would have rocked our world just like those games did. On the Xbox 360 however, the lustre is lost in comparisons to modern greats like Halo 3 or Gears of War. Too Human doesn't even hold its own visually, with sparse environments and often stodgy level design. Baldur looks fine but lesser NPCs don't scrub up so well and the enemies are all quite generic, and the game's framerate is hardly rock solid either.

Too Human sounds a little better than it looks, with passable (if a little melodramatic) voice acting and a solid soundtrack. The sound bites loop too frequently though, especially when you're adventuring with Thor. And like everything else, the adventure itself feels incomplete and leaves you with the sensation that this isn't the game it should have been. Weighing in at under ten hours and with a story that feels about 50% as developed as it should be, ultimately Too Human is not the game it should have or could have been... it isn't all bad, but it has a long way to go to make parts two and three of this planned epic trilogy live up to their potential.