Too Human is probably one of the most controversial games to come along in quite some time. The demo thread alone currently stands at 48 pages. While I haven't gone through all 48 of those pages to create an exact tally, the feeling I've gotten from reading it is that a strong percentage, if not a majority have decided not to buy the game based on the demo. As well, recently the I would describe the media feeling about the game as tepid. I'd describe it as negative, except that complaints are almost always framed in uncertain, neutral language, possibly because game journalists are so aware of Dyack's complaints regarding preview/reviews.
With high budget HD generation games we aren't too often surprised by critical response and sales. Most games that are expected to do poorly do poorly, and most that are expected to do well do well. Assassin's Creed is the only game I can think of at the moment that had mixed critical response, but did well regardless. Importantly, Assassin's Creed did not have a demo.
My personal feeling about the title, based on my own experience with the game and the impressions from the demo thread, is that it will get mediocre to poor reviews with the average being between 60-70.
Assuming that there isn't an Assassin's Creedlike rejection of reviews, Too Human could very well do quite poorly. It could bomb, or it might just be a mediocre disappointment, but in either case I'm wondering about the future of Silicon Knights.
At one point Silicon Knights was a flag bearer for Microsoft's software lineup, but it seems like it's been a lot more unloved recently. Too Human is planned as a trilogy, but if Too Human fails to live up to expectations, I wonder if Microsoft might just drop the series, and if that happens I wonder what will happen to Silicon Knights. They seem to have an unbelievable amount of resources invested in Too Human, and unlike many independent developers, they have no other IP projects in the pipeline, at least, not that we've been told about. As well, there is that nasty lawsuit against Epic regarding Unreal 3 to deal with.
We've seen companies fall apart after one failure before, so it's not out of the question.
One thing that may aid Too Human is the advertising, which I think is really good. Here is the ad from the recent EGM.
I don't know I thought it looked rad.
I'm sure some will object to my position that Too Human will do poorly. There were certainly folks in the demo thread that loved the game. I'd be curious to hear what sort of critical response people think it will get, or for folks who work at game stores, what the local hype is like.
With high budget HD generation games we aren't too often surprised by critical response and sales. Most games that are expected to do poorly do poorly, and most that are expected to do well do well. Assassin's Creed is the only game I can think of at the moment that had mixed critical response, but did well regardless. Importantly, Assassin's Creed did not have a demo.
My personal feeling about the title, based on my own experience with the game and the impressions from the demo thread, is that it will get mediocre to poor reviews with the average being between 60-70.
Assuming that there isn't an Assassin's Creedlike rejection of reviews, Too Human could very well do quite poorly. It could bomb, or it might just be a mediocre disappointment, but in either case I'm wondering about the future of Silicon Knights.
At one point Silicon Knights was a flag bearer for Microsoft's software lineup, but it seems like it's been a lot more unloved recently. Too Human is planned as a trilogy, but if Too Human fails to live up to expectations, I wonder if Microsoft might just drop the series, and if that happens I wonder what will happen to Silicon Knights. They seem to have an unbelievable amount of resources invested in Too Human, and unlike many independent developers, they have no other IP projects in the pipeline, at least, not that we've been told about. As well, there is that nasty lawsuit against Epic regarding Unreal 3 to deal with.
We've seen companies fall apart after one failure before, so it's not out of the question.
One thing that may aid Too Human is the advertising, which I think is really good. Here is the ad from the recent EGM.
I don't know I thought it looked rad.
I'm sure some will object to my position that Too Human will do poorly. There were certainly folks in the demo thread that loved the game. I'd be curious to hear what sort of critical response people think it will get, or for folks who work at game stores, what the local hype is like.
