I started playing Silicon Knights' Too Human for the 360 last night.  I am about seven hours into it, an just checked a FAQ to see how far I am into it, and it looks like I'll be done in a couple of hours.

I paid money for this game, despite all the bad things I had heard about it because I had read some contrary perspectives and wanted to give it a try for myself.  It's such a shame, because the game is indeed a mess, but before I get into the details let me get the big one out of the way, the one that everyone talks about.

When you die in this game (which you will do quite a bit of) it triggers an animation that cannot be skipped.  This animation shows a Valkyrie descended from the heavens who gently takes you into her arms and lift you toward Valhalla. Touching indeed, all 22.1 seconds of it, yes, all 22.1 unskipable seconds of it.  So far I have died 135 times in the game, which adds up to 45 minutes of time.  I have played it for just over 7 hours (and that is with skipping every cut-scene that can be skipped).

One might imagine that this is a forced load screen, but while this is all going on your comrades continue killing the enemies (with measurable damage) and you are re-spawned back into the same environment.  Which brings up the main problem with the game -- the difficulty balance.  Most of the time you are woefully under-powered compared to the many, many robotic enemies that are constantly spamming you with missiles.  If you want a mental picture, think of Dynasty Warriors.  Now replace all the cannon fodder enemies with human controlled COD players who have reached Prestige.  Then have them spam you with rockets.  So you die a lot, but there is no penalty other than the death animation.  In fact, you could probably set the controller down in the parts of the game in which you have companions and just let them kill everything while you continually die.

It is not that the game is too hard, because even in boss battles their is no penalty for death, any damage you have inflicted remains no matter how many times you die.  So why kill me?  Make it so the enemy is a little less tough, but don't keep the damage if I die.

The thing that gets me though, is that despite the boring gameplay (it is like Dynasty Warriors in space corridors), the game's other elements are completely fine.  It has a Buldur's Gate style equipment management system, a perfunctory skill tree system, very good graphics and sound, an acceptable story and decent voice acting.  With just some slight knob twiddling (no not that kind of knob) this could have been a solid 8 game, but as it is, it is completely boring.

Just two or more hours left, thank Odin.