I’ve had a bit of a roller-coaster interest in Too Human since its announcement long, long ago, with lots of ups and downs, fortunately culminating in an “up” phase (fortunately because the game comes out on Tuesday).

When Silicon Knights first announced Too Human I was interested. And then it got shuffled from console to console, and my interest faded. Then they announced the trilogy for the Xbox 360, and I was interested again. Then I watched a friend play it at E3 2006, and it looked pretty “meh”. And then I saw some CG cutscenes which were really cool, and my interest was up again. Then I saw an in-game cutscene and was less impressed. But then the gameplay and framerate started to improve dramatically, and that was good. And then they dropped 4-player co-op and offline co-op modes and that was bad.

And finally, the demo hit Xbox Live a few weeks ago. And since then, as I tried each class, the game has grown on me and I now find myself eagerly anticipating the game’s release next week. The no offline co-op thing still stings, and makes little sense to me. Online co-op is already there. What’s so hard about making it available offline? Why can’t my buddy and I network our 360s and play in my living room? What the hell?

I also support the trilogy approach in theory, but I worry about it in execution. ‘Too Human’ took nearly ten years. How long will ‘Still Too Human’ (not the actual title… I hope) take? What if we get a sequel, but not the third installment? We’re just left hanging? Then we have to make up our own ending?

“On his way to the ice cream shoppe, Baldur falls down a hole which takes him back in time, where he kills all of the dinosaurs, but then trips on an unearthed tree root and breaks his skull open on a rock. The end.”