With the level of preview coverage it's getting, Too Human doesn't really need reviews when it's officially released in mid-August. The upcoming action RPG from Silicon Knights has been getting a lot of play on the internet lately, thanks in part to developer Denis Dyack's "bring it on" challenge to an unruly gaming forum.

But it's also getting unusual review-style coverage from folks in the gaming press who've played the latest pre-release version. Chris Kohler at Wired played through and pretty much reviewed it. His mostly unflattering comments (but he loved the music!) read like a review. And the guys at IGN Australia have settled into their developer armchair to recommend fixes to Too Human's top five problems. Note the implication is that there are additional problems, but IGN's magnanimity only extends to the first five.

The peanut gallery (hi guys!) will no doubt welcome this sort of early critical commentary about games before they're released (or even finished? It's not clear how pre-release these pre-release builds are). Hard-hitting comments might seem to make up for the more common slobbery pre-release hype, and you can't help but feel a little gratitude at being warned off a bad or mediocre game before it comes out. But you have to wonder what effect this will have on publishers letting us speak freely about pre-release builds. We routinely get reviewable pre-release builds with "embargoes" on the review, meaning we can't post reviews until a given date. But what if I just write up a bunch of opinions, omit the usual score, and call it a "preview"? Or a blog entry? Or a fix for the top five problems? Or is Silicon Knights just intent on getting the game into as many people's hands as soon as possible to build buzz?

Whatever the case, I'm a lot less eager about the August 19th release of Too Human than I was before I read either of those articles.

UPDATE: This positive "review" just in from Penny Arcade. At this rate, Gamerankings.com might as well just slap a 7 on the game's page and be done with it.