The Universe has decided to gift us with a new X-Men game. I had been hoping and praying for this day since I finished up X-Men Legends II in 05 and uttered the words "Whats next". And no, mediocre movie tie in games like X-Men: The Official Game or Wolverine's revenge do not count, while the latter was not a bad game. It was not a game encompassing the X-Men as a group of diverse mutants.
X-Men Destiny is published by Activation who have published most of the awesome marvel comics video games to have came out since 2000 like Spider-man 2. They have also been responsible for some of the worst.... i.e. X-Men: The Official Game. Now obviously it is more up to the development studio then the publisher to make the game good. In this case unfortunately Raven Software nor Treyarch had a hand in developing this X-men Destiny. Instead the studio responsible for X-Men: Destiny is Silicon Knights whom brought us such titles as Too Human(which had a Metacritic of 65/100)...eh.
X-Men Destiny is based in a Semi-alternate time line with the current X-Men comic continuity. I say Semi because in the comics Bastion was defeated by the "Mutant Messiah" Hope Summers not Magneto and Professor X was not a part of that battle, is still alive just kinda ostracized by his own X-Men, particularly Cyclops. Hope Summers is not in this alternate time line, and there is no talk about M day.
Story: The story starts out with the X-Men having just moved to San Fransisco . Cyclops is on stage at a Pro-Mutant/Human relations rally with the Mayor and the Director of the MRD(Mutant.Response.Division which is a task force of the U.S. Government whom in the past has always been lead by a very clique mutant hating, wanting to commit genocide madmen). The MRD Director gives a speech welcoming the X-Men to San Fransisco and how they hope to show the world that Mutants and Humans can live together in harmony. Then Cyclops gives a speech, and then The MRD Director returns to the stand, in the middle of the director's speech a giant metal statue that has just been unveiled in the spirit of the rally. Different cheers and boos are heard from the crowd during the rally. Some as mutants them selves, others supporting mutants, and others obviously against mutants either due to fear or because they are different. A vocal group in the crowd is a Purifiers which is basically a new cult that has cropped up with a religious zealot like view on mutation and that it should be "purified"(i.e. kill all mutants) to keep humanity pure. When suddenly the statue comes crashing down with some purple special effects as if a certain master of magnetism is controlling it. Its at this put the proverbial all hell breaks loose as fire erupts which some identify as Pyro's power. At this point we have not seen any of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. The X-men jump into action with crowd control and you are not faced with the choice of picking your character.
Now in this game its the first X-men game where you are not playing an X-men, instead you are given the choice between 3 characters that has been created for the game. These are brand new characters to the X-men franchise and you will be the one to decided their choices and way in the world... in a limited way. The game gives you a little back story to read of each character as you scroll through them.
Its from this point forward that I will let you know I've so far only played the game through as Aimi joining the X-men.
Your choices are:
Aimi Yoshida (who is voice by Jamie Chung Soooo hotttt): Aimi is basically a japanese illegal whose mutant father sent her to America on a shadie cargo ship in order for her to escape from mutant imprisonment that is occurring in japan. Shes pretty young, wears pretty dark clothes and a scarf over her lower face like the main character in Soul Reaver. She is literally just getting off the boat when she sees this rally and checks it out. Her fathers is never named, but you see a cut scene of him as hes paying the boat guy to let her on and tricks her into leaving with out him. As her father is walking away he bursts into flames like the human torch. Its at this time that I'd like to remind or inform everyone that Yoshida is the last name of the X-men character Sunfire whos mutant power to make flames and can even surround himself with an aura of heat intense enough to melt steel. So its a good bet this very short cut scene is of Sunfire. The in game description of Aimi is: Born in Fuji City, Japan, Aimi was smuggled out of Japan by her mutant parents before their family could be incarcerated in the new mutant camps. She arrived in San Francisco hidden on a tanker ship. She is too young and frightened to appreciate her parents’ motivations for sending her away, instead feeling only the bitterness and anger of abandonment
Grant Alexander: Grant seems to be a football jock. The small quotes he says while in the selection screen play to the most stereotypical football jock, showing low intelligence, culture and class only caring for two things, chicks and football. Grants in game description is: Born in Sandersville, Georgia, Grant is a college freshman who dreams of becoming a professional football player. He hopes to land a spot this year on the University of California, Berkeley, varsity squad. Grant has no interest in politics and knows little about the ongoing mutant/human conflict.
Adrian Luca: Adrian is presented as an average looking young man with a bright red and black purifier tattoo on his arm. In the character select screen Adrian is heard spouting the purifier company line about keeping the line pure. The game has this to say about Adrian: Born in Los Angeles, California, Adrian is the son of an anti-mutant extremist who was killed in battle. His father’s associates called themselves “Purifiers,” and under their care Adrian was educated to hate all mutants and conditioned to seek revenge for his father’s murder. The Purifiers have trained Adrian to be a soldier in their army of “pure-blooded” Homo-sapiens
Now if you were wondering above why I picked the little asian girl over the two male characters let me break down those long winded descriptions for you. Your choice is between, a football jock of who I can't understand why the devs choose to make a character for a game that mostly is only going to be bought by comic book nerds most of whom will have no connection to this moronic pigskin playing playboy, a member of a group of bigots that the closest real world comparison I can come up with would be the ku klux klan or the nazis, or a japanese girl that dresses like a ninja(there by making her a Kunoichi). They made the choice really easy for me. Moron, Nazi, or Ninja, its ok to pick the girl in these situations. You don't have to turn in the man card you just got back because your wife "made" you watch all of the seasons of Grey's Anatomy
After you have chosen the characters and another cut scene occurs you choose your power set, you have 3 to choose from.
Density Control: This power manipulates a mutant’s body mass, often manifesting as a rocky outer coating. It can be focused on a fist for a devastating punch, or evenly distributed to render the mutant indestructible. The super human durability granted by Density Control is perfect for enduring attacks from large groups of enemies at once.
Energy Projection: This mutation allows grants a variety of energy-based attacks. Rapid-fire bursts take out crowds of weak opponents, while focused beams cut through the toughest armored foes. Energy can be contained and detonated far from the body, enemies can be stunned with disabling blasts to the nervous system, and the wielder can protect themselves with an envelope of raw, crackling power.
Shadow Matter: Masters of Shadow Matter can craft indestructible blades out of thin air or use matter displacement to move faster than the eye can see. The Shadow Matter mutation also heightens one’s reflexes, making it easy to take on multiple opponents or deal severe damage to a single target.
I took Shadow Matter which turns out to be mostly melee. So for the basis of when I speak of the powers I got and such this is what I am referring to, the two other sets might be completely different for the powers you get, although the base stuff remains the same.
The game play is the real let down here. It feels as though they only put about 65% of the elements they could for combat. The combo system is unimaginative, There is literally only 2 combos for your normal attacks, that's to just mash the "light" attack button over and over till the chain ends, or to mash "light" attack a number of times then end with "heavy" attack. The "heavy" attack ends your combo, there is no heavy heavy combo basically. There is a lot of jumping in the game with platforms and obstacles yet there is only one "jump attack", that being just a slam where it stops you mid air what ever your momentum was and you slam straight down into the ground. This slam attack is used in a few stages to break the floor to proceed in the linear level. The "powers" you get are also such a let down(sorry let down is the word of the day for this review.. I don't pick the word... the devs did this for me). You are given 4 powers in the progression of the game besides the starting normal attacks. Here is one huge slab of beef I have. is that the characters could actually have 7, but instead of giving you these powers, at certain boss fights in the story you are given the choice between 2 powers, either of these powers would be taken up but the same button combo which is trigger button(which is used for each power) + face button on controller. So with the way they decided to have the control scheme they really only allowed for 4 powers with the one trigger. Now the d-pad is completely unused, the manual says it changes the view but I can't tell the difference really. There is about 10 ideas I can think of off the top of my head they could have done with it, including adding different power modes, or adding buffs or auras and using the d-pad to trigger them, but really that would not have changed the dull and repetitiveness of the combo system. I don't now how a game 7 years older then Spider-man 2 can't come up with anything close to what was accomplished in that game for a combo system.
As you progress through the game you collect X-genes and Suits. X-genes are a way to upgrade your character in different ways. There are 3 types of X-genes which are Offensive, Defensive, and Utility.Offensive X-genes enhance your attacks obviously, they also change the color of your attacks to represent the color of the mutant that gene came from. For example if you have Icemans Offensive X-gene it turns your powers blue/white... like their ice. The graphics for these changes are just color based, it would have been awesome had this been a textural change as well seeing as this is on a "next" gen console. Certain X-genes increase damage of certain attacks or add an effect like stun to them, but again do not add new attacks to your roster of powers.
Defensive are some of the better X-genes in terms of thought or variety compared to the Offensive. Some change the way your "dodge" move works and looks either by animations or particle effects for instance Surge's X-gene turns your dodge move into this sweet electrical particle effect and stuns the enemies you dodge through. Where as Colossus's X-gene not only changes your dodge into a shoulder slamming knock back, but also has an upgrade to to health and then a third upgrade that every time you get hit your skin literally turns to the organic steel we love for our favorite Russian and you take a ton less damage. You see different X-gene's have different levels awesome. Colossus's defensive upgrade has 3 levels where his utility only has 1. Emma Frost had maybe the best defensive X-gene where level 1 was diamond skin, which in her case once your M(that's what the call it, its like your mana bar) -bar reaches about half your character's entire model is turned to diamond and reduces damage (this did not seem to be as much damage as Colossus's but I could be wrong), level 2 cases flames and the like not to hurt you as much, and level 3 out right deflects projectile attacks back at the target.
Utility X-genes seem to do mainly 2 things, give you a sprint ability, and/or effect your M-bar in some way either by increasing the gain, or increasing the storage of the M-bar. Some were pretty redundant, for instance Northstar's utility had 3 levels, but level 1 and 3 were both a sprint ability which you press the same keys just apparently the level 3 was faster(I really could not tell the difference in speed) and gave the animation(but not the actual ability) of flying 3 feet from the ground. Where as Toad and Pryo's utilities both gave a small dot, Toad's in the form of a plague type green cloud when you past through enemies sprinting, and Pryo left a trail of fire in the wake of his sprint that damaged enemies that crossed it.
In X-gene system it seems every character has an offensive, defensive, and utility you have a chance to collect, along with a suit that changes your outfits color but does nothing in the way of game play. When you combine the 3 x-genes and the suit you enable X-mode which when triggered drains your M-bar rather quickly and does not allow for M-bar regen through combat while its active. Different X-modes do different things depending on the character. Through my game play(and let me tell you I looked good and hard) I was only able to complete 4 complete sets that being Wolverine, Colossus, Northstar, and Iceman. The X-genes are completely random, I had picked up an Iceman X-gene one time, died fighting a boss, the checkpoint put me before the X-gene I had picked up and then I received a Psylocke X-gene from the same location.
There way of balance in the X-gene system is that for each character, they only have one x-gene that has 3 levels to it, another will have 2 levels and the last one will have 1. For example in the case of Colossus his offensive had 2, defensive had 3, and utility had 1. Each character is different as an example Wolverine's level 3 was his offensive, 2 in defensive, and 1 for utility. The dev's did play to the character's strengths when picking which character had the larger bonus in which X-gene type. So in this you can load up each slot with a lvl 3 of different characters or use one character and have X-mode. I in particular didn't find x-mode that handy since I could not regen the M-bar while in it, even hitting a Blue container which are scattered around levels and give you a chunk of M-bar back. I rather chose to have lvl 3's in each slot and used the M-bar for my own activated mutant abilities.
Now in terms of game play I want to discuss flight or the lack there of. As mentioned earlier in the example with Northstar's utility I gained the movement speed that simulated flight. Why could I not get normal flight I ask. I know it could have been possible in the system they built as the final Shadow Matter ability gives you wings where you hover about 20 feet in the air and then every time you attack you swoop down like a hawk and knock enemies back for lots of damage and then go back into the air and can move around 20 feet up in this mode. Would it have been game breaking? Could I have explored area's I was not intended to? They seemed to be fine using invisible walls so that you could not go back and review past check points after a fight to see if you missed any collectibles or X-genes so why not use invisiable walls to cover the areas you don't want fliers to go and add a whole new level of game play to a game sorely lacking it. I'll be honest, the X-men Legends/Marvel Ultimate Alliance combat system had more combo's and abilities in it then this game. and when consitering there were about 10x the amount of playable characters in those games, I don't think it would have been that hard.
Graphics:
I don't think this game is being given a fair shake by a lot of people. I'm looking at screens of Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 which released 2 years ago on the same hardware as X-Men Destiny and the character models don't look to be that must less or more detailed. Does it have the best, prettiest, or most polygon count of any game? No, but I don't believe calling it play station 2 graphics is very accurate either. Take a look at a High Res image of Kratos from God of War 2 one of the PS2's best developed games for that system. Where the models huge for the enemies? ya but really look at the details, the shadows were hard and blocky, Krato's skirt was 1 dimensional, there was no textures just images on polygons. Then take a look at a high res of X-men: Destiny
Sound/Music:
There is not a lot of Music in X-men Destiny, in fact there is plenty of time in the game where there is no music at all. So no epic tunes to get stuck in your head like the Halo theme or Zelda's. The sound is passable, however there were points that actually made the speakers on my television get literally a static or humming sound.... I waited for a check point, popped out the game and put in the blu ray of Independence Day.. no static, turned up the volume 10 points.. still no static.. can only say its the game. The Voice acting was a B, not bad at all, but not the best. Probably the best voice acting the the game was at the beginning cut scene and character select. And of course Steven Blum can do no wrong as the voice of Wolverine.
All in all I'd give the game a 7 out of 10. I'm giving a free point for the fan service. X-Men fans may be a little disappointed that Juggernaut shouldn't have an X-gene, or that in one cut scene Emma Frost is using telepathy while in her diamond skin. But all in all the characters looked how they should look and talked as they should talk. I liked that they did a game with Bastion in it. I will be rewriting an editorial on the direction I believe the game should have gone for the story. The Graphics were ok but not great, but the game play was the real let down here. And that's a problem. The game didn't have any bugs besides one ledge grab problem I faced in the first wolverine level but other then that it was a short but sweet game for X-men fans. If you are not a fan, you didn't know about this game anyway, so go ahead and take a pass on it and get God of War 3 or Infamous 2 if you hadn't already.
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