3 Oct, 2011
Title: X-Men Destiny
Platform: Xbox 360, PS3, Wii and DS (reviewed on Xbox 360)
Developer: Silicon Knights
Publisher: Activision
Tagline: The Result of Mixing Crap with the X-Men License in a Chemistry Lab
Family Friendly: The game is pretty inoffensive in regards to blood or destruction. No one ever dies, and you do get some more lessons of good vs. evil. Of course it is encased inside of a terrible game, so yes, it is safe for all ages, but no, they should not play it out of common decency for their sanity.
X-Men Destiny is an idea on paper that sounds like it should be a game that I would love. It was an idea about creating new characters that you would mold with choices into deciding their fate as to whether these characters would become X-Men or members of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. The premise is so sound on paper: Lots of choices, building up of powers, and adding in perks that would unlock extra talents for your character as you play the game. The problem with this is that concepts only go so far before you have to actually execute the idea in a game. It is here where X-Men Destiny fails on every conceivable level. Silicon Knights not only does a disservice to the X-Men license, but to gamers as a whole for hoisting up this product as a game worth $60.
As stated earlier, you do get to start with a character that is new to the X-Men continuity. As a matter of fact you get to choose from one of three characters, each detailed with their own backstory. One character has been sent to America to escape persecution of Mutants in Japan, while another has been brought up by a Purist faction with the teachings that Mutants are evil abominations. Once you pick your starting character, you also get to pick from one of three power sets and from there, you are on your way to making thoughtful choices in the story.
It is about this point in time, five minutes into the game, that the game starts to show cracks in the foundation. After a large showpiece into where we see our character’s backstory play out in a quick montage, we are brought to the present day of San Francisco, right out of current comic continuity. Professor X is dead, MRD keeps both humans and Mutants safe and San Francisco is considered a safe haven for Mutants. However, an attack on a celebration that appears to be the work of Magneto, we get to see our character’s power emerge and you fight 10 enemies. How did I know it was 10 enemies? Well, because a big pop-up came up that stated there were 10 enemies remaining.
Yes, so right off the bat, we start to see that this game is all about moving to an area, open said arena, defeat the target number of enemies, and move on to the next arena. There is no rhyme or reason for enemies to be in a particular area, except for the idea that they are cannon fodder for your attacks.
I could deal with a simplistic setup for combat if the actual combat was interesting, but X-Men Destiny’s combat is far from interesting. It is instead a mind numbing execution of button mashing. At first, I did study the combat combos that I was learning from my upgrades, but over time, I realized that if I just spammed the X button, it would get me out of most jams. Occasionally a dodge might be necessary, but after that, it was back to hammering on the X button continuously until the arena was cleared. Sure, X-Men Destiny is not the first game to use button mashing as a combat mechanic, but it never strives to make you interested in learning any new moves. As a matter of fact, the new moves become detrimental to your survival when it comes to the most spiteful and hate riddled point of the game – The Boss Fights.
I am not a huge fan of boss fights in games, but understanding that they are a part of the gaming lexicon, I accept them as being a part of most games. X-Men Destiny keeps the pure boss fights to a minimum, with a total of three heavy duty boss fights. There are several others that I consider minor boss fights, but those are not a problem. It is these three fights that will leave you hating every fiber of this title. You see, each major boss fight is preceded with a cut scene and then the fight, normally broken into three to four stages. The problem first is that you are never presented with the opportunity to regain health at any stage in the boss fight, normally leading to you dying in the last stage of battle and a restart of the last checkpoint. Worst still is the fact that the cut scene that you just watched – it is unskippable, leaving you to watch it after each checkpoint restart. Fine, make a boss battle needlessly hard, but force me to watch the same damn cut scene again with each restart is complete BS. I got to a point, where I started to remember dialogue from each cut scene.
So with terrible boss fights and completely uninspired combat options, the idea of choice will hopefully save the day. Nope, not in this hero story, as the choices come down to the following. You first talk to a hero or a villain. They will present you with several options. Once you go through all the dialog options, you get a choice of playing the good team mission or the bad team mission. Each of these choices is supposed to result in gaining faction with the X-Men or the Brotherhood, but at the end the meter is meaningless as you choose which team to join. My meter leaned towards the Brotherhood, but I picked the X-Men and they embraced me with open arms. Oh, and the choices still result in missions being identical no matter what side you work for. At one point I was given the choice of accepting someone’s surrender or continuing the fight. At first I accepted surrender, only to find out it gave the enemy time to recharge their shields. When I went with continue the battle, I got a different monologue, but the guy recharged his shields the same and the battle continued the exact same way. Choice means absolutely nothing in X-Men Destiny.
So much is wrong with this title that I am at a loss as to why this so-called piece of entertainment was actually made. The game can be finished in a few hours. My play time came in at six hours, but I know that two of those hours were split across two painfully difficult boss fights. So four hour s and you are done with this $60 title. Sure, you can go back to replay the game for more achievement and power unlocks, but why would you do that. That is akin to a POW asking to go back to the prison camp for more torture. There is no sense of redeeming value in this game. It looks shoddy, the voice work is average to poor and the story is about as half-baked as it gets for a video game. Everything about this screams out as a contractual obligation game for Activision, and a simple paycheck for Silicon Knights. It takes a lot for me to hate a game, but X-Men Destiny is a complete waste of development time and your time. Maybe rent it if you need to make penance for your sins, but stay away from X-Men Destiny at all costs.
The Good:
- It Did Load
- A lot of X-Men and Brotherhood characters do show up
The Bad:
- Uninspired Combat System
- Reprehensible Boss Fights
- Choices are meaningless in this choice based game
- Offensively short
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