X-Men Destiny Review (Xbox 360)

STAFF REVIEW of X-Men Destiny

Thursday, October 27, 2011.
by Adam Dileva

On paper, X-Men Destiny sounds like a fantastic idea for a comic book based game. Take a brand new mutant in the universe with powers you decide to pick and choose from all the other mutants then decide whose side of the fight youll be on: X-Men or the Brotherhood. Unfortunately it feels as if the game was rushed and not polished at all and we have a generic comic book based game that falls flat and grows tiresome very quickly from its generic and shallow combat.

I want it to be known that Silicon Knights is one of my favorite developers. Ive loved every game theyve done so far, from Eternal Darkness to Too Human. Yes, Im one of the few that loved that game and I dont know why they got such a bad rap for it, but thats a whole different issue. Im not much into the comic scene though I absolutely loved the X-Men cartoon from the 90s and once I found out Silicon Knights was doing this game I was instantly intrigued to see what they were going to do since Too Humans offering.

First and foremost what you need to know is that you wont be playing any of your favorite mutants from X-Men in any way; youll be playing a brand new character that suddenly comes upon having new powers. If you want to play Wolverine, Cyclops, Iceman and others, youre better off getting either the X-Men Legends or Ultimate Alliance games instead. Destiny is going to feel more like a generic comic book game rather than anything exceptional that sets it apart from anything else.

As you play through the game youll find random X-Genes around that give you specific powers for your new character. As you pick up these enhancements youll be granted an offensive, defensive or utility power that came from and resembles powers that your favorite mutants possess. As you gain more powers youre able to mix and match what powers you want equipped at a time for a unique play experience to your liking.

The games plot starts at a peace rally that is being held in the memory of ex X-Men leader Professor X who was recently killed by Bastion whom youll recognize if you now your X-Men lore. Just as quickly as the rally begins it is interrupted by destruction that looks like its from Magnetos hands himself, yet hes nowhere to be seen. With mutant and human relations being tense already, this sets events in motion that start absolute chaos in San Franciscos streets and youre just an unlucky individual at the rally when this all goes down. Lines are about to be drawn and youre going to have to eventually decide if youre backing the X-Men or the Brotherhood. Just as things are looking bad for you, suddenly you appear to have mutant powers (which you get to choose) as well.

Your first order of business is deciding which of the three new mutants you want to play as. Aimi Yoshida is a Japanese teenage girl whose parents sent her away from home on a tanker ship. She doesnt know why and has resentment towards her parents because of this choice. Grant Alexander is your generic jock type trying to become a football player that has no interest in the whole mutant vs. human conflict thats going on. Lastly is Adrian Luca who is the son of an extremist against mutants who was killed. Adrian grew up hating mutants and seeking revenge for his fathers death. Aside from some minor back story to each character, it really doesnt matter who you pick as they can all equip the same powers once obtained.

Throughout your journey to find out the truth youll cross paths with many recognizable mutants such as Iceman, Gambit, Magneto, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Cyclops, Pyro and more. Sometimes youll fight alongside these characters and others you might be fighting them depending on your choices. From here youre going to go on a short five hour journey of button mashing with a story that isnt all that interesting since youre not really invested into your new character unlike the other mutants weve known many years. As you smash, hack and slash your way through, youll probably lose interest about halfway through, which isnt a good sign when the game is so short. I really finished the game out of curiosity and obligation rather than enjoyment.

After you make your choice of who to play as you need to pick your main core power for your mutant (which cannot be changed unless you start a new game). Your three choices are Density Control, Energy Protection and Shadow Matter. Density Control is made for your brawler types that make you tougher and hit harder, Energy Protection is your ranged attacks that may not be as powerful but makes up for it in speed. Lastly is Shadow Matter that allows you to hit multiple opponents with extremely fast attacks. I chose Energy Matter and once you get a few upgrades I had no problem being in the thick of battle with some of my extremely powerful attacks taking out groups of enemies at once.

This is a straight up brawler game. Youll fight ten to fifty guys and once clear you can then move to the next checkpoint where youll fight ten to fifty guys again. As you repeat this over the course of your five hours of gameplay youll also be searching for collectibles and X-Genes which will grant you new powers. Once you unlock a combo or two that find work well for you youll essentially be repeating the same combo over and over making for a very shallow combat system even though youre supposed to have many different abilities at your disposal. Eventually your attacks will become so powerful that youll no longer need to dodge or block, which can be fun but theres only two types of enemies that need any sort of strategy to destroy (I hate you mechs with turrets!). As you complete large combos or have a specific numbers of enemies remaining youll see these giant words appear on the battlefield saying Great Combo! or 1 Enemy Remaining! .They can become distracting but in a neat comic book fashion, youre able to destroy these words and see them smash as you beat up enemies through them.

As you meet up with some of the more famous mutants, youll be given different dialogue options in your conversation with them. You can talk to them about certain subjects to find out more backstory but skipping these options wont really lose you any background info youll need. Sometimes when theres only one choice of response, youre still asked to pick it as a dialogue option. Why wasnt it just part of the cutscene of you two talking rather than pretending you had an option of something different to say? Oh, and you better hope you dont accidently pick the same dialogue choice a second time because all dialogue and cutscenes are unskippable. Sometimes in your conversations youll have to make moral choices that are supposed to be a big factor in X-Men Destinys gameplay. Sometimes youll need to decide if youre standing behind the X-Men or Magnetos Brotherhood. Moral choices are supposed to have a heavy weight or bearing attached to them to make them feel like youre actually deciding between good and evil. Your choices really have no weight attached and has no repercussions other than which factions quest you want to side on. This mechanic could have had such a great possibility, what if you had to choose to side with Magneto or else hed kill a bunch of his prisoners in front of you. Sadly nothing this deep is offered so dont worry about siding with one side or the other; it really doesnt matter.

As I mentioned before, as you play youll need to find X-Genes hidden around the world as you progress to gain new abilities, powers and combos. Rewards are completely random so when you reload a checkpoint for a second time, you will find a completely different ability than your first time. While it seems like a good idea, it makes it near impossible to find a full matching set of offensive, defensive, utility and costume. The reason you want a matching set of the same mutants powers is because when you match all four slots of the same person you have the ability to use a very powerful ability of theirs called an X-Mode attack inspired by that mutants powers. During my one and a half playthroughs I was only able to find one persons complete matching set; disappointing indeed. This means theres no way to find all your missing powers consistently and trying to finish a set can be frustrating as its completely random. As a redeeming quality, the option to mix and match specific abilities does become quite powerful once you decide how youre going to play, but it does take a lot of trial and error to find out what works for you.

Its very confusing to figure out how you spend your xp gained from battle to put into your skills and abilities. Once you figure it out it still doesnt make sense and is more convoluted than it needs to be. If you have a maxed out X-Gene then swap it out, youre stuck using the new one instead, so decide well before hand what abilities you want to level up. To make matters worse, many X-Genes essentially do the same thing but exact powers will have different wording. For example: an extra bar is added to your M-Power meter and an extra bar is added to THE M-Power meter. Subtle difference and they mean the same thing, but with an already confusing menu and inventory system, this doesnt help and seems sloppy and overlooked.

I understand that X-Men Destiny is comic based, but why must every boss tell you their master plan in great detail just before they think theyre going to kill you so that when you escape and defeat them you can fix all the wrong doing? Your character seems to have this problem as well and will tell anyone your plants regardless if youre aligned with X-Men or Brotherhood as if everyone is your friend.

Once I finished the game for the first time I was slightly disappointed there was no New Game+ mode once the main menu loaded. I decided to see if I went to continue my first game if it just saves it before the final boss and lo and behold, it starts the game over with my character and powers intact. While youre stuck with your main core choices it is entertaining to defeat challenges in mere seconds with your overpowered mutant and to see the secondary choices in the dialogue options. Even though the campaign is short, I simply didnt want to sit through the game a second time but at least the option is there for people who will try and suck a few more hours out of the game and achievement hunters.

X-Men Destiny lacks polish and lots of it. Some may consider these next items minor but the fact that they stood out made my experience tainted. Subtitles dont always match whats being spoken which is a big irk for me for some reason. Many cutscenes are clumsy and lack continuity; like when you give Gambit a package and he says lets see whats in the box then reacts to it instantly before even opening it or moving himself. I had a cutscene where a big package in the back of a truck slipped out half way and was clipping through the side of the truck as if nothing was wrong. If you have Icemans defensive ability equipped that gives you an ice armor coating, its instantly gone and missing once a cutscene loads. Facial expressions look completely dead and theres massive slowdown at specific sections where the frame rate just plummets.

As I said before, Im not the biggest X-Men fan but I know the basics and some of these are just wrong. Gambit doesnt sound the least bit Cajun or even resemble anything like the Gambit from the 90s cartoon. Also, why can you get Juggernauts X-Gene powers? Technically hes not a mutant. But alas, maybe Im reading too much into it, but when a casual fan notices this stuff I can only imagine what the real hardcore fans are going to think to these decisions.

Being that there are three characters to choose from it seems like the game is meant for a co-op experience but its only a single player affair and has no multiplayer of any kind. X-Men Destiny isnt inherently bad; its just unfinished and unpolished with a few poor design choices that make for a shallow experience. As I said, on paper all these ideas seem great, they just dont come together well in this full prices package. Even if youre a huge X-Men fan, its a rental at best and youll probably finish it in one sitting like I did.

Overall: 3.7 / 10
Gameplay: 3.0 / 10
Visuals: 3.0 / 10
Sound: 5.0 / 10

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