Promises so much, yet delivers so little.
When X-Men Destiny was first announced, I have to admit I was excited at the premise. As a huge X-Men fan, the thought of taking control of a brand new mutant just moments after their powers had manifested, and choosing what powers those would be and how they would shape themselves was mouth-watering. Unfortunately, as happens all too often in this medium, the end result does not line up with the pre-release hype.
X-Men Destiny opens up with a short cinematic about how mutant-human relations are really bad (big shocker), and you follow three young people, two boys and one girl, as they watch the speech being given by “Luis Reyes”. Unsurprisingly his speech gets interrupted by an apparent attack by Magneto, and from there you choose which character to be and what power to have. They let you choose between density control (you punch real hard), energy projection (you shoot balls of light that have range but not as much power), and shadow matter. I chose shadow matter for the character I finished the game with, and it almost seems like a mix between the first two, you have slightly more range than the density control class but more power than the energy projection class.
Now we are thrust into the gameplay, which is just a watered down version of the combat from the God of War games. You have a light attack, a heavy attack, a block, and a dodge. Unfortunately, unlike the God of War games, the combat just is too watered down to be fun for very long, as towards the middle of the short five or six hour story, you have settled into the one combo that you have taken a liking to, and use that almost exclusively. It is evident that the creative minds behind this were fairly bright, as the special attack you get along the story have ridiculously cool names like “Void Walk”. Sadly these bright lights go dark very quickly when attacks like “Void Walk” are actually used for the first time, and then very likely never used again. Some of the special powers didn’t even seem to hurt the non-peon enemies, and i found that my regular light combo, basically just mashing the x button on the Xbox360, was more effective than even the most powerful special you get at the end.
The storyline is this game is absolutely terrible, and I really wanted to be able to give it the benefit of the doubt. Basically, theres a real bad dude, trying to do real bad things, and you have to stop him. Oh wait, maybe it depends on which side you choose right? Maybe if you choose Brotherhood you will actually help him do real bad things, right? Nope, the evil plot is to destroy all mutants (again, shocker), so whether you choose X-Men or Brotherhood, your objective is still the same: stop the bad dude form doing bad things! Nothing really powerful or dramatic happens along the way, and the “moral desicions” you make are nothing more than the game asking you to pick between the X-Men or the Brotherhood. Wanna be good or evil? Good= X-Men, evil= Brotherhood. That’s it. You’ll not find any tough choices from games like Mass Effect here.
As a HUGE fan of the X-Men universe, I so badly wanted this game to be great. Sadly, it turned out the other way, and this game is a waste of time, even for a huge fan such as myself. This game is not worth any amount of money over $10, and I would say rent it if you absolutely must see for yourself how bad this game is.
