X-men Destiny First Impressions

Played the game for 3 hrs last night, and after it all, my overall feeling was, "Disappointment".

The opening sequence has it done in a comic books style drawing with very limited animation, it doesn't look too good, but what ever, its just the beginning. Lets just jump right in.

The environment and levels are boring and dull and just doesn't look good. The map textures are stretched and blurry. You know sometimes, when a new level loads up and your waiting for the textures on certain buildings or items or even costumes to load in. So you get that blurry look on everything, well it all looks like that, except crisp sharp good looking textures never load in. So either its broken or that's as good looking as it gets.

You get to choose between 3 characters each with its own story and 3 different powers. All of which play very similar to each other. One doesn't have an advantage over the other besides one looks different.

Then you are given two skill trees, one for the main power you just choose and one for items that you find around the levels. Such as where the other X-men come into to play, but I was dissappointed with this system. I was thinking that you could follow a certain x-men or brotherhood and you would grow based off what character you wanted as a mentor. Much like how DCU works.

But its no where near as deep as that. Its simply offensive, defensive and I forget the last slot, but you get a X-gene called Juggernaut Offensive. Which is " Add more power to your punches". IF you own two of his sets, then it gets a upgrade of more power, it you own 3 of the set, then its even more powerful and so on and so fourth.

So it really has nothing to do with interacting with characters to progress character growth, its simply finding items around the level and doing challenge rooms( beat 20 enemies in 2 min)

Then there's the costumes which again act just like the item slots. Except the power of the costume is only unlocked if you have all 3 items and have them equipped at the same time. Its a pretty boring skill tree.

Of course to unlock all these extra bits you need XP, which you get from killing enemies. But there is a major flaw in this. Some of the time you have a X-men or Brotherhood fighting along side you. So what ever enemies they kill, you don't get an XP from them. Lets say that you were having trouble with one of the sub-bosses, you finally get his life down to the last bar and he knocks you down. At the same time your X-men buddy comes over and gives him the final blow and he dies. Well now you don't get the XP for all that hard work you just did nor do you get any life orbs they he/she may have dropped upon their death.

This is one time where you need precious XP to upgrade all your stuff and your teammates are hogs. Like that guy that you play a co-op game with and he runs grabbing all the items before anyone else. Its really annoying, it makes battles more about luck than strategy. Running back and assessing the situation becuase your getting pummeled to maybe take out a stragler here and there to get some health is now punishable by you team mates jumping in and killing whats left over leaving you out in the cold with no health. I guess its one of the few times where people complain that your AI teammates are useless, well here, they aren't useless, they get the job done, but it leaves the player high and dry.

The fighting is pretty dull, a very limited move set and I don't mean something a dozen moves or so. Try 2 moves to start, a punch and jump punch. I'm currently 3 hrs into the game and i have 5 moves. No grabs, no special animations for finishers, nothing. Its pretty sad.

Then you have the conversation set up. Ehen I first used it I thought I had to give a response to what the character was saying, but its not as indepth as that. It really is, click A,B,C and the character will give a blurb about each. In the end, its a straight forward choice to be bad(brotherhood) or be good(X-men) Again, I thought there be more than that. Worse of all, you CAN'T SKIP CONVERSATIONS. Is this a hard thing to do? put in a skip button? Its annoying, especially if you die and you have to go through the whole conversation again.

Being a part of the X-men world, doesn't do a good job making you feel like your part of it. Instead, its more feel likes your on the side lines, looking in while you do your own thing. So the comic book geek in me that enjoys the fact that "yeah, this game may be bad, but I am enjoying playing my favourite characters" is lost in this game. Instead I play generic hero number 2 with generic power B, while Ice man is in the background blending in the with enemies and feels more like a set piece off in the distance than an actual partner.

That's where the game stands right now, I was thinking in the beginning that "sure this game may not be that bad" but for someone like me who enjoys the X-men universe, I was thinking that interacting with their world and being an integral part of it somehow would make up for the downside of the game. But that's just not the case, I don't feel apart of the world and it doesn't feel like an X-men game.

I guess I have to compare it too when the first X-men movie came out and it was pretty good. Then you got the TV show "X-factor" to watch at home and it just doesn't feel like the world of X-men.

So if you are a hardcore fan of X-men, would you enjoy this game more? Absolutely NOT!! It does a piss poor job of making you feel part of their world. Instead its more of a game based on the X-men than feeling like being an X-men. I'm going to finish the game, cause I finish all games I buy, regardless of how bad they are.(excluding - Sonic- where he trys to get it on with human female in a grassy field-WTF?!?)

Do NOT buy this game brand new. Instead wait a couple of months for the price to go down. Because I know if I read this or was told this by someone else that the game is not that good, I would still be interested in the game and would probable still want to buy it becuase it IS the X-men Universe. But let me tell you know, it does NOT feel like an X-men game and if you are going to buy, wait as long as you can to get the game as cheap you can.

Here's hoping the game picks up somehow and gets better towards the end. But until then, this feels like a shitty movie tie-in game from Activision, the King of piss poor quality games.

I'm not posting any pictures to go along with this article cause that's how the game feels, dull and uninteresting.