User blog:Hawkeye2701/Review4U: X-Men: Destiny

Alrighty, today I'll be reviewing X-Men: Destiny requested by Mako100. Given the nature of the game I won't be doing an overview of the plot in any kind of detail, but a sufficiently vague retelling will be forthcoming.

The Rally
Alright, the story opens with a rally in San Francisco where Luis Reyes, head of the Mutant Response Division and the Mayor of the city are welcoming the X-Men. In the crowd are three soon to be mutants, but the story only addresses one of them at a time. The rally is attacked. Flying metal and waves of living fire followed then by an earthquake, course this is San Fran, so the last one might not have been intentional.

Anyway, in the wake of this event, our protagonist, whoever it may be, activates their power as a car come hurtling towards them, either becoming one with the shadows, running away to later develop energy power or, my personal favourite, stand there and take a car to the face like a BAWS! But what they have really doesn't matter as they all end up the same place, middle of the rally, surrounded by purifiers. Fighting their way out, they run across members of the Brotherhood and X-Men as they try to restore order in their own ways. As Magneto makes his triumphant return, the battle culminates in a showdown with the force you chose to side with fighting against Purifiers before your chosen hero heads to the roof to fight Cameron Hodge. The battle ends with Magneto dropping a stretch of the Golden Gate Bridge on the area.

China Town
Being ported out by Nightcrawler, our protagonist is sent to find Gambit. Now seemingly separated from the X-Men, he has made his base out of a nightclub, using a small army of paid thugs called the Xternals. Intercepting an Xternal courier who was being attacked by Purifiers, the protagonist picks up a package meant for Gambit and brings it to him. After fighting the former X-Man, Gambit puts them onto a lead in a nearby warehouse. Busting it up, Gambit once again leads your chosen character on a path through a secret facility.

U-Men
Running across a U-Man stronghold the player fights their way through, releasing Surge, Colossus and Quicksilver. Battling their way out, they not only encounter new Purifier Stalker Mechs, but that the U-Men have been harvesting mutant powers and if they were to get Pixie and Caliban's, there'd be nowhere for mutants to hide anymore.

Finding the core of the facility, the protagonist takes on John Sublime, a U-Man scientist who infuses himself with the powers of the three allies you had through your stay there. After defeating him, you're left with the option to either destroy or hand over the gene samples, allowing Gambit to infuse his Xternals with mutant powers.

The War
Fighting their way through yet another underground facility, they soon encounter Cameron Hodge, again. This time finishing the fight, Nightcrawler arrives and you now have the option to either head for the X-Men or Brotherhood camps. You come out in pretty much the same place and travel on your way, tracking down Pixie and Caliban. Finding the latter, you get into a conversation with Bastion, who reveals Reyes as his pawn. Alongside Caliban, you track down Pixie only to see the Helicopter carrying her to get shot down. Heading to the site, you find Pixie pinned and while Juggernaut tries to help, the chopper explodes, killing Pixie. This incites a response from Magneto, who is now determined for war and you soon end up battling Juggernaut and the Master of Magnetism.

Decision Time
Coming out of it, you can join either the Brotherhood or X-Men, now seemingly for good. Depending on what side you choose, you then run into battles where you must disable speakers to halt the attacks of either Brotherhood or X-Men members. Nightcrawler and Northstar for the X-Men, Toad and Pyro for the Brotherhood. Now we get to the good part, A final run at the MRD and Bastion.

Final Battle
Tracking down Reyes, we get a nice scene where the leaders of both sides appear to back you up. A pity it lasts all of ten seconds before he buggers off and you have to hunt him down while Magneto goes to try and take down the satellite. Don't know why Cyclops couldn't of helped, but let's add that to the list of genuine dick moves of his. After that you're led across a series of rooftops, fighting off waves of mooks before finally facing off against the only legitimate Sentinel in this game. Props to the development team, they really managed to capture the threat of these things, heaven forbid if I had super powers, I wouldn't want to try climbing a building with this hi-tech Donkey Kong throwing lasers down at me. ¬_¬ All joking aside, despite the frustration of the building climbing, the battle itself is pretty good and certainly one of the ones that stands out. My one question in hunting down Reyes though, if the portals are made with Pixie's power and Pixie is dead, who the hell is making portals for you to follow Reyes? If it's him, it's kind of a dumb move on his part. Still, I digress.

We are then treated to a wonderful scene where Magneto takes down a satellite from space and use it to take the head clean off a sentinel that was about to attack him, you don't get much more epic than that. Unfortunately (As if we all didn't see it coming) Bastion had already downloaded into Reyes, leading to a final fight. For a guy who basically has the powers of every mutant in the game, and even some who don't appear (i.e. Psylocke and Avalanche) I really don't get why he spends most of the fight running from you. But anyway, you beat him, the day is saved, his supposed ability to download into any of the other mechs and troopers throughout the city goes unaddressed since beating this body apparently did the job, and that's the game.

The Review
Now then, I'm going to review certain aspects of the game in order, let's start with the story.


 * Story

I enjoyed it, pretty simple, but passable, but there are more looming issues. Not only is there the fact that Bastion's ability to download into others isn't addressed after Reyes defeat, the whole narrative, despite constantly forcing choices between Brotherhood and X-Men, never really effects anything but some dialogue choices. Even your initial power choice only really effects the scene that follows, you are still expected to follow the exact same path no matter what power you chose to start with. It's one of those cases where they had an idea the whole 'Choose your destiny' thing, but failed to execute it well. Other than some battles with certain people or some side missions, there is no difference. I think the whole affair would have been better if they had made three protagonists, with three different powers in three separate, interlinking stories. Maybe one Brotherhood, one X-Men and one Neutral. Instead, while there is replay value in the different character's personalities, the different power sets and the odd costume you can get, it's not enough to make up for the game's other failings.


 * Gameplay

The most important factor in any game. Whether you're there for the story, the combat, the collectibles, no matter what drew you in, the game has to be playable. In this case, the gameplay is decent, but it's also repetitive. Only when a boss rolls around does the plan ever seem to shift from 'go there, fight this'. It may have been better if the powers had more impact, like if you could only smash floors with density control, you could power things with energy manipulation or travel through small gaps with shadow matter, but along with whatever power you chose, the three all have a generic slew of enhanced acrobatics and strength enough to navigate a messed up San Francisco. It's always the same bosses, and only when you reach near the end of the game have you developed your powers enough to be able to string along some interesting combos beyond the old square, square, triangle.


 * Style

I'll sum up graphics, design and stuff under a general 'Style' banner. In this case, I love the character designs. Some people are just going with their classic looks, like Cyke and Wolverine, but then we have the likes of Nightcrawler with his tail beads and soul patch, and Juggernaut's multi-layered helmet, and I love those designs. There's a certain line between the more fanciful comic designs, and a sort of down to earth realism for some of the characters. Hell, looking at the protagonists, I love their normal designs, but I think Aimi is the only one who looks good in most of the hero suits and even then some of them are pretty bad, Adrian is a hit or miss affair and I'm yet to find a single one that Grant seems to look good in. In terms of the actual graphics, unfortunately some of the characters came out better than others. Pixie in particular I recall as having a really inflexible looking face and her hair kept clipping into her head. Those whose faces were covered tended to look alright most of the time, but not always. Other than that, the world design was quite nice, though roughly around Hodge's robot factory I feel they were running thin on set ideas. The designs of the different factions I thought were really good, the MRD looking like trained military, while the Purifiers appeared more like hooded monks and the Xternals looking like a bunch of rogue graffiti artists. Particularly the Purifier Stalker mechs, I just love those things.


 * Characters

Now to look at the characters themselves. For the old faces, I think for what we see many of them work quite well. With the exception of Pixie lacking anything approaching a welsh accent, I think the voice cast did really well. Now then, the new faces. I really liked the decision to give us three new mutants as our leads instead of just sticking us in the shoes of the old guard, and honestly, for a story about choosing destiny, I think that would have been enough to watch three people of different backgrounds become mutants and find their place in this world would have worked just fine instead of all this multiple choice that doesn't change crap thing.

First, we have Aimi Yoshida. From a mutant background, she literally just walks off the boat from Japan when this thing kicks off. She's not from here, she feels her father abandoned her and since every indication says she's Sunfire's kid, we can only imagine what her opinions on humans must be. I think that makes for a great character arc. The feeling of abandonment, the learning to stand on her own and all that, she's very interesting. Honestly I think her best lines come from working alongside the Brotherhood, cause hearing her taunt Toad and Pyro is hilarious.

Next up, Adrian Luca. This guy has full blown mental problems. He has visual and auditory hallucinations of his racist dead father constantly ragging on him. An Ex-Purifier, having awakened to his powers, he's now having to come to grips with the idea that the Purifiers aren't the bastions of self-sacrificing good guys he thought they were, that they were just bigoted thugs who attack people they don't understand, and that also is really interesting. If they had lined his story up to be taking down the Purifiers, things would have been very interesting, but instead he spends the first chapter addressing this, a lot of time listening to his father call him a disappointment and a blight, and then it just follows the same old schtick.

Grant Alexander is our third. Honestly I thought he'd be the one I'd like least, cause his background as jock turned mutant just seemed very generic and boring, but he's really grown on me. The humour, the fact that unlike the other two he's clearly out of his depth in Human/Mutant politics, the cracks about him hitting on every mutant girl he meets. You can tell he doesn't have the same baggage as the others and he's not the sharpest when it comes to these things, but he's got a lot of heart and he's trying to make the best of a bad situation, and I like that.

If these three were in Marvel Canon, I think they could make a good break out team. Something like Heroes for Hire in San Francisco. Unfortunately, due to the mirrored gameplay, you just keep running across the same dialogue trees, the same questions, and while it's sometimes interesting to see how they react differently in the same situation, it's not interesting enough to make it Not tedious as all hell.

Finale
All in all, this game has a lot of potential, but it just fell apart. It had the same failings as almost every other Marvel game I've seen. It tries to give you choice, while still needing you to follow the plot. It gives you dialogue trees that, while informative, are repetitive, and its good points just became mired in a overflow of the same old crap. I enjoyed playing this game, I enjoy the story and the characters, but that doesn't make it a good game. The two best Marvel based games I ever played were Spiderman 1 & 2 for the PS2. The reason for this is because they did what no other Marvel games I've seen have done. The first one made a story for one character and made you follow a narrative. You could then unlock as the last alternative, Harry Osborn as the Goblin, and while this changed the dialogue and game style, it was still the same story over, but that's what was expected pretty much. In the case of the second, it gave you freedom. When not doing a mission, you had a massive sandbox of New York to play in, you could swing all over, do little side jobs and just have fun with it. These to me, are the ones that work when you're trying to tell a character based narrative. If you want us to follow someone, to get invested, don't promise us choices that don't mean anything, just give us a story to follow, if you want us to have freedom, give us some actual freedom. This type of game works best if you're playing something like Ultimate Alliance, a party based game where dialogue might change and you might get some nice stuff depending on who you have with you, but for what Destiny could have been, what it should have been, this was an awful choice. So once again, on behalf of Mako100, this is Hawkeye2701, adios True Believers.