X Misses the Spot
X-Blades makes a valiant attempt at breaking into the action genre, but just can't quite find its feet.
Published: March 6, 2009
People will try to tell you that X-Blades is a bad game. Don't listen to them. It's a mediocre game, which is far more deadly. Why? Because with a bad game, you pretty much know what you're getting: crap through and through, with maybe only the barest hint of some kind of redemption. With a mediocre game, it's far trickier; at any point you can't help but feel like you might be rounding a corner, like the ideas that were introduced at the beginning could finally find their place in the game concept as a whole, yet it never happens. This constant could-be teasing never really lets up, and by the end, all you're left with is a waste of time and money, yet no real reason to slight the game. After all, it's just... there.
X-Blades occupies this middle of the spectrum in every facet of its experience. The main character, fond of flaunting butt cleavage just for the sake of titillation and dressed in what can best be described as stitches of clothing elsewhere is clearly made for eye candy. In truth, it almost works, but the weird attempt at melding wanton sex appeal with a Lara Croft-esque bit of treasure hunting never really seems to gel, leaving Ms. Ayumi with seemingly the worst parts of the "capable female adventurer" and the "anime pupil fodder" archetypes without actually getting anything out of either.
The biggest problem with the game, though, is just that no one part of it ever feels satisfying. Ayumi can open fire with her swords that double as pistols, or move to melee combat rather deftly, but the guns feel like pea shooters and the bladed attacks never seem like they're actually hitting anything. Both parts add up to an experience that'd devoid of heft or weight and instead just feels insipid, almost like you're just going through the motions. That the game is so readily accepting of a mindless button mashing streak only means that the tedium of fighting wave after wave of enemies is that much more pronounced.
And make no mistake: this is a game almost entirely comprised of tedium. You'll run (a bit too quickly for any sort of cool, agile moves in tighter spaces, one might add) around levels that essentially boil down to smallish arenas until you eventually come to a bigger arena where you'll inevitably duel with a boss, pausing to look at the game's bestiary to find out their weaknesses and then exploit them with whatever spells or melee boosts you've acquired during your time slogging through all the fighting bits up until then.
See, offing enemies (or breaking the very few interactive objects in a level or picking up little icons) releases energy which works as the game's currency. Keep slashing away at and killing enemies and you'll build up a combo streak which in turn causes enemies to barf up more soul cash that you can then spend on items. Repeat until you've either gone retarded from the intelligence-sapping combat or finally give up and shut the game off, and you have more or less the whole of what X-Blades is working toward.
Again, it's not that any one part of this is bad, but neither is it especially good, meaning it simply fills a bullet point on a list of things that far better games like Ninja Gaiden Sigma or God of War have already done and you start to see why X-Blades simply doesn't have the mojo to stand out in any way. Had the genre not already had so many solid -- even brilliant -- action games of this type, then things may have been different, but this is an effort that no smallish Russian development team can pull off no matter how much attention they got for earlier efforts.
X-Blades occupies this middle of the spectrum in every facet of its experience. The main character, fond of flaunting butt cleavage just for the sake of titillation and dressed in what can best be described as stitches of clothing elsewhere is clearly made for eye candy. In truth, it almost works, but the weird attempt at melding wanton sex appeal with a Lara Croft-esque bit of treasure hunting never really seems to gel, leaving Ms. Ayumi with seemingly the worst parts of the "capable female adventurer" and the "anime pupil fodder" archetypes without actually getting anything out of either.
The biggest problem with the game, though, is just that no one part of it ever feels satisfying. Ayumi can open fire with her swords that double as pistols, or move to melee combat rather deftly, but the guns feel like pea shooters and the bladed attacks never seem like they're actually hitting anything. Both parts add up to an experience that'd devoid of heft or weight and instead just feels insipid, almost like you're just going through the motions. That the game is so readily accepting of a mindless button mashing streak only means that the tedium of fighting wave after wave of enemies is that much more pronounced.
And make no mistake: this is a game almost entirely comprised of tedium. You'll run (a bit too quickly for any sort of cool, agile moves in tighter spaces, one might add) around levels that essentially boil down to smallish arenas until you eventually come to a bigger arena where you'll inevitably duel with a boss, pausing to look at the game's bestiary to find out their weaknesses and then exploit them with whatever spells or melee boosts you've acquired during your time slogging through all the fighting bits up until then.
See, offing enemies (or breaking the very few interactive objects in a level or picking up little icons) releases energy which works as the game's currency. Keep slashing away at and killing enemies and you'll build up a combo streak which in turn causes enemies to barf up more soul cash that you can then spend on items. Repeat until you've either gone retarded from the intelligence-sapping combat or finally give up and shut the game off, and you have more or less the whole of what X-Blades is working toward.
Again, it's not that any one part of this is bad, but neither is it especially good, meaning it simply fills a bullet point on a list of things that far better games like Ninja Gaiden Sigma or God of War have already done and you start to see why X-Blades simply doesn't have the mojo to stand out in any way. Had the genre not already had so many solid -- even brilliant -- action games of this type, then things may have been different, but this is an effort that no smallish Russian development team can pull off no matter how much attention they got for earlier efforts.
