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Oh boy, the X-Men have some serious problems this time, and it’s not just the death of
the Professor. This game has been universally panned by critics, written off as a sloppy
and mindless mess of a game that only avoids being a complete catastrophe thanks to its
license.
Geez, and you thought Magneto was a problem. It’s X-Men: Destiny.
Released about a month ago for the Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, this game
sounds interesting on paper. X-Men: Destiny was developed by Silicon Knights, the same
company that GameCube owners came to appreciate thanks to little games called Eternal Darkness
and The Twin Snakes. You put them at the helm of a X-Men game with an interesting story,
and you might expect good things.
That is, unless you played Too Human. You might also expect to shoot laser beams from
your freaking eye sockets. Sorry, Cyclops. Not today.
There’s just no way around it. X-Men: Destiny is just a mediocre video game. It’s a standard
3D beat ‘em up built around standard gameplay and standard level design. You could replace
“standard” with “boring,” and the criticism would still be accurate. There’s
nothing here worth exploring unless you’re a seriously devout X-Man fan.
And even then, you should just save your money for the comics.
To the game’s credit, though, it does have a pretty cool premise. Destiny is set in a
world where the tension between humans and mutants has boiled over. You play as your
choice of three young characters, each of whom will discover something very important
about themselves before it’s all said and done.
You learn, again, that Xavier is dead. The X-Men and rival Brotherhood are the two mutant
factions, and early on, you have to make a choice about who you’re going to fight with.
I like this, too—at least, in theory. You’re interacting with mutants who are going to
react to you based on which group you’re loyal to. So add that to being a youngster
in a post-Xavier world, and Destiny seems to have a great premise.
The problem is...it’s not all it seems, and that’s all it has. The story is essentially
the same no matter which of the three characters you choose, and the same applies to the gameplay
to an almost painful degree. I think I pressed two buttons in rapid succession literally
the entire time, and at no point was I having fun doing so.
It sucks, because the story has so much potential. I’m not even a comic fan, but I was hoping
things would get better because I wanted to let the story unfold. You soon learn it’s
not worth your effort, though, and although the game also seems to have a system of choice
built in, your decisions never really have the weight you want them to.
So the gameplay is one-dimensional, the story is flat, the missions are repetitive...it’s
not a good start for X-Men: Destiny, and unfortunately, the game doesn’t shine from a technical
perspective, either. The frame rate is really choppy, and the environments consist of a
blurry choice between grey, brown...and greyer.
This is an utterly mindless game. It’s an experience that gets boring within minutes,
never gets out of neutral and coasts on boredom for the duration. X-Men: Destiny has some
cool superhero ideas, but the execution is anything but super.