X-Blades
X-Blades
Scantily clad heroine cannot save herself from repetitive gameplay!
I have been one to always enjoy a good hack-and-slash title, some of them have been good, some great and some really really bad. Some notables include the God Of War franchise and Devil May Cry. The people at Gaijin Entertainment unleashed X-Blades into this category simulateously releasing versions on the Xbox 360 and the PS3. This review will focus on the PS3 version.
The heroine of X-Blades is a female treasure hunter, Ayumi, who travels through ancient temples searching for loot. Hmmmm ....where is Lara? In her travels she discovers the existence of artifacts of tremendous power, encompassing the properties of the ever competing Light and Dark magics. Ayumi begins her adventure in search of these artifacts and the wealth they will bring her.
Scantily clad Ayumi.
Gameplay
X-Blades tries come out as a heavy hitting action title but what it actually provides is an stunning example of repetitiveness. The action can be fast and furious but it’s the same thing over and over again ... lather – rinse – repeat.
Ayumi has a great variety of spells that you can employ very easily, in combination to dole out death to your enemies. These include weapon buffs, “area of effect” attacks, and long range spells. This is all well and good but the core gameplay using Ayumi’s gun-blades is very simplistic. The close quarter combat is a button mashing frenzy, hit square button repeatedly and turn the left thumbstick in circles to kill all in your path. There is a distinctive lack of attack combos. It’s just plain boring! Sure you can throw in an AoE (area of attack ) earthquake spell into the mix to knock some enemies flat but consistently hitting the square button for minutes at a time is just poor game design. The spells add some variety, but not enough to save X Blades from the tedium that is its existence. The long range aspect of the gun-blades is simple but effective, target an enemy, hold L1 to lock on and blast away. The thing is, Ayumi has two gun-blades, and this makes a perfect platform to bring in some fun play mechanics like multi-targeting, a la Dante of Devil May Cry fame. The developers tried to make a furious action/beat’em up, so why not step up to the bar of the current generation and not take a step back.
Controlling Ayumi is a bit twitchy and it can be difficult to fine tune the direction you want to point her in. Her jump mechanic is very floaty, but I imagine this is so you can engage in some aerial gun play with her gun-blades. A glaring omission is the lack of a block button. Instead of blocking to prevent death, Ayumi can take incredible amounts of damage since it is almost impossible to die. When you are near death, hit the select button to access the menu, then hit R1 about 3 times to get into the items menu and then select heal which uses a few souls out of the 1000’s you gather killing enemies. It is a painful chore to get to the menu, disrupting the flow of gameplay. A hot key would have improved this dramatically.
The game itself is a series of arena battles where you battle wave after wave of respawning enemies while trying to accomplish a goal such has killing a main boss character who stays stationary in the centre of the arena, or eliminating creature generators or other such derivative gameplay 1990 models. In the giant turtle boss battle I fought off seemingly 100’s of lizard men while trying to find a gap to shoot a flame spell at the giant turtle who would shoot flame spells back at me. I did this for about 10 minutes, in what appeared to be an endless cycle of square button, earthquake spell, fireball ... over and over and over and over again. To mix it up, you can run around the level trying to find hidden items/power-ups but this feels like it was thrown in as a vain attempt at a variety.
The opening cinematic of X Blades was quite pleasing, with an attractive cel-shaded/anime style, boasting rich colours. I was beginning to look forward to a pretty game, but then the frame-rate issues appeared. Frame rate issues in an opening cinematic are just not acceptable. Frame rate jitters were also common during hectic moments in the game when the screen is full of enemies.
Another flaw that I noticed and became a pervasive problem through the whole game is that some light effects (flare effects) obscure much of the image. I am not sure how the game developers could have thought that this was attractive, but the fact that it happened throughout the entire game indicates to me that there was some seriously poor judgement involved.
The animation speed of Ayumi’s weapon attacks seemed too fast and unnatural. When looking at Ayumi’s strike patterns, there was a definite lack of variety, limiting her to too few animations. I compare it to a boxing game where all I can do is jab with both hands, no hooks or uppercuts ... boring. I also noticed that some colours, especially the reds, seemed over-saturated hurting the visual appeal of X Blades.
Over-saturated reds hurt the visuals.
The all too few creature models are extremely uninspired and lacked any sense of originality. They were relatively mundane and left me with the feeling that the developers were not very experienced and/or talented or perhaps lacking inspiration. Besides being boring on the design level, I noticed that the texture levels weren’t very deep. I saw more complex character designs on the PS2 and XBox. It is shocking to me that a developer is pushing out stuff like this, it is completely sub-par. The spell effects were on par with a PS2 title and the blood/gore effects were absolutely terrible. I saw better blood effects on Mortal Kombat 1. We are deep into the next-gen cycle and this is just not acceptable.
On a positive note, the rich design and detail of the architecture/ruins looked gorgeous and made me hopeful but nothing else reached this level. The final positive and I was rather pleased, is that the camera functions quite well and is very responsive.
Impressive architecture!
Audio
The audio production values in X Blades are rather bland, but not bad. There is generic rock-and-roll background music that sounds decent but very dull in terms of variety and eliciting an emotional response, which one expects from a music score. It grows rather repetitive after a few levels. The game displays a lack of variety of combat sounds which doesn’t help immersion into the game at all. Ayumi has a limited number of yelps and yells which also would have benefited from more variety.
All in all, the sound quality isn’t bad but with its lack variety it comes out rather generic.
Value
There isn’t much variety or gameplay in X-Blades, it’s pretty much the same thing over and over again. To add some variety there are the hidden items and Light and Dark modes, but seems too little to late to rid X-Blades of it’s tedium. You can kill several hours with X-Blades but it lacks in something very important ...fun. Sadly there isn’t much game to be had here folks.
Conclusion
If X-Blades retail price was $20 dollars I might consider it a worthwhile purchase because you can kill some time with the tedious gameplay. Note that I said I might consider it. At the retail price of $59.99 I would dearly regret my purchase. There are some nice cinematics to look at, some pretty rich colours on display to catch my eye and arouse my curiosity but the core gameplay is just not worth more than 3 hours at minimum wage. I was bored after the first half hour and I cannot recommend this title unless it was a budget release.
On a personal note, X-Blades crosses the line when it comes to objectifying the female form. Ayumi is rather attractive for a sprite but where Lara Croft was somewhat tasteful, Ayumi is completely shameful. Ayumi’s outfit is outrageous! Her chest is covered in a bikini top and her bottom half is covered by a “barely there” g-string, in all honesty, they might have as well drawn her naked. I’ll admit that at first I smirked at this design choice but I can imagine more than a few people being offended, especially since there is no context for Ayumi’s costume. I am of the opinion that it is in very bad taste but some may argue that with an M rating it is excusable. It is true that there have been other women in games wearing g-strings but Ayumi’s g-string is extremely tiny, and in my opinion, has no place in a video game such as this. I am a red-blooded male and I find this flagrant obuse of sexuality inappropriate.
Pros
+ Gorgeous architecture
+ Rich colours
+ Eye catching cinematics
Cons
- Extremely repetitive gameplay
- Uninspired creature design (except for the Light and Dark Aspects ...they were well done!)
- Very boring
- The spike puzzle room ... you have to see it to understand how bad it is
Final Verdict
Here's a small guide to help you understand our evaluation of games.
PRESENTATION GRADE
Can be from the game's box to the contents of the booklet, and even the game introduction. (Intro, menus, options, etc)
GRAPHIC GRADE
Up to what point the graphics have been worked on my the developper. The design type, the effort used for textures and environments, as well as animations and framerate.
AUDIO GRADE
Is the soundtrack a good match to the game's style, he ambient sounds keeping with the gameplay and the sound effects clear and convincing?
GAMEPLAY GRADE
Placement of the controls and the inferface that the player with be using during the game.
REPLAY VALUE GRADE
The most important factor in the evaluation of a game. It identifies the lifespan of the game and the fun of coming back again and again.
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