X-Blades (Xbox 360) Review
Posted by Jordan Williams on 03.17.2009
It's like Tomb Raider Lite. 50% less clothes and 50% less fun!
Sometimes having a game with scantily clad women running around and kicking ass works for you. Just ask Lara Croft. But sometimes having a game with scantily clad women running around just makes you feel dirty for playing it and then makes you feel a hint of shame that this sort of trash still manages to get published. This is where you get X-Blades, a game that obviously was trying to be a "Tomb Raider" for the new age complete with a skimpy heroine and lots of treasure hunting. Instead all it does it reinforce the stereotype that the less clothes the main character wears, the less fun the game will be.
X-Blades follows the story of generically named Ayumi, the self-proclaimed best treasure hunter EVER. As she picks up a hint of a big score in some ancient ruin. Ayumi takes her bad(ly dressed) self to the ruins in pursuit of the treasure and of course falls into the wonderful adventure that is the backdrop for X-Blades. It's obvious here the story is definitely not its strong point. In fact, most of the story is told through very vague cut scene and HORRID voice acting from Ayumi and other character (we'll get to that later). It seems that X-Blades biggest downfall is that the game takes itself far too seriously to be any fun for the player at all.
Graphics
There is one thing that's going to be glaringly obvious the first time you boot up X-Blades...and it's not the fact the main character is wearing more material on her comically oversized boots than she is her entire body, it's the fact that the entire game looks very very cheap. The environment (note the singular usage) in X-Blades is pretty, as is the lighting. But after that it all goes downhill. The games cut scenes are very boring to watch and look straight out of a 1998 PC game, the actual character and enemy design falls super flat with the same three or four enemy types being recolored and reused throughout the entire game. You can see where the developers try to pull you into a deep fantasy setting but all it does it show you how exactly how quick and old such a setting can get when there isn't enough put into it to make it live.
The reason I keep harking on the setting is the simple fact that 99% of X-Blades takes place in the ancient ruin that Ayumi is exploring. As I said earlier the ruins themselves look wonderful but after about 30 minutes you will realize that they are simply the same set piece over and over again and you will quickly become bored with it. Couple that with the fact that the monsters in the ruins don't make much sense to begin with. They range from one-eyed crabs and tiny dinosaurs to giant one eyed dragons and little grim reapers. There is just no consistency in ANY part of this game.
Then we get to Ayumi, it's quite obvious that she was the only thing the artists decided to put real focus on. For those of you who haven't caught on yet Ayumi's outfit consist of nothing but a bra, a thong, gloves, and giant boots. This art direction was obviously made to grab your attention but all it does is just flat out confuse you. Why would a treasure hunter go into battle wearing NO ARMOR OR PROECTIVE GEAR at all? How can such a tiny little girl (to make this even dirtier, Ayumi looks like she just graduated from middle school) wield these giant sword guns with such teeny weenie arms? You would think that someone so rich from being "the best treasure hunter EVER" could afford to get a decent pair of slacks.
Gameplay
The gameplay in X-Blades actually tries to live up to some sort of standard by offering a lot of action and an equal amount of RPG-like leveling up and menus. And before I go on to bash the system I will say that it is a very fun system that does control well and offers some tense battles. The bad part is that the system gets very old after the first few levels.
Ayumi does battle with her two swords that double as guns, and a wide array of magic. When you put the three of these together you can link together some very respectable, if not unimpressive, combos. You aren't going to see any Devil May Cry or God of War like combos here, this is just standard hacking and slashing. The spells are a bit of a throwaway because the vast majority of them are useless. The only ones that matter are actually the ones that add elemental qualities to your blades. Shooting as a whole is horrible.
Just horrible.
The lock on mechanic is downright broken, using a PSO-like quality of targeting what's closest to you, not necessarily what you want to hit. Your movement slows to a painful crawl and the camera locks right behind you. Thankfully there aren't many times in the game you are required to buckle down and let bullets fly. Despite the game being cheaply made and a bit of the boring side this does NOT mean that this game is easy. If you decide to play for some of the harder achievements you will find that this game is an exercise in cheapness given the fact that you can almost die without knowing it seeing as poor little Ayumi doesn’t even react to being hit. You don't even get so much as a controller vibrating to let you know you are losing life until too late.
When it comes to the magic you are required to spend souls (in-game currency) and buy the spells and map them to one of the available face or shoulder buttons. This actually works pretty well because if you want to get a higher level spell you actually have to work for it and spend your souls wisely. The downside of this is that a vast majority of the spells are useless and there is no 'refund' option. So if you spend that 2000 Soul limit on one spell that turns out to be crappy, you're stuck with your investment. Later in the game you will get Ayumi's Dark and Light forms which should be insanely obvious what exactly they do.
The singular levels go in two phases. The first phase of the level usually has you pitted against an increasing horde of small enemies as they get larger and stronger as they all share a giant life bar. Once this life bar gets to the end the 'level' is considered over. You then go on to face a larger boss while the same amount of enemies still rush you at regular intervals. This style of play suits the games button-masher friendly style since you will never be without anything to dig into for long, but it gets very repetitive and boring. Think Dynasty Warriors with only one wacky Asian stereotype instead of 60.
Again, as far as this game goes the gameplay is actually the highlight of the entire package. The sad thing is that the gameplay is skimpier than Ayumi's clothes.
Okay, that's the last dig about Ayumi's clothes I'll make for this entire review.
Sound
Remember that horrible voice acting? Yeah. It's still horrible. The actual quality of the voice acting isn't that bad though. It's just the cheesy writing and delivery of the lines. Ayumi's voice actor is fine on her own, but the lines she constantly spouts out during the games cut scenes and boss fights are just painful to listen to. I'm talking about gems like
"For a lion, you fight like a lamb"
"Blah Blah Blah, You're still talking!?"
"Frankly, I'm the best treasure hunter EVER!"
It just reeks of bad anime and the supporting characters aren't much better. Thankfully during the course of the normal game the voice acting is limited only to a select few boss fights and cut scenes. Other than that you are just treated to the sound of Ayumi grunting as she gets hit (which you won't hear over the ensuing battle).
Music-wise the game is up and down. Some levels have some pretty impressive music work with some orchestral tracks with a bit of a rock feel. Then other resort to Dynasty Warrior-like butt rock that can only be summed up as generically generic. The music doesn’t harm anything, but you definitely won't be bobbing your head to the tracks as you go through the game.
Sound effects are you standard low-rent affair with sounds that have been pulled from what seems like every other action game ever made. You won't hear much of them though over the overpowering sounds of sword clashes and animal growls.
Fun Factor
South Peak set out to make a fun game and in that respect they did succeed. Where they failed at was trying to make that fun last for more than two hours. Given the stupid character and sound designs as well as the paper-thin gameplay the game IS fun the first time you boot it up and the first time you get into a real multi-man fight. But that allure fades really quick when you realize this is all you will be doing throughout the course of the game.
If the game had some sort of co-op or something more than a leader board for competitive reasons a few more ounces of fun might've been squeezed out of the game but right now half the fun of the games comes out of trying to get it's surprisingly difficult achievements and the other half comes from enjoying how bad it can be at times.
Lasting Appeal
There is an extra difficulty mode that can be unlocked after your first play through as well as two extra outfits to play in (which actually have an effect on gameplay) but that is about it when it comes to replay value. All of your kills and stats carry over your various playthroughs for achievement racking but there with the scant two endings (both of which are very vague on how to achieve) and no real branching story you are really just left with a game you could beat on the weekend if you tried hard enough. But I find it hard to imagine anyone would bother to play this for more than four hours unless they REALLY want those achievement points.
The 411
X-Blades is a bargain bin game that for some reason is being sold at full price. It looks cheaply made, has a cheap story, minimal fun, and overall just doesn’t seem to be that good. It's sad because this is a game that you can tell the developers obviously took pride in (they even went out of their way to send us a review guide for the game to make it easier on us) and they really WANTED it to succeed. Sadly there are just too many bugs, flaws, and shortcuts to keep this game from being one of the better beat'em up action titles of the year. Perhaps if South Peak wants to go forward with an X-Blades 2 that addresses the flaws the first one had it could do better, but as it stands now X-Blades is nothing more than fan service. Fanservice is okay, but fanservice with nothing to back it up just seems tired and old. This isn't 1998 anymore; you can't sell a game solely on boobs and nothing else.
Again, ask Lara Croft.
Graphics
7.5
The landscape is pretty impressive, sadly the same effort wasn't used on ANYTHING else in the game.
Gameplay
5.0
Hack and Slash at it's most boring form.
Sound
3.0
You might as well throw on the Custom Soundtrack and turn off the voices. It can only get better from there
Lasting Appeal
4.0
Rent it for the weekend. Beat it. Never look back.
Fun Factor
4.0
Add 4 more points to this if you are a preteen male.
