Is a nearly naked vixen enough to get your attention?
Have you ever played a game with an endurance mode or area where you must battle against an ever increasing number of enemies of ever increasing difficulty, level after level until your thumbs felt like they were going to fall off? Well, add in a thong wearing main character, magic and some nice graphics and you are getting close to X-Blades. Throw in a terrible camera system, weak weapons and glitches and take out the story line; then you are really at the core of X-Blades.
Being that there are so many negatives, I think I will start with those; that way I can end on a more positive note. First of all, let me tell you that I can not stand this game. I tried to like it, I really did. I thought that it would be like a God of War knock off and I was pretty excited to play. Unfortunately, this game doesn't even come close to being worthy of wiping the blood and guts off of Kratos' blades.
As I have already stated, X-Blades is a game where you kill all of the enemies in a given level and then go into the next level; repeat ad nauseum. Each level will have a harder group of enemies. Once the level is cleared you pick up the items scattered throughout the level and go into the previously locked doorway which leads to the next level. Why do this you might ask? Who knows? Just do it; as the old Nike slogan used to say.
To say that you have to kill all of the enemies in a particular level really isn't true. Instead, there is a health meter at the bottom of the screen that you have to snuff out to release the lock on the doorway leading to the next level. To accomplish this goal is the trickiest part of the game and one of the most annoying. The player is often left to guess what will do it. Do you have to kill a thousand of the endless flies stinging you? Or do you focus on the giant flying ball high in the air? The only way to tell is to focus on one type of enemy and watch the enemy power meter. If it goes down then you are on the right track.
The game doesn't always leave the player out to dry, attempting to guess how to progress for a half hour before stumbling onto the answer (although this happens more often than not). At the beginning of some levels the game will supply the player with a bestiary entry that, when read, sometimes provides a clue. This information can be useful but it seemed rare.
Speaking of being left out to dry, let me tell you about the camera. To put it mildly the camera was abominable. The game's targeting system works based on the direction the player is looking. Since the player is constantly running and turning, the camera does as well. The right stick allows for panning of the camera, but keeping the camera steady as you are running around takes a lot of getting used to. Now that both of your thumbs are taken, try pressing the blade attack button (the X button). This is pretty much impossible. The gun attack button is the R1 and is a little more accessible, but the attack is so weak, especially later in the game, it is pretty much useless. While on the subject of targeting enemies, the game likes to often target the farthest enemy in the direction you are pointing instead of taking care of the immediate threat. Nice feature in the heat of battle.
On to the general lack of polish of the game! This aspect of the game really surprised me. Having worked on a few software titles in my career I know how important these things are and how distracting they can be. I am talking about little things like the menu items not lining up properly. But I am also talking about giant things like the game teleporting me to the head end of a head guy every time that I perform a magic attack. I guess I have come to expect a professionally produced game to look like a professionally produced game. I can overlook some things, like when a glitch is really random, but glaring, reproducible flaws are unacceptable. That is why you pay testers, to test.
The game isn't a total waste of space. It does support some pretty decent looking environments. The levels themselves are varied and can sometimes be used strategically. The enemies are varied and generally have a specific weakness for brining them down which adds an element of planning to the game. And there is a purchase system that allows new attacks and upgraded attacks to be purchased as you progress through the game.
Money is made by killing enemies and collecting their souls or by collecting diamond shaped items in levels. Why souls and how is it used as money? Who knows? Just do it. Once enough souls are found the attacks are available and can be mapped to buttons on the controller for easy access. Since some of the attacks are very expensive it takes a large amount of enemy killing to purchase them. To aid you in making money, the game allows you to keep any souls you collected when you die. So if you lose a level a hundred times you still get to keep all of the souls from the hundred times through.
While the music can be downright irritating at times, most of the time it was just there and seemed to blend in with the boards. The sound effects for some of the magic attacks were pretty cool and made it more engrossing. I especially like the first magic attack, the earthquake attack. The sound is very Matrix like, think of when things slow down and then speed back up in the movie, and it really added to the effect of the magic attack.
In the end these few positives did little to sway me; while all of the negatives knocked me over. For most people I say stay away. I can only recommend X-Blades to people who really, and I mean really, enjoy the endurance challenges in some of the other games and don't want anything more than that.
