X-Men: Destiny

Rating: 1 out of 3 Stars (why out of 3 stars?)
Genre: Beat-'em-up; Sub-genre: Super Hero
ESRB: T (for some 60's Batman violence and ruination of a franchise name)
Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): 6/4
Developer: Silicon Knights
Wiki page

Boy, oh, boy! The X-Men in a beat 'em up! Nothing can possibly go wrong with THAT concept! If you ever got to play the arcade game as a kid (and presumably were not forced to play as Dazzler)  then you know what I mean. And with almost 20 years between this game and that one, there's sure to be some improvements! The dialogue alone should at least go from things like "Welcome to die!" to something that resembles English. And we've got Silicon Knights developing it! Wooo!

They're in the "take 10 years to make a game" club. They're solid.

Okay, enough sarcasm. I actually went into this game hoping for something good. I did like one or two things in Too Human, so I was hoping to see some ingenuity here. And I've heard people say good things about their horror game or whatever it was.

Sauce?

But I really should have lowered my expectations... apparently by a lot. What I found was a game typical of a pre-established non-video game franchise with writing from Resident Evil 1. I literally wondered if these people understood English. Or maybe they just didn't plan out their cutscenes or hire a sound engineer or some kind of dialogue director. Here is an example of what I mean. I especially like the ending of the scene that I jumped to 10:48 for, where Magento gets his introductory label in a split second as he's LEAVING. Then it cuts to Reyes and his men, who awkwardly leave the scene without saying a word, then back to Magento who is still flying away at about 5 miles an hour. Did they even look at this a second time? Wait a second... is it Magneto or Magento? I forgot again.

Looks more like "Magento" to me. I'll stick with that.

At this point, I should move forward from talking about the "story" part of this game. I could spend the entire article listing hilarious gems like "My men are a bit hair trigger", or listing off the amazing inflections used like this one about bringing down a satellite. You get the idea. That first video is also a good example of the shitacular graphics this game uses. What the fuck is wrong with the textures on the ground? Why do the other characters look like they came from a GameCube game? One thing I do like, though, is the different outfits you can choose from. The choices range from "dorky" to "Freddie Mercury".

Style!

You know what? I'm not being fair. After all, this is not only a video game but a beat 'em up; gameplay should be the main point. But keep in mind certain things affect gameplay that you might not immediately think of. Basically, what's the difference between pressing R to shoot a machine gun and pressing R to have your character flip on a light switch? Both things are pushing buttons, and if they both lead to victory then that should feel good, right? Well, in a sense you ARE just pushing buttons no matter what you do, but you have to CARE what pushing that button does. So there's a very big visual/story aspect that fucks up the gameplay here: you do NOT get to play as the X-Men. That's right. You are just some generic idiot created by the developers of this game, not a canonical character from the X-Men/Marvel universe. This might be fine if you could customize your character, like City of Heroes of Champions Online, but you can't!

NOT the X-Men.

The X-Men just show up in cutscenes and just sort of give you a thumbs up on your way. Pretty much regardless of what happens. There's this whole decision system in the game, but none of your decisions change anything. I actually played through this crap just to see what would happen. And the way these "decisions" present themselves is both lazy and apathetic. Nightcrawler at one point asks for your help and you can choose to side with Mystique. His response is basically, "Oh, that's too bad. Well, let me know if you change your mind." What's even more ridiculous, is that the game informs you when you are making a decision via recorded character dialogue. I am not exaggerating here. I defeated a boss and he proceeded to tell me that I had a decision to make, the choice was mine. My character stared blankly and asked "The choice is mine?" or some such.  This crap completely removed me from caring about the consequences of my actions, rendering the entire design choice of having "decisions" as something that takes AWAY from the game rather than add to it.

Let's talk about the combat: press X and Y a bunch. Good job, you beat Dynasty Warriors. I mean, wait... what game is this? But seriously, this game sticks with a tried and true formula as far as beat 'em up's go. If you haven't played a video game in a decade, this might seem pretty amazing to you. There's three different fighting styles, each with two-sided skill trees to upgrade via leveling. Maybe if I hadn't played God of War and about 23 "Warriors" games this would be fun, but it's stale to me at this point. Even then, I'll admit I do enjoy going back into an ol' beat 'em up like this. The real problem is that the Batman: Arkham Asylum/City games have spoiled me. They are so far ahead of everyone else, it's stupid. I really can't understand why game developers are having such a hard time stealing from those games. C'mon. Stop stealing from Dynasty Warriors and God of War. This game should have at least stolen from Too Human: the use of the right-stick to perform combat, the sliding around, the ability to swap back and forth between melee and ranged attacks, pop up combos, etc. That game was also terrible, but it at least did different things and earned itself something of a niche following. It also had co-op.

Oh, yeah! X-Men: Destiny has no co-op mode. What kind of shit is that?

Conclusion:
A poorly thrown together attempt at cashing in on the X-Men franchise. Don't let the promise of an X-Men beat 'em up fool you, especially since you don't get to play as any of them.