Gaming and Tech Network

When a person thinks of an X-Men game they are excited! Mutant powers, evil villains and an awesome story! What else could a person want? Most of the X-Men games have been appealing because of these aspects and now Silicon Knights has taken on the challenge of creating one themselves.

X-Men: Destiny takes place in a new world in the X-men universe where Professor X has been killed whilst defeating an evil robot from the future who has the mission of destroying all the mutants in the past. The game begins at a rally in support for the alliance of humans and mutants together lead by Cyclops and Luis Reyes. However, as the rally is being held it is interrupted by a chaotic storm of what seems to be powers of the mutants in The Brotherhood. At this point you choose from three different normal human characters to control that suddenly realize they have the amazing power of being a mutant, how convenient! Though this is where we see the main focus of Destiny, the power of choice.

Don't worry...I've never done this before...

Throughout Destiny you have many choices to make that affect the story and how you play the game. You can choose certain missions to take on that either side you with The Brotherhood or The X-Men which later lead on to you joining either side that you choose. Also, there are moments where you choose what powers you are going to learn during certain cut scenes, in the beginning there is usually three or four powers to choose from but as the game progresses your choices decline.

The gameplay in X-Men:Destiny was probably the simplest I have played in the past couple of years. I played the game on the hardest difficulty and yet I felt no challenge at all, a toddler could beat the game with no difficulty. Your character’s powers that you choose at the cut scenes do add to the game, for the first time you use them. Once you learn your ultimate attack and use it once it just becomes annoying and useless. I found myself becoming upset whenever I accidentally activated my ultimate power because of it’s slow motion and annoying movement. Also, you are never notified of your character being attacked, oh sorry was that a flamethrower? I didn’t notice. As for the rest of the gameplay….just hit the attack button.

I also found the graphics to be very disappointing. You would think in our time it would not be such a challenge for a character to grab an object smoothly. This game has points where characters awkwardly jump from object to object, they would combine with other objects in the environment and the fighting just didn’t impress at all. Besides the awkward action and movements the textures, lights and explosions just looked bland.

If you were planning on buying X-Men:Destiny, please just go back to playing the classic X-Men arcade or ANYTHING else, just don’t waste your time on this game. If you just have to play it though, just rent it. The game can be completed within 4 hours and then you can return it without feeling like you have lost anything.