X-Men Destiny Review

I rented out the Xbox game Xmen Destiny recently. I was attracted to the idea of choosing your own mutant powers that was presented on the box. As a review:

The problem with the game is that it is very restrictive and rather short. You have to follow the story to the letter with minor decisions changing the outcome slightly, you dont get to explore the environment in any real depth, not do you have any freedom of choice as to when you do something, you are forced to do the main and only quest from the beginning to the end - which too me about 7 hours over all, give or take.

I can see in the game a very Fable-esque style, in that the developers attempted to give you a blank slate from which you could develop a character within set boundaries however you wanted to become the main hero of the storyline and you would have the option of costumizing it in several ways. Where they fell down, however, was in not going you any free time to do what you want so you make no connection to the character but use it instead as a beserker that barrels through every level regardless of any changes you make to its power base.

Then there is the problem of costumes. You can pick up costumes but picking up X-markers - but this is hit and miss and you are just as likely to get an additional possible power than a costume - or through the storyline itself but you have no option to costumize the costumes themselves. Rather than give you the option of chopping and changing the individual items of clothes like boots, gloves, shirt, pants and even masks you are given a full costume everytime. They missed a trick here because a big part of the appeal of such "create your own character" games is when you can mix and match costume parts.

Then we come to the power unlocks. Like most games of this kind it is build on experiance unlocking the power but this works in X-Men Destiny only with the main power where they are unlocked during game play and you have the option of choosing which ones you want. In the add-on powers gained through the X-markers, which are taken from canonical Earth616 Marvel character, you get far too many for you to use and end up spoilt for choice, this is a bad thing.

And there is not enough time to max out your experiance and powers in the main quest line, simply because there is no enough game play. There are additionally challenge arenas where you can gain extra experiance but even with that there is simply no time to develop fully.

They should have taken a page out of Lionhead Studio's book and given you a world - or at least a city - to explore at your own pace with side-quests as well as the main quests, allowing you more time to explore and enjoy the game and develop you character fully.

I actually enjoyed the game overall but the restrictive nature of it makes it a let down.

Thanks for the review. I've really wanted to play it, but I haven't really heard many good things. I'd get it if I could grab it for a good price, but it's still quite expensive.

In this kind of game, I like becoming all-powerful eventually. Not like a god, exactly, but I don't see the point of becoming more powerful if you can't destroy enemies with ease. Typically they get harder and that's when I give up. If your power-ups aren't consistent with the difficulty of gameplay, I get annoyed quickly.

You can definitely become very powerful in the game. The final unlockable main power is a short-lived indestrutable mode, and the X-Marker add on powers allows you to add the strenght of the Juggernaught, or Emma Frost's Diamond Skin, or the speed of Quicksilver, and many other options.

There are specific places during the main story line when you have a cinematic break within which you choose from two options of the next level of you main power, so you develop as the game progresses to a level and the difficulty of gameplay never exceeds the levels of powers.

As I said, the main draw backs I had with it was that there was not enough time to max-out the powers I wanted or to explore the area's and that I had no freedom to move away from the main storyline.

So there's no free-roam or free-play mode where you can really max stuff out? That would be a pain, yeah. I guess the idea is they expect you to earn more points by being 'better' - but I tend to suck at games. No matter how much I play, I never become awesome at it.

Case in point: I can't finish Street Fighter IV on "Very Easy" mode. That last boss just gets me every time.

Good review, WT. Actually very glad you posted this. Been looking at this game for a bit.

I really like "sandbox" games. Like GTA, Red Dead, Infamous, etc. Open-world style games.

With that style/mode you can replay it a few times.

-HECK!