I think the first time I tried to move the TV remote solely using the power of my mind was when I was about eight years old.

I’ve been dreaming of becoming one of Marvel Comics’ ‘mutants’ ever since. I would join the X-Men and become a hero, and be utterly and unapologetically awesome. Alas, it turns out that telekinesis is not one of my god-given talents; at least, not yet. In the meantime, I am left to live out my super-heroic dreams through comics, movies, and games. X-Men Destiny promised to be a cause for celebration for me and my inner eight-year-old, but, regrettably, the celebration consisted of a couple of awkward high-fives instead of the tribal comic geek dance that we had been anticipating.

X-Men: Destiny seems promising enough, as it sets out to tread the ground so many X-Men games before it have surprisingly ignored. Instead of letting you play as an established mutant hero or villain, the game casts you as a new mutant in the Marvel Universe, and allows you to choose your alliances, siding either with the X-Men or the Brotherhood of Mutants. This is a seriously great idea; what better way is there to get the wannabe mutants of the world to identify with a game character, than to let us play through our very own origin story? Sadly, although the premise is full of promise, the execution is a strictly mediocre affair.


The game starts off at a San Francisco peace rally, hosted by the government’s Mutant Response Division, the X-Men and the Mayor. All of the involved parties are hoping to quell the rising tensions between mutants and humans, as relations have hit an all-time low following a series of natural disasters, for which mutants have been scapegoated. Add to that the death of Professor Charles Xavier, and the disbandment of the X-Men, and things look pretty grim. As you can expect, the rally does not go as planned, as an apparent mutant attack sends the masses running for the hills. You stand somewhere in that panicking crowd and, as all hell breaks loose around you, your mutant powers manifest themselves for the very first time. The story offers several predictable twists and turns, but, for the most part, it isn’t half bad. X-Men Destiny offers up a true comic book yarn, which could have been pulled straight out of one of Marvel’s books. So what’s the problem? Well, the problem is the way the game wants you to believe the choices you make have some kind of effect on the story, when, in fact, they don’t.

See, at the beginning of the game, you’re prompted to choose between one of three characters: Aimi Yoshida, a young and spunky Japanese refugee; Grant Alexander, a football jock with a college scholarship (and, if you’re wondering, he is indeed a total douche); and Adrian Luca, who, as the son of a human supremacist, is arguably the most interesting of the three characters. Choosing who you play as is the first 'false' choice that the game presents you with, because the characters are so poorly developed that, regardless of who you choose, your experience with the game will be largely unchanged. Sure, Grant hits on any female character he can find, and Adrian has some serious daddy issues which pop up occasionally, but other than that, the game doesn’t really make you feel like you’re having substantially different experiences.

The same can be said of your choices of alignment with either the X-Men or the Brotherhood. Throughout the game you’ll encounter several well-known Brotherhood and X-Men members, many of whom will ask you for help with various missions and attempt to sway you towards their cause. As a fan of the comics, fighting beside Emma Frost was very different from fighting alongside Mystique, but for the casual gamer, I’m not quite sure the difference will register, largely because the game fails to make the missions offered by both sides feel any different. Most missions task you with taking out a given number of enemies, and regardless of who you fight alongside, you’ll smash through the same faceless lackeys and ultimately head towards the same goal. Having played through the campaign aligned with both the X-Men and the Brotherhood, it was utterly disappointing to choose differently only to find that I ended up taking on exactly the same mission that I had completed before. Talk about lazy game design.


As for the gameplay, X-Men Destiny promises to make me feel like a powerhouse of a mutant, and for the most part, I’m going to go ahead and confirm that this is achieved. Although the game is mostly a button masher, I must admit I did enjoy mashing said buttons, mainly due to the different ways that the game allows you to customise your mutant and his or her powers. At the start of the game, you’ll be asked to choose between three different power sets: density control, which will turn you into a brawler with the ability to encase yourself in obsidian stone; shadow matter, which will allow you to pull off some very acrobatic and quick moves (think a badass Nightcrawler); or energy projection, which will have you shooting shiny lights from your hands that blow stuff up real good. Each power set comes with a branching skill tree, which allows you to upgrade your powers with new combos and abilities, all pretty standard stuff. The real treats, though, are offered up by the X-Genes.

X-Genes are power-ups and upgrades you are awarded with upon completing missions. Think of them as genetic material belonging to your favourite X-Men characters, which you can equip to your character. There are three different types of X-Genes: offensive, which grant special attributes to your attacks; defensive, which ramp up your evasion skills and defensive capabilities; and utility, mostly passive abilities or movement upgrades, which grant you the power of flight or super-speed. If you’re playing with density control powers, you might equip the Iceman offensive X-Gene, the Emma Frost defensive X-Gene, and the Quicksilver utility X-Gene; this will cause your character’s hits to freeze your opponents, and allow you to run around the screen at super-speed with your body encased in diamond. Just that idea is pretty freaking awesome, especially for a fan of the comics.

One last bit of customisation comes in the form of the special suits you find. These suits are also inspired by the most famous mutants in the comics, so each of the three main characters end up with their own version of classic costumes, such as Wolverine’s yellow-and-blue costume, or Psylocke’s purple threads. These suits aren’t just for show, though. If you equip all of the X-Genes related to a specific character and also wear that character's suit, you’ll be able to activate X-Mode, which grants you a considerable power boost for a short period of time, allowing you access to the abilities and powers of the mutant whose genes you have equipped.


So gameplay is completely epic, right? Well, no: sadly, it isn’t. Although goofing about with your mutant powers is fun, the enemies that the game pits you against are just too darn repetitive and, frankly, dumb. The AI is a mess, and enemy variation is slim. You end up feeling like an Omega-level mutant taking on a bunch of Danger Room bots. Can this be fun? Certainly. Is it ultimately forgettable? Absolutely and undeniably.

Lastly, the game has caught a good deal of flak for its presentation, and it’s time that the record were set straight: it isn’t as horrible as certain internet folks would have you believe. The voice work is actually pretty darn good, and all the major players act and sound like you would expect them to, which is something I greatly appreciate. As for the visuals, there are two things to consider: the art style and the graphics. The art style wants to be great; a very cool animation sequence at the beginning of the game just oozes with comic book coolness. Likewise, the character's suits all look good and are faithful to the comic design – with the exception of the newly hippie Nightcrawler – and the main characters’ customised suit designs are pretty authentic as well. The problem is that the graphics just don’t do the designs justice. Character models are seriously lacking in detail and animation fluidity, and the hair, oh-do-not-even-get-me-started on the hair. Mutant powers look okay, with some decent particle effects here and there, but the environments you let your powers loose in are mostly drab and lifeless. All in all, the game is not hideous, but neither is it pretty by any stretch of the imagination. On the heels of Batman: Arkham City, a visually-uninspired comic book game is simply unacceptable.


If you are a fan of the comics, I say you should definitely give X-Men: Destiny a try. There is a certain rush to fighting as a new mutant alongside the likes of Cyclops, Colossus, and Emma Frost, which only an X-Men fan can entirely appreciate. I'd be lying if I said that I didn’t have fun with this game, though whilst X-Men: Destiny is a fun distraction, it doesn't achieve much more than that. If you’re looking for the next great action RPG or comic book game, your attention should be centred elsewhere.

6/10 [?]

Labels: 2011, Activision, Joey Núñez, PlayStation 3, Review, Silicon Knights, Wii, X-Men, Xbox 360

It's an exciting time to be a fan of Marvel's Merry Mutants, the X-Men.

In the pages of the X-Men comics, a major overhaul is in the works for the team as the Schism event, a story arc centred on a team-dividing clash between Wolverine and Cyclops, comes to an end. This summer, X-Men First Class helped 20th Century Fox prove that there was still hope for the X-Men film franchise. And, just recently, gamers around the globe were able to get their hands on X-Men: Destiny, the latest game to feature Marvel’s super-powered outcasts.

Developed by Silicon Knights, X-Men: Destiny is an action-RPG that allows you to step into the shoes of one of three original mutant characters. Although the game doesn’t allow you to create your own characters, there is a heavy emphasis on power customisation, so your mutant of choice will have the abilities which suit you best. Likewise, you are free to determine your allegiance, as the game allows you to choose to side with the stubbornly heroic X-Men, or the Brotherhood of Mutants (a.k.a., the bad guys). Now, although my status as an X-Men fanboy is undisputed, the sad truth is that if I had to sum up Destiny in one word, it would be disappointing. Lackluster graphics, repetitive combat and uninspired characters rob the game of all of its potential.

But I promise you gamers, Marvel's Merry Mutants have seen better days. Don't believe me, yeah well i came prepared. I leave you with the definitive list of the very best X-Men games of the past; basically just the games I liked the very most.

X-Men Arcade

If part of your childhood was spent frolicking in the savageness of the early 90s, chances are that you, like me, spent a considerable amount of time at the arcade. Everyone has that single arcade game that they remember the most, the one that swallowed the most coins and incited the simultaneous feelings of excitement, rage and love. For me, that game was the X-Men Arcade. It’s both the first arcade game I can remember playing, and the one I played the most.

A classic 90s beat-em-up, X-Men Arcade was basically a side-scroller where you hit everything that stood in your way. Refined gameplay it wasn't, but man, was it fun. The game featured six beloved X-Men in playable roles – Wolverine, Cyclops, Dazzler, Colossus, Nightcrawler and Storm are all present – and they all look great (all things considered), with big and detailed character sprites. I’m a huge fan of Storm, and some of my fondest gaming memories involve kicking Sentinels to the curb with everyone’s favourite weather witch. Though, in all honesty, I never did understand why Storm was packing a wand.

Spider-Man and the X-Men: Arcade’s Revenge

A SNES game featuring both the X-Men and Spider-Man was almost too much for my ten-year-old mind to compute. The sheer incredible awesomeness of the concept was too much to bear. That’s probably why I never finished the game. Or maybe it was because the game was so freaking hard, even by old-school standards.

This nineties gem had Spider-Man rushing in to save Storm, Gambit, Wolverine and Cyclops from the menace of Arcade. You don’t need to know much about the guy, just that he’s constructed a fun little theme park called Murderworld; Disney World it is not. As with many SNES platformers of the day, the controls were a challenge unto themselves, the platforming was torture, and deaths came cheaply, but these hang-ups made getting through a level all the more rewarding. It was no masterpiece, but Cyclops shot his optic blasts and Gambit threw his cards, and at the time, that was enough.

X-Men (Sega Genesis)

When I finally managed to convince my parents to get me a Sega Genesis, this is the first game I bought. A 2D platformer at heart, the game allowed you to take control of Cyclops, Gambit, Nightcrawler and Wolverine. Several other X-Men were featured as assist characters too, including Rogue, Iceman, Storm and Archangel. As a kid, watching Jean Grey swoop in and save me from falling to my death with her telekinetic powers was probably the most amazing thing I’d ever seen – I didn’t get out much, but still. The graphics were all kinds of pretty, with detailed, colourful sprites, and the gameplay was as challenging as you would expect from a mid-90’s 16-bit platformer.

But what is the one thing that really sets this game apart? The one thing that every person who ever played it was unable to forget? The game was set in the X-Men’s Danger Room — if you don’t know what that is, honestly I don’t know how you’re still reading this — and the premise was that the X-Men’s training system had been infected by a virus. Upon defeating one of the bosses, the game would tell you to 'reset the computer' in order to clear the virus. Look all you want at the screen, you’ll find no reset button, or command prompt; you had to literally press the reset button on your console. Hold down on the button too long, however, and the system would reset like normal.

You can imagine my frustration the hundreds of time I held the button for just a moment too long. My controller, on the other hand, felt my frustration, as I threw it across the room. Again, and again, and again.

X-Men: Children of the Atom

Before Marvel vs. Capcom, there was X-Men vs. Street Fighter, and before that there was X-Men: Children of the Atom. It was a bright day in Valhalla when Marvel and Capcom put their heads and talents together to create a fighting game, and gamers have been thanking their lucky stars ever since. Children of the Atom was the first fighting game to feature the X-Men, created by the great minds behind Street Fighter; with a pedigree like that, it’s no wonder the game is still impressive today. In fact, if you look closely enough, you’ll notice that Wolverine and Storm use pretty much the same special moves today, almost twenty years later, in Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Now that’s what I call staying power.

A few years later, Capcom would lose the rights to Marvel’s characters. Activision stepped in, and created three X-Men-centric fighting games (Mutant Academy and its sequel, and X-Men: Next Dimension), and although I played the hell out of those games, they didn't hold a candle to Capcom’s original masterpiece. I’m glad that the mutants are back in the hands of Capcom, and here’s hoping against hope that a Children of the Atom sequel might still see the light of day.

X-Men: Legends and X-Men: Legends 2

The X-Men are, first and foremost, a team, and although many games had let you control many different X-Men one-at-a-time, no game had ever put you in control of a team. Activision and Raven Software set out to solve that problem with X-Men: Legends, released for the PlayStation 2, GameCube, and Xbox. Featuring fifteeen playable characters, each with their own diverse power set, the game allowed you to create teams of up to four X-Men, and wreak havoc on multitudes of baddies. An action RPG, Legends almost felt like Diablo for X-Men fans.

How cool was it to hold a baddie in place using Jean Grey’s Telekinesis, and then blast him away with Cyclops optic blast?

About as freaking awesome as it sounds.

The cel-shaded character models of the game weren’t appreciated by every gamer out there, but regardless of whichever gripes you had over the graphics, the Legends games offered a definitive X-Men experience, with great storylines, a massive list of playable characters, and gameplay that was faithful to the comics. A greater X-Men game has yet to be created if you ask me.

Labels: 2011, Columns, Feature, Joey Núñez, RePlay, Silicon Knights, X-Men