Madcap's Game Reviews - "X-Men: Destiny"

Xbox 360 Box Art

….and then X-Men Destiny happened.  The funny thing, though, is that before the game actually appeared on display at my local Wal-Mart, I had heard absolutely nothing about it. And I mean nothing, which means one of two things.  Either that I’m not on the up and up as much as I thought I was, or the studio and publisher realized they had a massive pile of feces on their hands and wanted it to slip by unnoticed.  Well, from the reviews I’ve read, it certainly hasn’t done that.

So, I figured the only logical step was to subject myself to the potential psychological torture.  Getting the game and now having beaten it…I’m more disappointed than I thought I’d be.  If the title didn’t give it away, the game is about the X-Men of Marvel Comics, a team of people born with strange and wondrous powers who fight a war against others of their kind so they can protect humanity and encourage peaceful co-existence between humans and mutants.

So how can a studio fail to make a good game based on a nearly fifty year long publication history complete with several deep and complex characters and deep, intricate storylines?  In a word: astonishingly.  But does it really deserve all the hate it seems to be getting? No, say, and here’s why.

It’s a beat ‘em up. The game would like to have you think it’s an action RPG, but it’s not.  A drop down menu with one or two word dialogue options does not make it an RPG.  The “moral choices” are strictly to change some minor details. Early on, the player can start earning points towards the X-Men or Brotherhood of Mutants factions and it becomes entirely pointless because the player is then given the option later on of which team they wish to join.

I’d almost liken it to Fable and it’s karma system, except there’s no actual weight to any of the choices. Whether Brotherhood or X-Men, the story ends up panning out the same way. The whole storyline just has the minor changes depending on choices and on which of the three different characters you pick at the beginning of the game.

I’d tell you about the gameplay, but if you’ve played any beat ‘em up, just add some superpowers and you’ve played this.  All in all, I would say it’s something to showcase the X-Men in all their glory to potential fans (and once more just, sarcastic airquotes, bowing before the awesome that is Wolverine), but then the fans are really the only ones who are going to be interested in this to begin with.

It all smacks of laziness and a cheap cash-in.  It’s definitely not worth what it costs and I doubt it’ll even come close to making it all back…

"X-Men Destiny" is now available from Activison and Silicon Knights and is available on Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Wii, and Nintendo DS.

This review is based on the Xbox 360 version.

Madcap's Game Reviews - "Fallout New: Vegas - The Lonesome Road"

The Lonesome Road" is a 1927 song with music by Nathaniel Shilkret and lyrics by Gene Austin, alternat-
...what? Oh, I'm sorry, you were expecting a game review? Well, I was expecting an epic conclusion for all the set up that Bethesda and Obsidian have been doing since last November, so I guess we're just all disappointed, aren't we? It's hard to pinpoint exactly was about New Vegas' latest (and, perhaps, last) DLC pisses me off, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to try.

While being fully aware of how Bethesda's RPGs tend to take the route of blank faced, generic hero with no discernable backstory. That is, after all, why it's a Role Playing Game. Fine. With New Vegas, however as we all known, they dropped hints about the backstory of our character - the Courier - through dialogue in vanilla New Vegas and have given more and more throughout the three DLCs that came before this one. These also hinted at another courier running around the Mojave, a foil to the PC Courier, with some connection to the player that has been left unknown...until now.

As I said in my other reviews of the New Vegas DLCs, I won't go over gameplay, since you already have the game if you're even remotely interested in this steaming pile of Brahmin dung. Storyline-wise, I got back into the leather boots of Reese (who you may remember from my last few reviews of the DLC goodness...when it was still good). Reese had just gotten a strange package with some coordinates and the word "Ulysses" on it, which excited me. Finally, I was going to find out who this was! What he wanted with me!

...then I ran into ED-E, who those who are familiar with glitches in New Vegas may remember as "Robot Prick Who Likes To Disappear off the Face of the Earth". Fearing the worst, I let the little chrome soccerball follow me around. This actually became an aspect of the story I liked, giving some funny dialogue options that transposed well with the desolation and utter horror of the destroyed setting around me and more importantly, did not actually run off and vanish. And now back to the hate...

Needless to say, I trekked through a very linear setting of broken terrain, cave-like underpasses, and atomic warheads in order to find the courier who so tormented me at the end of it all. And in the end...well, I'm not going to spoil, but it degrades into a case of "But For Me, It Was Tuesday" on your character's part. For all the set up they made for this...and we get that...

This isn't the first time I've been disappointed by a storyline from Bethesda - Oblivion takes that slot) - but it's even more depressing and nonsensical than the ending of that game for me. At least Oblivion has the excuse of being just one game. Lonesome Road has no excuses whatsoever. It was set up in the base game, in three DLCs, and this was literally the best that they could give us? Us who have waited through a year and a lot of pointless and unexplained delays? Really?

A lot of you have probably guessed that storyline will often sell me on a game more than graphics or gameplay mechanics will. Throwing a bunch of shiny new weapons to shoot, slice, and burn my enemies with does little to nothing for me if I'm not interested in the story or the characters. If I wanted to just mindlessly butcher my enemies, I'd play "Manhunt". Want to know why I'm not playing that? BECAUSE I WAS PLANNING ON AN AMAZING CONCLUSION TO NEW VEGAS!!! C'mon, Bethesda, you've had excellent game stories before, why are you doing this now?

Next time, Bethesda (well, first, stop working with Obsidian), don't do a set up for an amazing climatic ending to a storyline unless you plan to have an amazing climatic ending. Again, can't give much without spoiling, but if you played the first DLCs and enjoyed the foreshadowing, you're gonna be real disappointed...
This review is based on the Xbox 360 DLC

An Apology to All

I know none of you were reading, so that's fine. The blog was dead for a bit because Blogspot seemed not to want to work. So I've been working off of my IGN Blog. Here are the reviews that are not here:

Shadows of the Damned

Fallout New Vegas: "Old World Blues"

Dead Space 2

Alan Wake

And my not-review of Risen can be read below. But I'm baaack!!!

Madcap's Mad Rantings - "Risen"

So, yeah, sorry about no review this week, real life keeps getting in the way. I keep meaning to get , Assassin's Creed finished and I do mean to and get it put up here, don't worry (also considering putting my reviews into a biweekly slot now instead of every week, unless I can get where I can do them weekly again). So, to make up for no review this week, let me instead tell you about a game that was so dry and so irritating that I couldn't even finish it: Risen. (This is technically not a review, since I didn't finish it, so...yeah...me, ranting...angrily...)

What is Risen? Well, it's something that by Piranha Bytes (who I will be avoiding in the future) and published by Deep Silver (also off my Christmas card list) that promises to be an epic fantasy adventure. It's not. It's a rather boring, sticky game that irritated me after about half an hour of playing it. I wish I were even joking. Sorry, Piranha Bytes, but you can't establish a vague backstory then throw me into Fantasy World "X" and expect me to be interested in the story. Being washed up on an island would be exciting if something actually happened! I have the same problem with Alice: The Madness Returns, having a story involves having something actually happen!

I would almost say it's giving up it's storyline to showcase and amazing graphics engine, but it doesn't have that. The graphics look bizarrely cartoon-y and realistic, like they couldn't decide if they wanted to go with the Fable look or the Dragon Age look and succeeds at neither one of them. Instead we get something that looks like it could be a Saturday morning cartoon version of Lord of the Rings.

Then again, I seem to remember Lord of the Rings having characters that were interesting and that I wanted to follow from the very beginning. In the half hour I played Risen, I encountered the main character, a bald apparently middle aged man with no discernable personality (but who is oh, so British) and a woman was supposed to be wearing furs (I imagine) but just really looked like she had particularly hairy her breasts and gentalia (Another note to Piranha, TNA will only get you so much!). I literally ran into goblins during the game that had more personality than these two...and I actually felt bad about killing mook NPCs for the first time in my life.

Of course, the killing took place with a ridiculous combat interface. It's depressing to see real-time melee combat done so terrifically bad. The main character (who I will call "Bob") seemed to move half a second slower than I needed him too. Matters weren't helped when Bob decided after hacking through an enemy right in front of him that it was a much better idea to look at the wall nearby instead of going for the next enemy who was less than half a foot away with a sword ready to be rammed in his gut. This game is actually showing it's PC origins. Things ported over to console never seem to do well (I'm sure some have done well, but I can't think of any).

So, in the end. Bad game that has no flow whatsoever and is unintuitive in every way. Nice job, Piranha. Nice job.

This is based on the Xbox 360 version of the game.