Activision and Marvel Comics found success with both the X-Men Legends and Marvel Ultimate Alliance series on both PlayStation 2 and the original Xbox consoles. Now they are looking to recreate that commercial success with the release of X-Men: Destiny, which allows players to control three original mutants created specifically for this game and weave their destinies as the players see fit as potential members of the X-Men or the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.
Sounds great doesn't it? Read on to find out if everything pans out in the long haul...
Note: This is another re-posted article that needed to be reformatted from my original blog on Tumblr.
Characters:
On console versions, players have a choice of three new mutants at the beginning of the game.Aimi Yoshida: Born in Fuji City, Japan, Aimi was smuggled out of Japan by her mutant parents before their family could be incarcerated in mutant camps. She arrived in San Francisco, hidden on a tanker ship, too young and frightened to appreciate her parents' motivation for sending her away. Instead, she only felt the bitterness and anger at her parents for abandoning her.
Grant Alexander: Born in Sandersville, Georgia, Grant is a college freshman who dreams of becoming a professional football player. He hopes to land a spot on the varsity team at the University of California, Berkeley. Grant has no interest in politics and knows little about the ongoing mutant/human conflict.
Adrian Luca: Born in Los Angeles, California, Adrian is the son of an anti-mutant extremist who was killed in battle. His father’s associates called themselves "Purifiers". Under their care, Adrian was educated to hate all mutants and brought up to seek revenge for his father’s murder. The Purifiers have trained Adrian to be a soldier in their “pure-blooded” army.
The Nintendo DS version has only one character.
Non-playable characters
Many established characters from the X-Men universe make an appearance in the game to assist the player in combat or in the completion of the story line such as:X-Men
CyclopsEmma Frost
Caliban
Colossus
Forge
Gambit
Iceman
Nightcrawler
Northstar
Pixie
Surge
Wolverine
Brotherhood of Mutants
MagnetoJuggernaut
Mystique
Pyro
Quicksilver
Sabretooth (Nintendo DS Only)
Toad
Cast
Jamie Chung – Aimi YoshidaScott Porter – Adrian Luca
Milo Ventimiglia – Grant Alexander
Steven Blum – Wolverine, Pyro
Aileen Ong Casas – Surge, Pixie
Keith Ferguson – Cameron Hodge
Bob Glouberman – Caliban
Bill Graves – Magneto
Phil LaMarr – Gambit, Forge
Yuri Lowenthal – Nightcrawler, Northstar
Sunil Malhotra – Quicksilver
Jason Marsden – Iceman
Sumalee Montano – Mystique
Nolan North – Cyclops, Adrian Luca's father
Alexander Polinsky – Toad
André Sogliuzzo – Colossus, Luis Reyes
Gaku Space – Sunfire
Joel Spence – John Sublime
Keith Szarabajka – Bastion
Fred Tatasciore – Juggernaut
Kari Wahlgren – Emma Frost
Wally Wingert – Commentator
Additional voices by Aileen Ong Casas, Mark Famigletti, Keith Ferguson, Bob Glouberman, Bill Graves, Phil LaMarr, Yuri Lowenthal, Sunil Malhotra, Jason Marsden, Sumalee Montano, Minae Noji, Nolan North, Alexander Polinsky, André Sogliuzzo, Joel Spence, Keith Szarabajka, Fred Tatasciore, Kari Wahlgren, and Wally Wingert
A large amount of the main cast reprise their roles from Wolverine and the X-Men including Steve Blum, Phil LaMarr, Nolan North, and Kari Wahlgren.
The Plot: (FULL Spoilers)
X-Men Destiny is based in San Francisco, which has been divided into human and mutant areas due to a conflict between the two groups. At the start of the game, the player chooses from one of three mutant characters who have been originally created for the game. The game allows for the player to decide which mutants become their allies and enemies through choices made in the course of the story.The game begins at a peace rally held in San Francisco, in memory of the deceased Professor X, by the Mutant Response Division's Chief Luis Reyes. Things quickly turn into a disaster as the rally is attacked by an anti-mutant extremist organization called the Purifiers who were taking mutants alive and not killing them. Immediately after, the latent mutant powers of the player's character are awakened and he/she is forced to defend civilians in the area from the Purifiers. The player's character then meets with mutants from both the X-Men and Brotherhood of Mutants and makes the choice of joining either group as they go after Cameron Hodge, leader of the Purifiers. Hodge is wearing a Power Armor and personally joins the hunt for mutants.
While many characters wonder why the Purifiers are capturing mutants alive instead of killing them, the player character eventually corners Hodge on top of a building. The fight is then interrupted by Magneto, who is accused by Reyes for attacking the rally, and drops a steel bridge on top of the combat zone.
The player's character is saved by Nightcrawler at the last moment and teleported to China Town where he/she is tasked to find Gambit, who left the X-Men after the death of Professor X and is currently operating a casino in China Town. After meeting Gambit, he asks the player to help him raid a Purifier warehouse which contains technology that the Purifiers use against mutants. After the raid, Gambit gives the player the location of the secret underground lab where Purifiers hold captured mutants.
At the lab, the player meets several captured mutants such as Quicksilver, Surge and Colossus. With their help, the player eventually defeats Sublime and the U-Men, a group of anti-mutant soldiers that somehow uses power drained from mutants, and saves the captured victims.
Acting on information gained by the X-Men, the player goes to a secret underground base used by Hodge and Purifiers. He/she eventually finds Hodge who is now wearing a more powerful Power Armor containing drained mutant powers. Hodge claims that the power drained from Pixie and Caliban will enable them to find and capture any mutant that the Purifiers want. He also says that he is helped by some other group or person. After the fight, Hodge falls from the generator tower and is presumed dead.
Depending on the player's choice between the X-Men or the Brotherhood of Mutants, he/she goes to either Cyclops or Mystique with the new-found information and is tasked with finding Pixie and Caliban. With the aid of Forge, the player eventually finds Caliban and realizes that the person who is pulling the strings is Bastion, the robot who killed Professor X. Bastion somehow survived and uploaded himself to the MRD satellite; it is revealed that Reyes also works for him.
With Caliban's help, the player finds Pixie, but is too late. The helicopter carrying her gets shot down by a laser beam and crashes, resulting in the death of Pixie in the blast. Immediately after, regardless of the player's choices so far, Magneto accuses Cyclops of shooting down the helicopter and, alongside Juggernaut, attacks both Cyclops and the player's character. After the fight, Magneto grudgingly gives the player a chance to join the Brotherhood, and he/she is forced to make a decision.
Regardless of which side the player chooses, he/she is tasked to find and eliminate Reyes who seems to have mind control powers to influence other mutants. Reyes plans to amplify his power with Bastion's satellite so he can control both humans and mutants on Earth. After fighting several allied mutants and saving them from Reyes' mind-control, the player eventually finds the broadcasting tower used by Reyes and shuts down the signal with the aid of Cyclops and Magneto. However, Bastion downloads himself into Reyes, who is now wearing an even more powerful version of the Power Armor that Hodge was wearing, and takes control of his mind. Bastion also sends several Sentinel robots to the fight. After the player defeats Reyes and his Sentinels, Reyes surrenders to the authorities, to which the player responds that they (either X-Men or Brotherhood) are the law now.
The ending depends on which side the player chooses to join at the end of Chapter 7.
- If he/she sides with the X-Men, Cyclops and rest of the team is seen watching the remains of the city and promising that they will create a world where mutants and humans can live in peace. Cyclops says that there's another storm coming that might be worse than the ones they endured. Cyclops tells the player that it is good to know that the player is with them.
- If he/she sides with the Brotherhood of Mutants, Magneto and the player are seen watching the ruins of the city, with Magneto declaring the formation of a mutant-only nation and saying that he will teach the player how to survive in a world that despises mutants.
The Verdict:
I have to be honest here... After Spider-Man: Edge of Time, I REALLY didn’t have any high hopes for this at all. I meant to finish this BEFORE Batman: Arkham City came out but got sidetracked with college and work at the time. I must say, I really didn’t have much to look forward to here.The plot follows you in the role of three teenagers whose powers manifest during an attack during a rally for peace between the X-Men and MRD after the untimely death of Charles Xavier at the hands of the villain Bastion. Long story short, Bastion is a crazed mutant from the future set to rearrange our time to make his rule over all humanity and mutantkind, even more set in stone. You assist both the X-Men and ironically, the Brotherhood (led by Magneto of course), regain control during the rally, but ultimately it leads into a quest of seeing who was behind the rally attack. Throughout the game, you’re constantly urged to side with either the X-Men, or the Brotherhood.
So yeah, you pick one of these 3 blank slate characters and choose a starting mutant power — energy projection, density control, and shadow control. I went with density control and picked the girl, Aimi Yoshida, who just happens to be Sunfire’s (Shiro Yoshida) daughter, despite that it is implied but never flat out said in the comics. Throughout the game’s events, your powers “evolve” and you’re offered with multiple advances for your powers to develop a branching skill tree of different powers and abilities. For example, Density Control branches off and offers Obsidian Shards, Tremor, and finally Obsidian Titan as evolutions to your default power. Each of these branches can be leveled up through EXP but the end results aren’t as amazing as those found in the Marvel Ultimate Alliance or X-Men Legends series. Then there’s the costumes of other mutants to find, as matching these costumes with the corresponding mutants’ powers unlocks the X-Mode state that amplifies your powers even further in battle.
Overall, all of this sounds nice on paper, but once you start playing, it QUICKLY turns into another button-masher that could be finished in roughly 5-6 hours. X-Mode really doesn’t do anything “great” or stellar for combat whereas spamming the same few combos would wear down roughly any and everything you run against. You fight the same stale major boss repeatedly. The only thing that changes is his attacks and appearance changes over the course of the game, which is VERY sad to say the Sentinel boss fight prior to the final boss fight was done REALLY well - in my opinion. As a LONG-time X-Men fan, it’s sad to see Marvel drop the ball onto something that could have been an amazing game. There’s NO opportunities to play as the other members of the X-Men nor Brotherhood, and on top of that, NONE of their powers aren’t even unlockable for use for your chosen protagonist. Lame sauce indeed. The only bone they toss you is random “challenges” where either the X-Men/Brotherhood members run around an area like they are on acid, taking out of bad guys and stealing your EXP when they are supposed to be “assisting” you in battle. Some damn teamwork.
Oh and let’s not forget the lame ass Saturday morning plot that the game runs off of.
I will say that I did enjoy that majority of the cast from Wolverine & The X-Men lending their voices here, as I don’t get sick of hearing of Kari Wahlgren’s Emma Frost and Phil LaMarr’s Gambit voices. Regardless, that’s not enough to warrant a purchase here. Rent during the downtime of new games in 2014 or pick it up in the bargain bin for no more than than $5-10, if you really want to give this a shot. There’s CLEARLY a lot better titles out there to waste your hard-earned cash and free time on during this holiday season. X-Men: Destiny comes across as an unfinished HD remake of an unfinished X-Men Legends sequel. It gets a 5 out of 10.
This is how X-Men: Destiny should have turned out, not this crap that we were handed. I don't know if gamers are ever going to get a "good" X-Men game anytime soon.
إرسال تعليق