X-BLADES REVIEW Posted by PlayDevil.com Staff on Mar 28, 2009 18:42 (Mar 28, 2009 18:42) |
Written by: Mark
 What is X-Blades?
I’ll have to admit that when I received my copy of "X-Blades" for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 I was asking the same question as I had not really heard much about the game myself other than it was a hack and slash game from SouthPeak Games.
In fact the actual story sees you taking on the role of a female treasure hunter called Ayumi who is seeking out a hidden relic which is broken up into two halves. Once complete the relic gives the owner a map of the two most powerful artifacts known to man, the light orb and the dark orb which rule over the world.
In order to succeed in her quest Ayumi must enter two islands featuring and defeat all manner of enemies in order to gain possession of the hidden map and save the universe.
Character Design:
The first noticeable thing with the main character of Ayumi is the lack of clothing which she wears throughout the game which simply consists of nothing more than just underwear. Instantly this gave me the feeling that the game has a certain tacky and cheap feel before I even got into the gameplay.
 The saving grace with the character is the weaponry at her disposal with the title of the game coming from the X blades which Ayumi possesses. These come in the form of two cool looking gun blades which are two sword attachments strapped to Ayumi’s arms which can not only be used for slashing opponents but also as a number of firearms which certainly help when facing some of the tougher enemies but often make the game easier than it should be.
In addition Ayumi can collect the souls of the defeated enemies and gain a variety of magic abilities which it has to be said have varying degrees of effectiveness.
Gameplay:
This is where I have to be very critical of X Blades as the game offers no more than continuous bashing of buttons to progress. As eluded to earlier in the review you have a variety of weaponry at your disposal which does make your task somewhat easier and these can be used with the ability to lock on to your nearest enemy. This however is somewhat of a lottery as this rarely works how you wish and this often leads to being attacked by enemies which are surrounding you whilst you are trying to come to term with the awkwardness of the controls.
The enemies themselves consist of a variety of creatures from crawling creatures, flying creatures, undead who fight back and of course the obligatory boss characters and how you progress through levels in X Blades is interesting to say the least.
 As you enter a room you often find you way to progress blocked whilst a red health bar appears at the bottom of the screen and this acts as a guide as to many enemies you have to kill in order to continue your quest. This makes for some very lengthy and repetitive battles as wave after wave of enemies appear on screen and bearing in mind in order to defeat them you simply bash buttons this quickly becomes a chore. This is particularly evident in boss battles some of which can take as much as half an hour to defeat particularly if you have selected the wrong magic abilities prior to the levels commencing.
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