X-Men Destiny

Is Homo Superior? X-Men: Destiny Review

When people ask me who my favorite comic book character is I get flummoxed, Colossus is sexy and sincere (and gigantic), Storm is classy kick-ass, Night Crawler is the gayest and bluest metaphor, Professor Xavier= awesome, Phoenix, damn! and then there are The New Mutants, so all I can say when they ask is The X-Men.   When they ask what powers I would want I burst into flames- wait, no I don’t want flames, DAMN IT!  X-Men Destiny allows players to choose one of three mutants and choose their powers, and they are all flippin’ cool.

I HAVE THE POWER

Destiny’s strength is its  fanboy’s wet dream of a power set.   Want to shoot ice, or tool around on iceslides, you can.  Want Emma’s diamond skin, Gambit’s pink kinetics, and Toad’s B.O.- they’re yours.  The powers are great and allow you to subtly change your core power which can be rock armor for the brawlers, shadow matter, a telekinetic blade-looking affair, or energy projectiles.  These powers have further permutations a player chooses as the game progresses and allows for a nice amount of customization.

Players also get to pick from three mutants Grant, a bland, but sexy looking all American football player, Aimi, an illegal Asian immigrant who is female and fashion forward, or Adrian, the surprisingly interesting former anti mutant militia man.  The militia man is well voiced, tormented by the memory of his anti-mutant father, and the most real of the three, he truly struggles with who he is now and who he wants to be. 

It is obvious the creators love the X-men, the character models are lovingly rendered, and for the most part, convincingly written, Emma Frost suffers again from being forced from being The Ice Queen to being a MILF, but Nightcrawler, Cyclops, and Collossus capture the earnesty of the X-Men’s cause, and Magneto’s strength , conviction and intelligence are obvious.  The X-Men and The Brotherhood (led by Magneto and Mystique) are facing the same foe and have different views on how to get things done, but it is not presented as a simple good/bad choice.  Magneto is willing to break a few eggs and heads and eggheads to make his omlette of mutant survival and the X-men want peaceful coexistence.

WITH GREAT POTENTIAL COMES…

The game has its problems.  While there are some beautiful touches, the opening comic, the flashy entrances and comic book style, exciting power effects, the settings couldn’t be more bland- everything is gray and broken down, and for some reason you’re in the sewers quite often.  There is very little variety and color palette is, in a word, blech.  The enemies are mostly the same with only slight variations in their costumes.  There is some platforming that could have been cool with a little more work.  I also wanted to be able to move quickly through or bypass cutscenes, but was forced to sit through them again and again.  Also, the game is five hours long.  You can replay chapters and challenges with all your upgrades and there is a new game plus where you can begin again with all you’ve found, and there are a huge amount of things to find that are set in specific places, but are chosen at random, so if you want to get them all you must replay.

X-Men Destiny is a good game for fanboys, especially those who are not big gamers or those who just want to take large groups of thugs out with their powers while fighting along side some of their favorite characters.  It is a game of contradictions, it has got such style and genuine affection for it’s characters and mythology; its RPG elements are fun and varied, but the settings and action is bland and repetitive.  It is a game that feels unfinished and rushed.  It is obvious they wanted to do more, but for whatever reason couldn’t.  $60 might be a little much, but I am sure it will be in the bargain bin soon and worth a good look.

Dead Island Review

DEAD HORROR, DEAD FUN, DEAD ISLAND

Board shorts, washboard abs, men up all night and hungry for flesh, and an island paradise are what make Dead Island a riveting play (you thought I was talking about a West Hollywood pool party didn’t you?).  Banoi has white sand beaches, four star accommodations and a zombie infection.  You are one of the few somehow immune to the whole mess, so, of course, survivors look to you to do shit for them.  Leaving your vacation alive is probably a good idea too.

The island is beautiful and a blast to explore, especially in the early levels where not everything is trying to eat you, beaches, jungle, strange bunkers, and life that just stopped in the middle of everything.  The whole place is filled with atmosphere whether it’s the abandoned houses in the slums, the tiki bars, or posh bungalows, what the place was- just was twelve hours ago- is evident and now juxtaposed with the horror that has exploded in its midst.  Dead Island manages to capture tragedy in its environments by allowing them to be what they are, beautiful, vivid, bright, welcoming and letting the zombies bring the scare instead of relying on skulls, creepy statues, and darkness.  The day is sunny and perfect and the beach is filled with lovers in bathing suits who a few hours ago were people- beautifully terrible. 

While exploring you will come across survivors dealing with seeing their friends and family eaten in front of them or trying to kill them, and these survivors are not going to ask you to find their hat; many will not even acknowledge you as they are lost in their grief and fear.  The art direction is fantastic giving you amazing vistas and a variety of zombies with different body types and in various states of decomposition.  The world is vivid and alive (except for the dead people).

The story is survival and how people deal with the end of their vacation and their world, the husband who wants you to tell you his wife that he is dead while he gets wasted with girls in bikinis, her genuine concern over what has happened to him, the woman obsessing over water and never getting enough, the crazy merchant charging you a bunch for weapons that can save him and everyone else who thinks aliens must have caused this- it’s a tapestry of survival.  You’re not trying to find out what happened or somehow make it all better, you are trying to get your ass out of there and maybe help others do the same.  The characters you play have great backstories (all a more living living dead), all are independent and headstrong, but dead inside.  The outbreak, exploration, and battles somehow fit them well, and seem a liberation, society has left them behind, and the story of besting this place and their possible redemption is the compelling one.  Unfortunately, their cut scenes  are bland, and actually much less interesting than the story I was making for them, and it often made me dislike the character I played as.

Online multiplayer is possible, but to this date there have been some serious bugs with saving and connection on different platforms, although they say a patch is soon in coming.  When you are playing you will be alerted if another player is nearby and you can choose to join their game. The characters are varied enough and would work well together.  There is a role-playing aspect where you can upgrade and choose skills, and the system is varied, deep, and fun to move through.

Later levels seem to require you to have other players with you as the zombies come fast and furious and there is less room to maneuver.  It is easy to quickly be surrounded by the undead, as some make little to no sound, which adds to the creep and frustration factors.   I found myself wishing for the ability to sneak, hide, block, or in some way bypass large groups, but instead I got swarmed or had to pull some Sun Tzu strategy out of my ass (where I keep it and my keys).  Weapons degrade and come in large varieties which can be upgraded or modified, but packs of zombies can really wear down you electrified machete and flaming baseball bat and soon you’re left exhausted and defending yourself with a tin can and a stick.

Dead Island is a great horror/survival game, it’s damn long, fun to play, a pleasure to look at, and chock full of atmosphere.  It has its problems, but zombie relationships and are going to take a little bit of work and you knew that going in- c’mon, you’re an adult. 

DEUS EX: HUMAN REVOLUTION, PUTTING THE,“OH MY GAWD!” IN THE MACHINE

Think edgy Six Million Dollar Man and you’ll get Adam Jensen, the protagonist in  Deus Ex: Human Revolution.  He’s fashionable, dark, gravelly voiced, a little dangerous, very capable, part man part machine and he’s got a cool beard.  Deus Ex: Human Revolution is sexy cyberpunk which is kind of a tautology because to be cyberpunk it must be sexy.  Cyberpunk is the film noir set in the future- there is tragedy and intrigue, there are huge forces one never quite sees, and only our dark and flawed hero can uncover it.  In cyberpunk the cities are light and glass, flashing images, futuristic, and there is a dark underbelly where the have-nots dwell.  There are femme fatales and double crosses, and nothing and no one is as they seem.  Deus Ex: Human Revolution captures this type of world perfectly in both story and design.  Corporations have created ways to augment human abilities with mechanical prosthesis; these can make you stronger, smarter, heighten senses, and make you more (or less) than you are.  This is the beginning of this process; the changes are cosmetic, and in some cases, more insectoid than human.  The moral question in the game is, “Is this change benefiting humanity or removing ourselves from it?  Do these changes further segregate us into haves and have-nots?”

The strengths of the game are the story and the design.  The world is gritty and alive, and the costumes are completely fabulous, seriously.  The style is a strange Victorian/ modern mix, intricate, textured, and beautiful.  As someone who prefers less clothing, no one was more surprised than I that I found myself goggling the clothes (Thank you Tim Gunn).  Everything but characters’ faces are lovingly and dangerously rendered, but the faces of most of the characters, barring the main ones, look straight out of 1995, blocky and crushed all around bizarre.

I tried not to kill anyone (yes, you can really play this way); it worked pretty well.  The RPG elements of upgrading you augmentations was varied and cool, and allowed you to approach the world the way you wanted to, guns blazing or stealthy, or an expert at using the environment.  This is good because the shooting aspect of the game is weak, clunky, and hard to maneuver, blind firing is a joke, and your inventory is limited (but can be upgraded), so carrying a variety of weapons and large amounts of ammo isn’t going to happen.  Also, there are boss battles, the bane of my existence, that you must use weapons to complete and you must kill those tragically sexy fuckers.  This has been a complaint in many reviews, and mine, but it excites me because it says gamers don’t want to be mass murderers in every game and that they can enjoy games not centered on killing. D

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a world worth exploring.  The story is engrossing, the settings compelling, and the design fantastic.  The gameplay is passable and made better in that there is no one way to face a situation.  It is a step towards the majesty that games could be complex and beautiful, something you want to talk about, and an experience that stays with you even after you put the controller down.

PAX changes a person, see!