Difficulty:

Very Easy

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Uninspired"

X-Men Destiny is basically a mediocre early 2000s PS2 game and a squandering of my beloved X-men license. It's dull, short and repetitive. But for what it is... a sloppy trash rental, I found it to be a decent distraction for a couple nights.

The graphics would actually be bad for a PS2 game. You know when there's a delay in certain games and the textures don't fill in properly. That's what this game looks like all the time. What's absolutely inexcusable is how this game freezes about once an hour. How can a game this bad, with graphics this poor freeze? It's astounding that games as epic and incredible as Dark Souls can be pulled off without a single glitch, while other companies make games as terribly awful and simplistic as this, but still can't get the basic programming right.

There are so many little interface issues that aren't worth mentioning. It still amazes me that when games are really bad, they get simple things like menus, captions and unskippable cutscenes wrong.

The combat is sloppy, extremely repetitive and unresponsive, but it isn't terribly glitched or overly frustrating. You have two buttons, 3 abilities and a grand total of 3 combos throughout the whole game. There is really no challenge to this laughably short game and the last mutant power you earn is the most ridiculously cheated ability ever. You float in the air, turn invincible and all enemies on the screen are sucked towards you before they instantly vaporize… did I mention this ability last for 30 to 60 seconds.

I guess the amount of passive powers deserves some praise, but they really have very little effect on the gameplay.

The story is as basic as you would expect from a button mashing PS2 game, complete with plot holes and an absurd, nonsensical ending. Just think bad, slapped together movie tie-in video game… without the movie tie-in. The "choice" between the X-men and Brotherhood is one of the most pathetic attempts ever. There's absolutely no difference between the two playthroughs aside from maybe a dozen lines of dialogue. At least tie the passive abilities to the faction you join to give the "choice" some gameplay relevance.

I have to admit that I'm a little bit blinded by my love for the X-men. The X-men themes and characters are so strong that any bottom feeder can latch onto the license and find a few decent story ideas to slop through in mediocrity. This is basically the worst game ever and the X-men still come out looking awesome. I can only hope and dream that someday they get the Batman Arkham Asylum treatment by a team that isn't as criminally incompetent as the failures at Silicon Knights.