by: Dameon White

March 04, 2009

I’d be lying if I said that the first thing that I saw when starting this game wasn’t flat ass in a g-string – but I’m no liar…mostly. Perhaps it’s the behind-view (pun intended) camera that suspiciously angles itself so that the first thing you see is digital flat ass or maybe I just need to get a little more in touch with my feminine side and learn to respect women as not just being sexual vessels for male pleasure. Well, the hell with the latter, as this game is nothing but in your face ass’ness. Unfortunately, though, that ass also happens to stink a little.

X-Blades is essentially a cel-shaded hack-and-slash action-adventure title that follows the story of a young treasure hunter named Ayumi. As any good treasure hunter would tell you she inescapably finds herself in possession of a relic that turns out to possess the powers of darkness. And wouldn’t you know it - she accidentally unleashes hell on the world and it’s now up to her and her to save it. I’m sure that I don’t have to tell you how uninspiring the game’s story is. To its credit, though, SouthPeak has obviously chosen to not focus on the story as much as it tried with the game’s combat. Story aside, X-Blades hopes to first draw you in with its scantily-clad-thong-wearing-makes-you-wonder-if-she’s-even-legal-age heroine. Once you’re in the simplicity of the games’ combat (a true-button masher at best) is what SouthPeak hopes will keep you playing.

As aforementioned, combat is what this game is really all about. In fact, it’s arguably nothing but combat. The game progresses as you complete series after series of arena battles, similar to that of Heavenly Sword. You see, there is no exploration, there’s no running from point a to point b in search of a way out of the level. You simply enter an arena, beat the hordes of monsters and then you run to the next arena and repeat the process all the way until you beat the game. It’s a process that gets old incredibly fast, particularly because while there are over a dozen different enemy types that you’ll face off against (many of which at the same time), the differences between them is minimal and beating one enemy over another can be done simply by changing the type of magic you’re currently using.

Like most games utilizing a magic system, magic is not unlimited. All magic in the game is elemental based – fire, water, lightning, etc. – and aside from creating a different piece of eye candy when using it, the effects are mostly the same. Defeating different enemy types only requires using the opposite type of magic for which the creature is based. In other words, if you see a giant flaming ball coming at you, use an ice attack. As for conservation, replenishing your magic only requires destroying magic crystals that are scattered around the levels or using soul points, which are harnessed as you destroy your enemies. There’s very little need to worry about actually running out of magic, though, as the magic crystals will often respawn before you even need them; making you feel less pressure for worrying about conserving your magic, but also diminishing its effect as being a “special” power.