"You Are, Like, SOOO Evil!"
by Joel Brink

I’m just going to jump right in and say that X-Blades has one of the single most annoying protagonists evah. Yes, evah. As in, like, valley girl, like, oh my gawd no way, like totally, kind of annoying. I’m not exaggerating for comic effect either.

Before I started playing the game I looked at the instruction manual. The instruction what you say? You know, that little book inside every game case opposite the disk that gives you a brief intro to the story, character bios, and follows with control layouts… I’ve lost you. It’s, like, the in-game tutorial but, like, in print form.

Game manuals are generally informative and pretty basic, offering just the need-to-know basics to start playing. It doesn’t seem like you could mess up delivering the basics, but X-Blades is right there to proudly prove you wrong.

The entire manual is explained to you by the main character, Ayumi, who has the verbal capacity of a drunk prom date with desires of become an Omega Delta Krappa. She, like, tells you she is, like, a treasure hunter and stuff. She also, like totally, tells you how to, like, swing the sword to, like, kill the stupid heads who want your, like, treasure.

Wondering why I’ve spent so much time explaining how much of a best seller the manual is? It’s because the game itself isn’t any more entertaining.

As I mentioned, Ayumi is a treasure hunter. More accurately, she is a bratty valley girl treasure hunter who only had a roll of toilet paper handy when she got dressed for her adventure.

When the first cutscene starts, the game fools you into thinking it might be fun for two reasons: One, Ayumi is wearing a giant cape hiding her TP thong. Two, she doesn’t really speak, masking her true annoyance.

Then the game starts, flushing fun and Ayumi’s outfit down the toilet.

Gameplay is VERY basic. It’s Hack-and-Slash Button Mash™ with some added spells and charged attacks to deal the greatest amount of damage. That sounds fun if you are looking for something mindless to kill an evening. Mindless also means you don’t have to try. That’s where X-Blades fails even harder.

On the easiest difficulty, you have to actively not die. I struggled through the first couple missions, executing some powerful attacks, but discovered the game offers nothing in way of defense. You attack, the enemies attack, and you just hope you’re the last one standing.

By the fourth mission, I had a rhythm going and started to dispatch enemies with more relative ease. I had killed everything, but noticed a “shiny” I was supposed to collect. After 15 solid minutes of pressing X,X,X… Y, I went to jump down a platform to acquire said “shiny”, but instead fell off the level.

You see, that annoying bitch, Ayumi, forgot to tell me in the manual that even though she can athletically double jump, she has to use the damn stairs to get across a 5-foot gap.

So I let her die. Screw my continue. I was done.

The overall audio is poor, even if you exclude Ayumi’s snotty tone. The music is very repetitive for any level, and the sounds effects are paltry. The sole quality effect was for the “earthquake” attack, which only sounded cool because it reminded me of the explosion from Burnout Revenge.

The best part of the game may be the art style. It has an animated look, but isn’t too cartoony. The best way I can describe it is like cel shading, but without the cel. It’s a visual style I definitely like, but would love to see used in a higher quality production.

In conclusion, Ayumi is obnoxious and needs some more 2-ply sheets. The game takes itself too seriously in the difficulty department and needs to learn that level boundary clipping can be a good thing.

Overall Rating: Like totally 2 out of 10 treasures you big stupid head.