Check it out here.

I’m sure that the question many people were asking was not “Will there be a guest character?,” but “Who will be the guest character(s)?” SoulCalibur II, SoulCalibur IV, SoulCalibur Legends and SoulCalibur: Broken Destiny all had guest characters. This time, Ezio is joining the ranks of Kratos, Link, Spawn, Starkiller, among others.

Here’s a video showcasing some of Ezio’s attacks and combos. He gets a crossbow, a longsword, a stiletto, a hidden gun, and his signature bladed gauntlets.

So then, my biggest hope is that I’ll get to use his style in the character creator. Oh, I will be so pissed if I don’t. I was disappointed when I couldn’t make my own Sith and Jedi in SoulCalibur IV (although secretly pleased that at the same time, fanboys of the series were trolled by this as well).

You’ll get to kick ass with Ezio on January 31st, 2012 (the game’s release date).

If Xbox Live was a city, the Indie Games section would be its Chinatown. It’s exciting, it’s weird, and most of the stuff you find on sale is either a bootleg copy or a serious copyright violation of other very well-known intellectual properties. But once in a while, you stumble upon an elderly gentleman selling legit-looking DVDs of The Walking Dead for a steal in a shady back alley. In this terrible metaphor, Dead Pixels: An 8-Bit Zombie Sim is that gem.

Campaign: AH! ZOMBIES!… Again…

Dead Pixels‘ story doesn’t stray far from the standard zombie storytelling formula. Toxic waste is accidentally dumped into the water supply of New Hexington, NY, which causes the recently deceased to rise from their graves. Everyone killed by the undead joins their ranks. With most of the population dead or zombified, a group of survivors hatch a plan to the city by getting to the airport and flying out. It’s up to you (and a buddy) to blast your way through streets packed with zombies.

Yes, it’s not the most original plot out there, but unless your name is George A. Romero, you don’t get to call your zombie project “original” anymore.

Gameplay: River City Ransom meets Left 4 Dead

For readers unfamiliar with River City Ransom, it’s a classic NES beat-em-up that incorporated RPG elements (stats-building, item buying, etc.). Dead Pixels follows the same premise. You shoot your way through hordes of increasingly-tougher zombies (including boss zombies), collecting cash, loot buildings for items, and buy or sell items at shops. The game randomly generates levels each time you play, so no playthrough is ever the same as another.

There are four main types of weapons that players can use in Dead Pixels, each color-coded to correspond with the correct ammo type. Red weapons are shotguns, blue weapons are semi-auto pistols and rifles, green weapons are full-auto guns, and yellow weapons are fire-based weapons. Thrown weapons also come in handy when clusters of zombies block the only way out. Weapons and ammo are found by looting homes and businesses or buying them at traders, but you can melee zombies if you run out of ammo. Since zombies respawn indefinitely and ammo does not, the game encourages you to play smart, and decide when you need to run past zombies or shoot them.

The RPG elements are pretty basic. You can level up your character’s health, carrying limit, damage, luck and other stats by purchasing upgrades at traders. Traders also sell items that can be used to heal or buff your character or distract zombies.

Dead Pixels supports local co-op (no Xbox Live functionality), so you and a friend can team up and tackle the game together. The game becomes a lot more fun when you thrown in a second player. Players can trade weapons, ammo and items with one another, looting buildings turns up twice as much loot, and boss fights become a bit easier. If one player dies, his character will become zombified and attack the other player, but reaching a trader will revive him with all his weapons, ammo, items and money.

There are 3 difficulty levels, Easy, Normal, and Hard, which don’t actually change the game’s core difficulty, but rather how many streets you need to pass. Easy ends at 10, Normal at 20, and Hard at 30. By playing solo or with a friend, a Normal or Hard game shouldn’t take more than 2 hours.

Presentation: 8-bit Grindhouse

The first thing you’ll notice about Dead Pixels‘ presentation is that it looks like an old NES 8-bit title. So don’t expect Skyrim-levels of graphics, but the 8-bit nostalgia factory definitely works to the game’s charm. It also plays around with a “Grindhouse”-style presentation, from the film grain effect muddying up the graphics, hard rock soundtrack, and (optional) narrated intermission slide that appears at the halfway point in each game. Dead Pixels also includes references to other zombie-themed titles, such as Left 4 Dead, Resident Evil, and Evil Dead. My favorite callback was the reference to Resident Evil, where Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata plays during the trade menu.

Gamers Leak Recommendation: Buy it

It’s pretty hard to muck up a game about zombies (though it certainly is possible), but given the saturation of zombie titles in the market nowadays, it’s also difficult to make one that’s actually kind of fun. Not only has Can’t Strafe Right Studios developed a hit, they’ve promised free DLC updates for every sale milestone they reach. Their first milestone, 4000 sales, has already been reached and the studio is working The Solution, a scenario that takes place after events in the campaign. At 10000 sales, CSR will release Last Stand, which, as the name suggests, adds an infinite survival mode. Dead Pixels is available on Xbox Live Marketplace for 80 Microsoft Points (1 USD in real life), so there’s really no excuse for you not to buy this. As with all indie games, Dead Pixels has a trial version if you want to try before you buy, so go check it out.

I’m kind of at an impasse here with Hitman: Absolution. I’m the kind of person who thinks games like new XCOM shouldn’t technically be berated for not being XCOM because if it were named anything else, nobody would care. Yet, I strongly dislike the direction that IO Interactive has taken with the Hitman series. It’s the same problem I feel has plagued the Splinter Cell series.

I feel Hitman: Absolution has fallen into the bad habits of stealth games (i.e. hide behind cover and wait for enemies to walk away, and maybe perform stealth take-downs). It looks nothing like the Hitman experience I love (Hitman: Blood Money). While this would be fine – assuming it weren’t Hitman – it feels that IO Interactive are doing what Ubisoft did to Splinter Cell and turning the otherwise excellent stealth game into boring, repetitive cover combat without the combat.

The beauty of Hitman: Blood Money is that it prides itself on being non-linear, allowing all sorts of routes to exterminate specific targets or complete a specific objective with the true test of skill being whether or not you can achieve the Silent Assassin ranking at the end of the level.

I don’t mind the ability to see incoming enemies with superhuman instincts or even marking and executing, because that certainly feels like Agent 47. What sets off my panic switch is the game in general. What happened to knocking out specific enemies by drugging their foods or feeding dogs a poisoned sausage? What happened to the skillful Agent 47 who kills no-one but his target?

I’ll give you a minute to name as many stealth games (or games utilizing stealth) involving hiding behind cover until guards walk away as possible.

Done? That’s what I thought.

It’s an epidemic amongst games using stealth. Hitman: Blood Money was a step above this. Okay, it’s not exactly realistic for a target to systematically smoke a cigarette in the same exact alley every five minutes, but the game was about clever timing and coming up with your own ideas for assassinating enemies. There were openings that you could take, like when enemies did go down an alley to smoke a cigarette, but you didn’t have to take out the enemy that way. In fact, even if you did, you didn’t have to tranquilize them. You could shoot them, snap their neck. There were all kinds of possibilities. Hitman: Blood Money was a game that invited players to mess around in it, rather than forcing you through a linear succession of various walls you could hide behind.

In that game, even if you ended up having to shoot people to complete your objectives, you were powerful enough to walk up to an enemy, pimp-slap him, steal his gun, and shoot him in the face with it. You felt powerful and vulnerable at the same time, because your objective was to remain as invisible as possible, but you didn’t have to. This is part of the reason I don’t mind giving Agent 47 half-baked features like x-ray vision or the ability to see paths of enemies.

Although Hitman: Absolution touches a few of the bases that Hitman: Blood Money did (such as stealing clothes to disguise yourself, and that looming sense of superiority you have over others; in fact, it’s actually a pretty important theme for Hitman in general, if you ask me), it never captures the spirit of the last game.

It gives me the feeling that IO Interactive are trying to make a game that present-day gamers will feel familiar with, but are missing the point. Hitman: Blood Money was an innovative game, and an incredibly fun one at that. Now Hitman: Absolution is a game that is trying too hard to fit in with other stealth games when it’s so much better than that. Who honestly thinks that Hitman: Blood Money could have been improved if you could hide behind a table until a police officer walked away? I certainly don’t. The point is, IO Interactive took a formula that worked very well and trashed it.

I suppose this is just me yearning for the past (not twenty years ago, god no; I like Hitman: Blood Money, not Battletoads). I’m open to the possibility that Hitman: Absolution will be a good game, but I’m not the only one who is disappointed that it’s devolved into the generic stealth formula that many titles these days resort to. It’s too bad, because Hitman had something really going for it. In my opinion, very few games can compare to what Hitman: Blood Money was. I suppose  the best way to sum up how I feel about these changes are: How would you feel if Grand Theft Auto didn’t have an open world? This freedom you’re granted in this game is little more than being given the choice to move to the cover on the left or to the cover on the right.

I’d like to know how other people feel about these changes, if you feel IO Interactive is making a mistake or if this is for the best.

By the way, that new voice actor sounds like a chain-smoker. Why are so many protagonists chain-smokers these days?

Yeah yeah, that’s not our video, it’s Machinima.

So we finally get to see what Agent 47 did in that library in Chicago. We are finally treated to a 15-minute playthrough sequence of Hitman: Absolution. I am severely disappointed, but who knows, maybe there’s someone out there who prefers Hitman this way. Maybe that person is also mentally handicapped. All I know is that now, this video has compelled me to write an editorial on it.

There’s a few games that I’m not afraid to say that I’ve been looking forward to. I’ve seen a couple lists dedicated to dark horse and underdog games (Jim Sterling and Extra Credits, if you’re wondering). I figured I might as well point out a few games I’m looking forward to that aren’t as popular as Call of Duty: Modern Remake Sixty-Nine, or The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, etc.

1. NeverDead

I have to be honest with this one, I won’t banish you to the ninth level of Hell if you aren’t looking forward to this (only the third). This game is being developed by Rebellion Developments, well-known for their incredibly inspirational game, Rogue Warrior. Konami is overseeing this project, so it’ll be fair to expect at least an average game out of Rebellion this time.

The premise is as follows: you play an immortal demon-hunter by the name of Bryce Boltzmann. Yes, you get to play as an immortal character. Here’s how the immortality thing works: over the course of the game, you’ll lose limbs which you have to recollect by rolling into them. You can use some objects to do harm to yourself and enemies, but you won’t die. Take that, assholes! There will also be puzzle elements (keyword: elements) that will (presumably) use the dismemberment mechanic.

There’s one thing I feel I have a bite with though: you have a female AI partner who you have to protect by taking damage. Most female partners are already annoying (see Resident Evil 5 and Prince of Persia), but having to take damage for them sounds like the developer is challenging me not to get frustrated. I’m hoping that Rebellion will not mess up the AI in this game. I don’t want to have to protect an AI partner who is only slightly smarter than that bimbo from Daikatana.

Also, the voice-acting sucks, but whatever.

2. Inversion

Okay, I have to be honest, I tentatively added this game to the list. It’s by the developers of TimeShift (Saber Interactive, but that’s not the bad part), and published by Namco Bandai (again, not the bad part).

The gameplay revolves around destructible terrain and gravity manipulation. It’s also a cover shooter (the bad part). Yes, we’ve got quite a lot of those, but the gravity manipulation certainly looks like it adds an interesting style of gameplay. While enemies will take cover often, you can make them float above the cover so you can shoot them like you’re playing a SOCOM piñata party. You can also increase gravity to make objects fall on enemies, or pin enemies to the ground. Plus, you can pick up objects from the environment with your abilities to fling at enemies, which certainly sounds like it’s ripping off Star Wars: The Force Unleashed an interesting and fun gameplay mechanic!

Besides the cover combat, another problem I have with the game is where you can shift planes from fighting on the ground to fighting on the side of a building (it’s called “vector shifts”). While this sounds like a clever strategy, all it really does it change the cover around when you use it. However, some enemies can actually attack from the ceiling or from the sides of buildings or walls, so although it’s cover combat, at least the gameplay looks and sounds hectic.

This is one you might want to consider checking out, but it definitely sounds like a rental at best.

3. Retro City Rampage

What really can be said about this game? It’s an 8-bit retro-style game being released on WiiWare (and eventually XBox Live Arcade), and it looks awesome. It blends a whole bunch of elements of retro games while appearing on the surface as a bird’s eye version of Grand Theft Auto, only 8-bit (actually, it looks like 16-bit, but whatever).

I don’t feel that anything I say can do it justice. Just look at the video below.

It has elements of classic games like Mega Man, Bionic Commando, Super Mario Bros., Contra, and so many others. I dislike most retro games (because let’s be honest, they’re total sh*t compared to modern-day games; I’d rather play a bad game made today than a lot of “good” games made twenty years ago). However, the game just looks absolute nuts. I have my concerns that playing a game that devotes itself to a retro vein might have some issues (like driving controls), but I’ll just have to wait and see. But you have to admit, that gameplay alone makes you at least curious.

There’s been a lot of history behind this game. The concept came from a homebrew project that Brian Provinciano was working on: an 8-bit version of Grand Theft Auto III, to be titled “Grand Theftendo.” If you want to know more, look it up yourself. There’s even a Wikipedia page about the game.

4. Firefall

We’ve already talked a bit about this game here on Gamers Leak (there was even a contest going on to post comments on as many sites reporting Firefall as possible; we got a lot of comments out of it). I’m pointing it out because I curiously haven’t seen or heard many people talk about it. It’s being developed by Red 5 Studios, founded by Mark Kern, who is credited as being the leader of the team that developed World of Warcraft. He was also involved in other projects by Blizzard, including the Starcraft and Warcraft franchises.

This game will be released as a free-to-play game sustained by microtransactions, sometime in December (but don’t be surprised if it gets delayed). It will boast a large open world, cooperative campaign with hundreds of players, competitive multiplayer, among other things. Oh, and it’s a first- and third-person shooter. There will be basic features you might come to expect, like looting bodies, leveling up, guilds, and a class system.

It’s on the PC and it’s free-to-play, so what reason would you have not to check it out?

5. Quantum Conundrum

It should be a crime that there hasn’t been a lot of talk about this game. It’s being published by Square Enix, and developed by Airtight Games. The creative director is Kim Swift. “But wait, who is Kim Swift?” You may better know her as the co-creator of Portal. In this game, it certainly shows.

It is a puzzle game, of course, and it’s very reminiscent of Portal. You can shift between four different dimensions that you unlock by gathering various batteries and placing them inside a machine called the Interdimensional Shift Device (that name probably didn’t take a lot of thought). Among the dimensions you can mess, there is a “fluff dimension,” which makes objects ten times lighter (so you can lift safes), a “slow-motion dimension,” which lets Max Payne jizz in your face, and an “anti-gravity dimension,” which, well, you can probably guess (wow, that makes two games messing with gravity on this list).

The game so far looks incredibly fun, and certainly looks like it’ll take a lot more clever thought and timing than Portal, so be prepared when it’s released early next year on XBox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, and Steam.

Anyways, that’s all the games I have for now. I might release another list if I ever come up with other potential dark horses, but for now, this is all I’ve really got. Sure, none of these games may have slipped the radar, but I just wanted to raise awareness of them, and maybe even give the people who haven’t heard of them something to hope for.

I don’t think the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection needs much explanation: basically, the overseas version (that’s us) will get five games: Metal Gear, Metal Gear 2, Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance, Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence, and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. All for $49.99 (ten dollars more than other HD collections, but it comes with two more games – MSX2-era games, but sure why not).

Most HD collections (none of them that I know of) don’t get limited editions, but Konami made this one the exception to the rule. The limited edition doesn’t have much of anything special. In fact, it’s the most disappointing limited edition I’ve ever seen: you get nice packaging and a 248-page art book. If you’re a huge supporter of the Metal Gear franchise, this may be what you’re looking for.

So what’s the price for this oh-so enticing package? Why, it will only set you back… $79.99…

Now, if Amazon is to be believed, then I have to say that Konami is really leading quite a scheme here. Most limited editions set you back only $10 more and include an art book and exclusive packaging, and more.

I sincerely hope this is not true, because if it is, it’ll probably lead publishers to start charging just as much for limited editions, perhaps even with less content. You know how the video game industry is: it’s one of the few industries I can think of where companies compete to overprice each other rather than the other way around. Who knows though, maybe there’s details not yet released, and maybe Amazon.com just has their information wrong, but that’s just it. Even if this package were just $10 more, it still only has an artbook and exclusive packaging. Hell, you could pre-order a game like Dark Souls and it’ll come with the art book and soundtrack CD, no extra charge, so I hope someone got something wrong (even if it’s me).

The Metal Gear Solid HD Collection will be released on November 8. Will you be picking it up?

CD Projekt has thrown gamers a very shiny treat with the release of the massive 2.0 patch for everyone’s favorite Witcherang Witchering Witching game. You can download it automatically by just running the game, and all of the content included here will be already a part of the Xbox 360 version of the game on launch. The patch addresses a huge number of basic gameplay concerns to make the combat run much smoother, and many of the last few bugs in the game seem to have been addressed.

The patch also adds a surprisingly well realized Horde mode rip-off entitled “Arena”, which pits you against increasingly difficult groups of enemies for money, points and glory. It has upgrades, online leaderboards and multiple difficulty levels. A tutorial mode is included for those who actually want to know how to play the game before being dropped into a brutally difficult siege battle (as it was handled before the patch). And finally, Dark Mode has been added. It has subtle, but not un-noticeable changes to dialogue, it has a few new quests and items, and it offers the moment-to-moment difficulty of the Insane setting while not deleting your save files upon death as Insane does. In case you haven’t already downloaded them, the patch includes all previous DLC’s as well.

I’ve already invested quite a bit of time with the new modes and I can safely say that this makes one of the better games to come out this year even better. There are still some annoying issues like the story’s terrible cliffhanger ending, and certain aspects of the control scheme still feel clunky, but the majority of the worst issues have been successfully addressed. If you were scared off by the high initial difficulty, the newly lowered price and tutorial may be enough to bring you in. However, if you didn’t want to buy it in the first place, this new stuff most likely won’t convince you.

On a final note, CD Projekt seems to just be trying to make other developers look bad. Fixing problems with patches is one thing, but adding entirely new modes for free is not common. I’d probably be more thankful for the free stuff, but now I’m going to feel stupid for buying DLC from EA. Thanks, guys.

For a while, I’ve wanted an X-Men game. Yes, I am an X-Men fan myself. I’m no buff of the franchise, but I’m a fan of the concept, that’s for sure. Sure there are plenty of old X-Men games (some of which suck), but I’ve wanted something current-gen myself. I’ve never played X-Men Legends, admittedly.

At first, I was quite interested in X-Men: Destiny. Then most of that interest faded away when I found out it was being developed by Silicon Knights (yes, the fathers of that atrocity known as Too Human). I perished the thought of this game being bad by reminding myself that Silicon Knights also made Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem.

So I guess the question now is whether or not X-Men: Destiny is an Eternal Darkness gold nugget or a flaming bag of Too Human poo?

Surprisingly, neither.

Writing: X-Men: Rise of the Fanfiction

The game starts out with some comic book-style intro telling us the events that led to the current setting. Professor Xavier is dead and the X-Men have taken a vacation in San Francisco because the location of the Xavier Institute has been compromised. A peace rally between humans and mutants is broken up by a supposed mutant attack and events unfold from there.

There are three protagonists to choose from. You can play as a jock, jailbait, or Leonardo DiCaprio with a bigger chin. I picked the minor (Aimi) if only because I don’t see enough female main protagonists in games that I can care about (other than ones I customize). Plus it seemed funny to be fighting giant robots as someone dressed as a schizophrenic Harajuku girl who couldn’t figure out which outfit she wanted to wear one day.

The writing is subpar at best. The story is present, and it loosely fits into an X-Men setting, but character development is very poor. When Aimi first discovers her powers, she doesn’t even bat an eyelash at this. She is completely unsurprised that she is a mutant, like she knew all along (though her intro where her father catches on fire might make a certain amount of sense here). No, Silicon Knights, staring at your hands for half a second does not count as a legitimate reaction. Especially when the anti-mutant activist does it!

The characters in general all seem like caricatures of their normal selves. I only played through completely as Aimi, and partially as Adrian. This might just be me, but this game seems like a Mary Sue fantasy. You only recently develop your powers, and within the course of a day or two, you’re suddenly fighting the main villain who has the means to take over the Earth. Alone. If you’re playing as Aimi, then even Wolverine seems to drop a few badass points and acts concerned about her daddy problems. Characters do act differently depending on the character you select (they’re rightfully dicks to Adrian)

If you’ve ever wanted to play a game where you play a Mary Sue (Bleach would be an ideal series for a game, in this case), then this one is for you. All this game needs now is to have a cat-fight between Mystique and Emma Frost over who gets to be rejected by the protagonist’s modesty.

This writing is incredibly subpar. Even if you throw the writing a bone for being comic book writing, it still fails to meet even those expectations.

Gameplay: X-Men, Welcome To Die!

Contrary to the stupid meme that I typed above, dying is the exact opposite of what you will be doing in this game. This game is shockingly easy, even on normal difficulty. The only challenge are much-later boss battles, really, like a battle with a Sentinel (oh come on, this isn’t a spoiler, you knew there was going to be a Sentinel in here somewhere). But even those aren’t too unforgiving.

I was playing a Shadow Matter user, and the difficulty of the game became an absolute joke later on when I gained the ability to turn invincible and attack any enemies around me with spinning blades.

There’s quite a large (but not too large) degree of character customization to be had. There is a God of War-style leveling up system where you put any amount of experience points you want into a particular ability. This applies to something called X-Genes, which are basically passive abilities. You gather these from exploration and completing challenges. There are three slots: Offensive, Defensive, and Utility. You also gain various attacks throughout the course of the game through bullet-time cutscenes (without the bullets). These can also be leveled up.

The customization, however, is undermined by the childish difficulty once more. There’s really no point in using anything other than Surge’s offensive X-Gene. This X-Gene gives you Sith force powers, allowing you to arc lightning enemies randomly as you attack them, dealing quite a lot of damage and stunning enemies surrounding you. There’s an Iceman offensive X-Gene which can freeze enemies, which is useful unless you’re fighting a “boss enemy,” which is quite often, so you might as well just settle with the extra damage. Some of the X-Genes have their own uses, but offensive wise, you’re best off just using Surge’s gene the whole game.

I really can’t argue about the easy difficulty, even if I’m playing a teenager who just gained their powers. It’s a superhero game, and it certainly helps you feel powerful, but we constantly drift from fighting the same enemies constantly throughout the game, with little variety here and there, leading the game to feel more like a second job of pressing buttons. It’s fun at first, but you start to fall into a trance later through the game.

You can also pick out various suits. These give you different X-Mode abilities. But trying to get X-Mode is a pain in the ass, because you need to match the suit with three genes of all three classes from the same character (i.e. Wolverine’s suit and genes). Keep in mind that you are randomly given different X-Genes and suits, too, so you’ll most likely go through a good portion of the game without ever using X-Mode (and even if you do, it’s just one passive ability that isn’t even that good). I even nearly completed a whole playthrough without matching any of the genes and suits of any one character, so X-Mode is incredibly arbitrary.

There’s also some gratuitous platforming thrown into the game. It’s not very tightly controlled and sometimes you can go flying right off because the controls don’t interpret holding up on the analog stick and pressing A as “jump up and grab the ledge above.” This platforming feels forced right in as a desperate attempt to make the game less repetitive (and it really isn’t that repetitive). Fortunately, we aren’t forced to do a lot of this platforming.

Later on, the game becomes sentient and notices that I’m starting to get bored of repetition, and fortunately saves itself in time by throwing more boss battles at me. To be honest, these boss battles do actually mix up the monotony that was growing in the game, so I’m certainly not bugged by it.

Although the combat – and gameplay overall – might have a few issues like imbalanced X-Genes, I can assure you that it’s at least still fun to partake in. But with that in mind, the gameplay feels dated, whether it’s fairly predictable boss patterns (at first), pitfalls that take portions of your health like a Zelda game, and unnecessary platforming. Not to mention, every challenge is just a different variant of “kill x amount of enemies,” and there’s a faction meter that leans toward either Brotherhood or X-Men, which is basically just a moral choice system shoveled into the game. There really isn’t much of a difference being part of either the X-Men or Brotherhood, anyway, leading the “Destiny” part of the title to lose a lot of its weight.

One last thing: I played through the beginning sequence of the game when you’re trying to fight your way through San Francisco and figure out which of the two factions you want to take you in the ass, and I played as Leonardo DiCaprio with density control. Compared to shadow matter, density control is much weaker. You can apparently take more damage, but if you even played a video game before, then using shadow matter will keep enemies off of you so often that density control really isn’t worth using. Take this paragraph with a grain of salt, though, because I didn’t play with it that far through.

Presentation: It makes the PS2 scoff.

This is definitely X-Men: Destiny’s greatest shortcoming. I’ve seen better looking Wii games than this game. Clearly Silicon Knights did not care to polish up this game. Character models look fine, save for the fact that most of the characters are covered in goosebumps and the females look like they’re wearing wigs made of styrofoam.

The special effects are just absolutely laughable. They look very badly pixelated and you can very clearly tell they are 2D objects just by looking from the side. I’m not kidding when I say they look badly pixelated, too. Some of the explosions look like they belong in Doom. The only person I could imagine that designed the art for this game is a Bizarro Michael Bay, but then that would imply that this game has good writing.

Gamers Leak Recommendation: Rent It

This game clearly lacks polish. The writing that we’re expected to care about is about as slapdash as the graphics. It’s definitely not a spectacle, yet it’s not a bad game: it just keeps crashing and burning. I can honestly say that there was at least some ambition in this game, but all of its flaws lead it to mediocrity. I can’t recommend this to anyone except maybe big X-Men fans or younger audiences.

I honestly wanted to try and like this game, but the game feels like it struggles to keep up with modern-day gaming. Without its at most satisfying combat, the game really has no crutches to help it stand up straight. I had some fun with it every now and then, but the game just wasn’t fun enough for me. But I can say that if you enjoyed a game like, say, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, there’s a chance you’ll enjoy this. This game is certainly better than Too Human, but it seems Silicon Knights continues its struggle to make great games.

It’s a licensed game. Nothing much more or less.

Finished the game on Normal difficulty. Played through once, played part of another game as Aimi siding with the Brotherhood. Available in North America on the XBox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, and Nintendo DS. Will be available in Europe on September 30.

You might not know what Jade Empire is; it’s an XBox action-RPG from 2005, based in ancient China with real-time combat, based primarily around martial arts, and weapon styles and magic. The game is on XBox Classics on XBox Live, if you want to check it out. It was critically acclaimed, and yet strangely has not seen a sequel after six years, with developer BioWare more focused on Mass Effect and Dragon Age.

Well, BioWare thinks that a sequel to its “staff favorite” is a possibility. Nothing concrete, but they’re “just looking for the right way to deploy it.” I wouldn’t be surprised if a Jade Empire sequel were to arise, but more than likely we’ll just get another comment from BioWare’s staff saying how they want to make a Jade Empire sequel while simultaneously refusing to do so.

If you want to figure out whether or not Jade Empire deserves a sequel, why not play it? It’s an old game, but if you have some cash, why not just buy it on XBox Live? If you’re into RPGs (especially ones by BioWare), then you shouldn’t be disappointed.