Ayumi is a no-nonsense treasure hunter who works alone, aside from her trusty blades, that it. When she uncovers a map to some ancient ruins rumored to hold a powerful treasure of the gods, she gets more than what she bargained for. Now she must fight her way out of the ruins and learn some new attacks and magic spells along the way as she battles the forces of an ancient sealed evil. And maybe she’ll get some treasure, too.

X-Blades is a fast paced action-adventure game for the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC. As Ayumi, hack and slash monsters with her dual blades. Defeated enemies give you ‘souls’ that you can exchange to buy magic spells and other skills. String together attacks for combo moves that net you more souls. Ayumi can also fire limitless magic bullets from her blades, handy for flying enemies and long distance attacks. Collect and piece together hidden amulet artifact to upgrade Ayumi’s stats. Game flow is pretty much this: enter a room or area, fight off a few waves of enemies, search the area for hidden items, then find the exit. Wash, rinse, repeat.

The visuals are fantastic. Characters and monsters have a cel-shaded, cartoon style and animate well. And the backgrounds and settings have exquisite graphic detail. Only problem is the in-game map can be a little confusing at times, and if you get lost and need to backtrack, you’ll have to fight all the enemies in that room all over again, which can get a little tedious and repetitive after a while.

Play control is quick and smooth. Ayumi’s actions, including performing combos or just simply running, is super fast, yet easy to pull off. There are a couple of moves that aren’t very easy to do, though. Such as the rolling move, which hardly ever worked. And that’s bad in places where it’s required to roll, such as the room filled with giant guillotines.

The only other problem I had with X-Blades was the camera. The camera does a great job of staying behind Ayumi as you play, but since she runs and turns so quickly, the camera movements following her fast feet made me dizzy sometimes. But fans of action-adventure games, with heavy emphasis on the action, would probably enjoy X-Blades.

Kid Factor:
X-Blades is rated M for Mature with ESRB descriptors of Blood, Suggestive Themes, and Violence. Can’t argue with the violence part, as all you do in the game is slash, shoot, and blast enemies with your swords and magic. Ayumi does wear a skimpy outfit, hence the suggestive themes. However, I felt the artwork and marketing of X-Blades was more suggestive than anything found in the game itself. There is blood in the game, but since everything looks somewhat cartoony, the red stuff doesn’t look very realistic. And there’s an option to turn the blood off, too. You know how there is an E rating and an E-10 rating for older kids? If they had an older teen rating, I would give X-Blades that instead of the Mature one. With the blood off and some adult supervision, I would be OK letting an older teen play X-Blades.

Tags: Game Reviews