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Review
X-Blades is another in a long line of "gorgeous-heroines-fighting-warriors-in-skimpy-underwear" adventures and, randomly, it made its debut nearly two years ago as a Russian game for the PC called 'Oniblade' before making it to next-gen consoles with a slightly toned down main character, Ayumi (since she wears next to nothing here, you wonder what exactly she was - or rather wasn't - wearing first time around).
Developed by Gajin Entertainment, X-Blades begins with a slightly murky opening scene that shows how treasure hunter Ayumi found a map that promises to lead her to two priceless artifacts. What we're not told until much later is that these artifacts represent The Dark and The Enlightened (Good and Evil). Ayumi finds and opens the Dark artifact (despite being told by its wolf guardian that it would kill her if she did so. Stupid girl) and absorbs some ooze, much like Spider-Man did with Venom.
The aim of the game is to shoot or slice your way through 'dark' monsters using your twin pistols, while smashing anything breakable (like vases) to release soul energy. Ayumi has a rage meter that grows each time she attacks an enemy and this powers numerous spells that can be attached to certain buttons on the controller. As you go through the levels, you inevitably grow more powerful and better spells become available; we say 'spells' but they're more akin to weapons, like an Earthquake spell that kills anything in a circular radius.
Unfortunately, attaching spells to buttons is a bit of a lottery because you can't simply push a button; you have to try and 'toggle' it on, which is a nightmare. This wouldn't be so bad if Ayumi's targeting was up to scratch, but it's not. You can move her in one direction and rotate the camera in another but never the twain shall meet. Your current target, signified by a red circle, has no locking mechanism so simply trying to throw a fireball at a flying demon as you ward off ground attacks by other monsters becomes that much more frustrating. You learn to get by, but you can also say that about Alz(snip-Ed).
