Blades of Time Review (Xbox 360)

The slide is quite handy as well. You can lock onto a target and then pretty much slide right up to them and begin attacking. Talk about fast attack craft, this has it all. You can even pile on other abilities that do things like allow you to dash out of attacks (for when you get stuck in a corner), do damage to enemies when sliding and more. It’s another mechanic that was really well made and integrated instead of being just a defensive maneuver or a way to get through some long alleys.

There is some amount of walking in the game and I do tend to dash through a lot of it, much like people run and jump in MMOs. Mostly it’s because there’s little else to do in those areas, and the walking is sort of boring.

So the bad things about Blades of Time. Well, it’s extremely linear. Go here, open this door, fight this boss, watch this cut scene, etc, etc. But it’s all done interestingly enough so that it doesn’t get boring. I am tempted to skip past some of the cut scenes but the story has kept me engaged enough. I wish that there weren’t so many little cut scenes. In one area of the game it’s sort of like watch 2 minute cut scene, play game for 3 minutes, watch 2 minute cut scene, play 2 minutes, watch yet another cut scene. Yeah, fine, just tell me all of it at once and let me get on with the killing!

For multiplayer you’ve got co-op campaign mode which is self-explanatory and then there’s Outbreak which can be co-op, versus or singleplayer. Outbreak is basically a command point game where there are outposts that you need to attack and destroy as you are swarmed by enemies. Taking an outpost out moves you closer to the ultimate goal of taking out their spawn point and winning the match. It’s challenging and tons of enemies are thrown at you over the course of a match but it’s engaging and downright fun. There’s also some RPG-like progression here as well which give you boosts based on leveling up during each match and overall by nabbing awards for certain objectives like taking out a boss, destroying a outpost, etc. I’m not quite sure but I think the outposts for your team are tied to the number of times you die (two per outpost maybe). However, you need to die to gain powers that you need to survive. It’s quite interesting. I try to stay alive until level 7 or so to make it worth the death so I can power up a bunch of stuff and then come back and wreak utter havoc on the baddies.

Overall, I don’t really have anything bad to say about Blades of Time. Is it for everyone? Probably not. I really like the fact that they thought outside the mindless button mashing box and brought in some elements that require a level of strategy to your approach. Sure, some of the boss battles are frustrating, but they’re supposed to be. You can’t just waltz past every massively armored, hugely powerful creature you encounter, where would be the fun in that?

This is quite possibly my sleeper hit of early 2012. I wasn’t really expecting it to be as good as it is and that in itself makes it all that much better I think. I don’t know why so many other people are down on the game, it’s good, it’s fun and it looks and sounds great. The most robust gameplay? No, but for what it is, it’s very good.

This review is based on the full retail package supplied by Konami for review purposes.