What would you get if Lara Croft had a younger sister who was conceived with a particularly weak and retarded sperm? You’d get X-Blades. You play as Ayumi: a prissy, bubble-headed collector of artefacts with a bitchy Britney Spears-esque view of the world. Her outfit makes her appear as though she belongs in an era in which over-the-shoulder bootlaces are all the rage. Complete with ‘jiggle’ physics. And not even convincing ones either.

I’m not an old-fashioned stick-in-the-mud by any stretch of the imagination (the contents of my hard-drive prove this) but are some developers really only interested in audiences with a one-track mind; in this case, the sort that shut themselves away from social interaction during the warmest of days and giggle at the word “titty-bollocks”?

I mean, unless you’re a huge fan of the third-person action/adventure genre there isn’t really much anyone over the age of thirteen can appreciate in X-Blades. Most grown men would probably be too embarrassed to buy it in-between purchasing issues of Big Butts and hiring prostitutes. And I can’t imagine many female gamers being keen on the idea of controlling this aesthetically idealised American spoilt bint.

We begin the demo with a somewhat ambiguous cut-scene in which our size-6 heroine discovers an artefact in some old wizen man’s shop. Matching this to an artefact she already had about her person it becomes clear that this was a very bad thing to do. Dragons appear. The room darkens. The wizen old man is consumed by Dragon-y goodness. Eventually the heroine bravely fights off the dragons and the conjoined artefact transforms into a glowing map of some description. And all in time to catch a J-Lo concert.

Once in control the game itself just seems so generic and uninspiring. Not that games should be on par with the Renaissance or anything but X-Blades just doesn’t appear to be trying anything even a tad daring or avant-garde. Attacks are usual: a jumpy-thing, melee sword moves and some long-range stuff so getting to grips with basics is fairly straight forward (this may be the only positive thing I am prepared to say about this game).

For the demo, at least, the game consists of mainly flitting from one Aztec ruin to another with a barrage of simpleton creatures blocking your path (one such enemy appeared to be a sort of floating bit of blue light (?)). Tasks involve endless repetition of the killing of similar enemies over and over again before one can progress through the level. I can’t help but think this was just the developers attempt at prolonging missions by spawning one after another until the game decreed enough time had passed, rather than by doing something unique, different or just, ya know, good.

The end of the demo saw Miss Jiggles being warned by a big, grey, anthropomorphic lion (Yes, lion) of the dangers of taking the artefact she had worked hard and jiggled much to achieve. However, this does not deter our highly materialistic heroine from reaching for the prize non-the-less in spite of warnings about it being “harmful to humans” (Admittedly it being in the middle of a large, unguarded coliseum-looking place it is pretty tantalising). So she grabs the artefact like a five-year-old who’s curious about the three holes in the wall that the TV plugs into and inevitably a “you should’ve listened to what I said” fight breaks out.

At this point not only did I stop caring about the protagonist but I actually wished for her death. However, I wasn’t playing at the time and so I had no power over this. Call me a git if you must but I struggle to be intrigued by a game that has a completely unlikable heroine with a “WANT! WANT! WANT!” mentality that one can associate or sympathise with. I’d be more sympathetic if I was controlling Patrick Bateman as he axed through characters designed to look like my mother.

SIDE NOTE: Credit goes to my friend Mike for taking the bullet for me on this one: he played it while we both made snide comments. I think we had a pretty good system going on there…