Blackwind [Xbox]
Developed by Drakkar Dev, Blackwind is a hack-and-slash sci-fi action-platformer utilising large mech suits known as Battle Frames. You play as teenager James Hawkins, who finds himself trapped inside a prototype Battle Frame after the starship he was on was shot down. So now, he must set out to find his missing father and stop the upcoming invasion. You can play single player or in local co-op, with the second player taking control of your drone (which you can summon using the D-pad when playing alone), however when the drone is out and about, it will be in control of the ranged attacks, leaving the mech to only utilise melee attacks.
In an almost hilarious turn of events upon starting the game, we ran into a repeated bug. The first achievement is titled ‘Crash Landing’ which you’ll get at the point that you gain control, and the game immediately crashed. Our worry was that it would then go on to do this each time we reached this point, but it let us progress beyond this thankfully. Our relief was short-lived however, as upon gaining the next achievement, the same issue arose again - booting us back out to the Xbox dashboard. This quickly grew to be mega frustrating, as every single achievement would lead to the same problem, causing us to have to replay sections multiple times if the crashes happened before relevant checkpoints. Just as a little side-note: there are 63 achievements to get… We suffered through this 8 times before we gave up, with the intention of coming back to try again at a later date. A few weeks since passed, and this thankfully looks to be resolved, so we were able to dive back in.
There are save points located throughout the world where you can upgrade Skills, across General, Combat and Special in order to improve your mech, as well as alter your skin, with 15 skins available for you to find and unlock, including some pretty awesome references like Bumblebee from Transformers and the E.V.A. 01 suit from Evangelion. There are also Fast Travel points throughout the different areas you’ve visited, though this can become horribly maze-like, as they will warp you back to the general area rather than other Fast Travel points, and with no objective markers it can be a bit of a nightmare trying to figure out where you’re meant to go next.
The mech is surprisingly nimble, with fast, satisfying movement and well designed dashing and dodging, however the melee combat feels a little stiff. You can fast attack with X, heavy attack with Y, and launch missiles with LB, but there doesn’t seem to be any real power behind your moves, despite being in a huge mech. You can pull off finishing moves called ‘Enemy Terminations’ with B when prompted, but these too lack the power and weight behind them, with a really repetitive animation that will quickly grow tiresome. As you explore, you can find B-Wolfrium, which allows your Battle Frame to evolve and gain new powers, such as a shield-breaking ground pound move known as ‘Punisher’. The Blackwind mech has an ability called ‘Black Mode’, in which it will allow you to warp time to pull off powerful moves, but even this feels flawed.
Area environments are fairly uninspired, with lots of repetition in the layouts and overall designs of each area, with you moving from place to place (mostly within the facilities, but on occasion outside), wiping out enemies and then destroying any of the destructible environmental items, before progressing to the next area to do the same again - it’s a shame, as some of the enemy designs are pretty interesting, but there’s also a lot of samey-ness to them all, as well. The fixed, top-down/isometric viewpoint is really awkward and frustrating at times, and can lead to you taking unnecessary damage from enemies hidden just off-screen.
You’ll gain blue orbs as you go, that can be used at save points on your Skill Tree, in order to upgrade your Battle Frame, with improvements such as ‘Life Theft’ that gives the chance to regain health when terminating an enemy, and increasing the area of damage of particular moves. The sound design is lacking impact, with attacks feeling very underwhelming, and the voice acting feeling overly cheesy at times - and boy, does Jimmy love to whinge. The soundtrack is typical sci-fi action fare, but isn’t really anything special either.
Available for £19.99 on the Xbox Store, Blackwind was a promising title that we were excited to get stuck in to, but with not enough to set it apart and make it feel enjoyable, it fell short of our expectations. It’s got a decent upgrade system and fun unlockable skins, but there’s a lot of flaws that really drag it down. The repeated shutdown bug drained us of a lot of our enjoyment, and even with a bit of a gap before coming back, it had lost a lot of our interest. Overall, it’s a pretty average hack-and-slash, but I’d recommend holding out for a sale if you’re looking to pick this one up.
In the end, we decided to give Blackwind the Collecting Asylum rating of 5.5/10.
Are you interested in Blackwind? What do you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to Blowfish Studios for the Blackwind Xbox review code!
