Hands-on with X-Blades, starring a G-String wearing vixen

Ayumi is a treasure huntress who's always looking for the next big payoff. You pick up the story on her latest hunt, a hunt that will change her life as she knows it. At the end of this demo, Ayumi finds an orb that as soon as she touches, sets off a chain of events that puts the world in danger, as well as stealing her soul away. The game is to span over 30 levels where Ayumi has to try and get her soul back and make things right again.

The first level you start off in is one of your standard tutorial levels. The first thing you'll notice is that X-Blades is going to be a very fast paced title. As soon as you move the left thumb stick, Ayumi is running at top speeds. 

There is no enemy in this first section so it's a perfect place to figure out what button does what. The game is going for a very simple and basic combat system. Pressing the X button will make Ayumi swing her swords and mashing the button will allow for combo attacks. Pressing the right trigger will let you shoot at enemies with her swords. Yup, that's right -- Ayumi has gunblades, with unlimited ammo of course. 

Now, by this point, you might be thinking that this game sounds an awful lot like Devil May Cry. Well, you wouldn't be wrong in that assumption, actually. But there is one major difference that sets this game apart from DMC ... and no, I'm not referring to the fact that you're staring at a bare ass 90% of the time.

X-Blades has a heavy focus on magic attacks. The main goal in X-Blades is for Ayumi to reclaim the soul she has lost. As you kill enemies in the game, you get parts of your soul back. These soul parts are also the currency in the game in which you use to buy yourself new magic spells. The game will have between 30 to 40 different magic spells, but we were only shown two of these magic attacks in the demo. 

The first magic spell I bought was the Earthquake attack. Sometimes as you fight enemies, it's easy to get surrounded and swarmed by attackers. With Earthquake, Ayumi jumps up into the air and slams back down to the ground causing enemies to get knocked back or obliterated. 

Some enemies, and a majority of the bosses, will also require specific magic spells to take them out. At one point in the game, I got to a hallway where a blue flying ice demon was patrolling the area. Your swords and guns won't hurt the demon and if you get too close, it will freeze you. The only spell that will work on it is the fireball spell. The demon will follow you everywhere you go, so you have to gain some distance before you can shoot a fireball at it to take it out. Like most other hack 'n slash adventure games, rooms will be blocked off by a magical barrier that will drop once you've taken out all the enemies in an area.

It's not a bad thing, though, to take on every demon since you need souls to buy more magic. As you progress through the game, more magic spells are unlocked for you to buy. You can bind up to four magic spells to your controller (Y, B, and the two shoulder buttons) and every spell differs in price. Some are very cheap and some you won't be able to afford until you get really deep into the game. Vases and other breakable objects in the levels will contain a small of souls too.

Most of the spells will require you to build up your rage meter before you can use the magic attack. It's really easy to fill up your rage meter, as you just need to slice up a few enemies. 

The demo ends with the first boss encounter. As Ayumi is trying to grab a mysterious dark orb, a giant wolf creature comes into the room and stops Ayumi. The wolf creature warns Ayumi to back off, but the greedy bitch doesn't listen and grabs the orb anyway. The wolf creature has no choice now but to kill Ayumi.

Combat is still the same as before. But like the ice demon from earlier, melee and your guns won't work here. The only attack that will work on the boss is the fireball. Every boss battle will differ in some way and it's up to you to figure out which attack will work best to fight a boss.

This battle can get pretty frantic so it's important that you use your lock-on to make sure your fireball attack only hits the wolf and not the little demon minions crawling all over the place. The wolf boss has some very strong attacks too, but so long as you do a dodge roll in time, the boss really won't be that much of a challenge. In case you're getting your ass kicked though, there are these green crystals located in the stage, which once broken, will give you a health boost. There are also red crystals that will add some rage to your rage meter. If things are getting really bad, you can always purchase some health through store with your soul monies.   

There's no release date yet, but the build I played was 60% finished so there's a good chance of X-Blades dropping on the Xbox 360 and PC later this year. The game should be around eight to ten hours with about nine of those hours spent staring at Ayumi's ass. Also, for all of you going to PAX this year, keep your eyes on some Ayumi cosplay action. Or in otherwords, if you need to find me on the show floor, just look for the Ayumi cosplayer. I won't be far behind from her behind.