XEL

Review

Your adventure of Xel begins with your crashlanding in an unknown place. That is not all, you have lost your memory and cannot even recall your own name. However, you’re greeted by Chap, a flying robot who explains that you have crashed landed in The Garden on Xel. You set off with your new-found friend to explore your surroundings and discover where the hell you have landed.

After a while you meet up with Desmond, a young lad who gives you some information about where you are and what Xel is. He takes you to meet the Elder at the Needle Eye where most of the folks of Xel live in safety, away from some of the harsh environments of Xel. Also at the Needle Eye, there’s a shop where you can buy various items, Desmond has a Dojo where you can beat the hell out of a wooden dummy, and then there’s Shirl’s workshop; Shirl will upgrade your equipment if you have the right resources.

As you progress, you’ll venture into new areas of Xel; in total there are eleven areas to explore, although you may not be able to enter some of them until you have acquired the necessary item or completed another area. Each area has its own theme, cold and scorching heat, bogs and more and each will have a variety of enemies within them. The most common enemy you will come across are the Ding Bots, you’ll find them everywhere you go but they are easy to deal with.

To help you move through each of the areas and to protect you from enemies you have a sword and shield which you will have to find. You will also gain a Zap-trap; you throw this on the ground and it will shock enemies, immobilising them for a short time. The Zap-trap can also be used to power doors or bridges; by throwing them towards a plug somewhere nearby, the door or bridge will open for a short length of time.

Another item in your inventory is the Stickyhook, this allows you to traverse gaps by shooting at a big sticky ball on a post on the other side of a gap. Firing at an enemy will then attach and pull you towards them which can be handy at times. Burnhilde is a flamethrower which can help you move forward when blocks of ice stand in the way of progress.  It’s also great against certain enemies when you want to turn up the heat. The last of your equipment is Clobber, a sonic hammer which not only smashes glass barriers, but works great against the symbiotic enemy, allowing you to deal with them with more ease.

There are some puzzles which you have to solve in order to move forward. Sometimes you’re unable to see a way forward, but you have this small crystal embedded in your forehead. At times you may see some floating pink crystals (Time Core) that usually span a small area, and these crystals interact with the crystal stuck in your forehead. When activated they will open a portal back in time where things may be different, a broken bridge now could be fixed when the time core is activated allowing you to pass over the bridge and reach the other side, whereas you couldn’t if it wasn’t activated. There are other times where activating the Time Core will help you progress, so keep your mince pies open for those crystals, there may be something of interest close by.

You can craft recipes at campsites which are scattered around here and there if you have the recipes. However, I have found only a couple recipes and apart from crafting some gold cables I’m not exactly sure what the point is of the campsite and the recipe-crafting.

While I have enjoyed playing Xel, it has been extremely frustrating to the point of almost quitting the game. I kept at it, however, and at times I could get to enjoy the game, but I endured multiple bugs which almost had me at the point of throwing my game pad.

When you’re trying to shoot your Web Spinner so you can jump over a gap, it won’t aim at the target on the other side, but aims at the one you’re standing next too.  Manual aiming is a real pain, it’s real hit and miss as to whether or not you can hit the target, and then the web spinner stops working. Sometimes it's better to just jump into the gap and be repositioned on the map on the side where you actually wanted to be.

When you go to throw a Zap-trap and change your mind, your character gets stuck in that animation. This mean you think that your character is looking one way, but they are not, so just make sure you’re facing the right way otherwise you’ll come unstuck if you try to deploy a Zap-trap or anything else. This problem only seemed to happen when I had the Zap-trap assigned to “X” on my gamepad.

Other bugs I’ve had are falling through the map and getting stuck in the ground after jumping down from an opening.  At times, the enemy would start to float away (especially if you came up behind them) and would not attack until it was too late and they died.

There are ladders around each area that help you return to a place instead of running all the way back the way you came, which is great, although at times I could not activate a ladder to drop down for later use. Then at a later point I’d try to go down a ladder, but it would not let me, and sometimes the ladder would be shown as being up even though you had activated it to be in the down position.

One other problem was that the map became useless on some of the areas; it could have done with a Legend so we could understand what’s on it. There’s a list of areas you can scroll down and then select the map you wish to view. However, it would scroll down so much that I could not choose the map I wanted, so I’d get lost and start running around and around in circles.

A fast travel feature would have been great as I often found myself trying to get back to where I could replenish my health.  Earlier areas seemed to have a lot more health in boxes and from defeating enemies than the latter stages. A fast travel option does appear but it’s only when you’ve completed about three-quarters of the game, which I found to be a bit silly.

It would be a nice game if it wasn’t for the bugs, so I really do hope they fix the bugs in the near future.

In the settings you find options for Screen (Resolution, Window Mode, V Sync and Graphics Quality), Audio (Master, Voices, Music and Sound Effects Volume Adjusters), Controls (Customise Keyboard - sadly there’s no gamepad customisation - and Controller Vibrations), Language (English, German, French, Korean, Japanese, Russian, Brazilian Portuguese).

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com

XEL Steam Store Page