There have been a lot of Marvel games over the years. Some of them are totally awesome, while others come up a little short, getting less and less impressive of late. Then "X-Men: Destiny" came out on the field with its pretty graphics and ultra customization, including a story that you make for yourself. An X-Men game where you pick your own destiny and own story? Sign me up.

"X-Men: Destiny" starts out with a cut scene that shows a hostile climate for humans and mutants world round. The scene ends by focusing on three teens in the crowd of a peace rally between mutants and politicians, and after a hostile attack on the rally, you get to choose which of these three you want to play as.

There's Aimi Yoshida, Grant Alexander, and Adrian Luca. Aimi is alone in the US after being smuggled out of Japan to avoid the on-going colonization of mutants. Grant is a college jock who has no interest in mutant affairs and doesn't really know anything that's going on. Last, Adrian is the son of an anti-mutant militarist and was raised to hate mutants. Too bad he finds out he is one.

After you choose what character you'd like you get to pick from three mutant abilities. Destiny Control allows you to change your body mass, giving you the ability to have rock-like fists punches. Energy Projection allows you to control energy, giving you the ability to shoot energy balls. Then there is Shadow Matter control, giving you the ability to create shadow-swords by displacing matter. For my play through I went with Aimi and the energy projection.

Once your choice is made you immediately get thrown into fighting. Hordes of enemies come at you with laser guns and electric batons just for standing there. So, you spend a little while running around the demolished streets mashing your two attack buttons, one normal attack and one heavy attack, as you defeat these enemies and run into various mutants from the X-Men and the Brotherhood. After a few conversations with each of them you start to paint a picture of what's going on - basically these Purifier folk are trying to wipe out mutants and you have to help stop them.

This is pretty much the game play for the rest of the game. You run around and knock out groups of between ten and thirty Purifiers at a time, have a conversation with some mutants, and then go back to running around defeating waves of enemies. There's really no strategy to fighting, just mash your attack buttons until all the enemies are gone. At the beginning of the game the fighting looks neat, but after an hour of shooting energy blasts at your three-hundredth Purifier, it's not really cool anymore.

Early on you get to decide whether you want to assist the X-Men or the Brotherhood. Both have the same goal; defeat the Purifiers and take back the city. The only difference is that the X-Men want to take back the city in the name of peace, and the Brotherhood wants to make it a mutant paradise. Turns out, whichever side you choose, the game is the same. The bosses are the same, all the plot-focused people you talk to are the same, and all you do in the game is run around different city environments beating up Purifiers. You do have some different teammates here and there, and your ending changes, but otherwise it doesn't matter which side your on.

That's the most disappointing part of the game: It's very linear despite the illusion of being branched out based on your choices. You pick your own destiny! Not really, you just pick what kind of teenager to play as and what powers they get. Everything else is set in stone for the most part.

Outside of the linear story there's not any exploration to be had. This disappointed me. The game has some fun environments that are designed well. You run around streets demolished by earthquakes and mutant fights, train stations, China Town, underground sewers, etc. It'd be cool if you could have extra missions in them, or maybe some objectives to collect here and there that could flesh out your customizable character. Outside of maybe four or five non-linear missions you can take (these again only consist of killing waves of Purifiers) there is nothing left to be found or done.

Last of my complaints, this game is short. It took me about three hours to finish the story line. To me that's disappointing in today's age: Three hours is not nearly enough.

Gripes aside, I still enjoyed the game. The story, while short, is well done. There is a lot of dialogue and plot it really immerses you. While game play wise your choices don't really have a lot of weight, the story and dialogue makes it seem like there is everything weighing on it.

When it came time for me to pick between helping out the X-Men or the Brotherhood, I couldn't choose. In video games I almost always pick the "good side" because I end up feeling bad being mean even to a NPC. Thanks to X-Men movies and a lot of mainstream X-Men media I feel that the Brotherhood is portrayed as the "evil" side. It's not really true to the comics; the Brotherhood is just another point of view in the Marvel universe. This game did a good job of reminding me that I love the Brotherhood. I did side with the X-Men in this game for my first run through, but it can be hard to tell the difference between the two. I was happy to see that was included.

If you pick up the game, don't expect too much from the choices you make or the sometimes monotonous game play - but pick it up for the cool story that you get to be involved in. You'll leave this game feeling involved with an epic story arch from the X-Men comics, and that's what should matter most in a Marvel game anyway.