Destiny Review In Progress

There's a stark and uneasy beauty to Destiny. It bubbles forth from the methane pools that poison Venus' landscapes, and it billows from within the fissures crisscrossing Earth's own moon. These are unfriendly places, but their hostility is strict and measured. As I close in on level 15, I understand that there is no native fauna or flora seeking to extinguish my light, only an array of robotic and semirobotic soldiers that arrive via dropship, themselves bolstered by otherworldly entities like wizards that I have yet to understand.

I am both in awe of these environs and left cold by them. Much of the time, I suspect that Destiny is emotionally frigid by design, its mysteries not so much lurking in corners as they are dispersed in a thematic fog. Even when I travel to Destiny's lushest areas, I shiver at how simultaneously green and lifeless they are. It is then that I can almost understand recent theories that suggest our own universe behaves like a hologram projected from its edges. Playing Destiny is to move and shoot through spaces that don't feel entirely real. They are both tremendously gorgeous and eerily synthetic, much like the face of the pale, tattooed Warlock I am guiding through Destiny's missions.

It's here, in this odd purgatory where human intelligence is as dispassionate as the artificial variety, where you take up arms and go to battle. Destiny publisher Activision tells us we can post a review as early as you are reading this very article, but I need time to finish the story, to delve deeper into this game--a game with surgically precise mechanics and atmosphere sure to avoid offending the pickiest of focus groups.

Oh, but don't take that to mean that my experience with Destiny has been negative. This is the kind of game that brings to mind that evil word "polish," a word often used to describe games that were clearly expensive to make, games with such meticulous mechanics that every individual moment is defined by fluid movement and controls you rarely, if ever, fight against. There's a Halo-ish feel to some of these mechanics--no surprise, given that Destiny developer Bungie created that series, too--but this game is never as cartoonish as that other sci-fi shooter. You can leap and glide for a good amount of time, but you still feel gravity pulling you down even during the most fanciful moments. The shooting isn't quite as free as that in Halo, but you must still exercise aiming skill, because you cannot lean on the conservative autotargeting as a crutch.

So in the most mechanical respects, Destiny feels absolutely fantastic. I currently favor a burst rifle and a pulse rifle, the latter of which can make mincemeat out of Vex hydras and hobglobins with its charged shot. They are worthy foes, if rather bullet-spongey, particularly when accompanying a goblin horde. You encounter these enemies around the time Destiny's story starts to kick into gear, a moment that was welcome not only for the new gameplay diversity, but for giving me plot points worth paying attention to. Up to this point, Destiny's dialogue comes from the Diablo III school of cliche, offering up such gems as "I've got a bad feeling about this," but without enough cheeky energy for me to believe this could actually be a Star Wars reference. There's little room for humor in this universe.

There's no reason you can't provide your own humor, however. Destiny means for you to join others in your quests. The downside of playing before the game was available to the general public has been the relatively small community, mostly made up of other games writers. As a result, I did play several missions on my own, which provided a nice challenge. Fortunately, most combat spaces are elegantly designed and give you plenty of room to find cover should you need time to charge up your shield, though enemies like Hive thralls are too stubborn to allow you to just sit idly by and heal up, at least some of the time. I was more pleased when others joined me, which is relatively easy even should you not have friends joining you. After all, not only can you group with others in the hub area known as the Tower, but will also encounter your fellow brothers and sisters as you move through the world.

I have yet to take part in any firefights I would classify as thrilling--not quite yet. Challenging, certainly, but not yet explosive. I expect that to change once the community is overflowing with new players. It's then that I will get into The Crucible, where Destiny's multiplayer competition rages. For now, my interactions are cooperative ones, sometimes in the form of dancing with my co-op partner before we blast into the skies and select our next destination, and sometimes in the form of pick-up groups in which I join strangers in our quest to eradicate the Fallen from the Earth's surface.

If you played the alpha or beta test, you more or less know how Destiny feels, however. There's little I can find fault with in this regard. As for the loot, the story, and world-building, the jury is still out, or if I want to be more appropriate, this particular jury of one has a ways to go before he knows where he stands. For now, however, Destiny has the look and feel of a big-budget shooter, and the structure of a lean, loot-driven role-playing game, a combination that Borderlands popularized, and Destiny greatly refines. At the same time, I have gone through these motions before, and I am looking forward to that moment when Destiny's excellent mechanics are released into combat scenarios that rise to their greatness.