Review: Destiny

Destiny is not a great game. Sometimes I am not even sure if it’s a good game. But like the obedient little boy I am (one of Destiny’s 3.2 million daily obedient children) I run back to it every day, looking to see if there is more to it than meets the eye. There isn’t, but I don’t care… leave me alone. Destiny is MY friend, not yours.

Destiny is a really pretty game and it has all you could want mechanically from a FPS. But the game was made by Bungie, so that is really something you would expect from the off. These reviews are supposed to be brief, so I am not going to go in to the laughable story of Destiny (it feels like major plot elements may have ended up in the chopping room floor [imagine The Sixth Sense if they had accidentally cut the whole Bruce Willis is dead scene]), but suffice is to say that by the first hour you will probably have added this game to the list of ‘podcast games’ that you own.

You are given the choice at the beginning whether you would like to play as one of three types of characters – warlock, titan or hunter. The problematic thing is that there doesn’t seem to be any discernible difference between them and in the end your choice becomes fairly arbitrary. When you get to a certain level you are then given the option to focus on a second power, but to do so you must start again without any of the armour, etc. you had built up, one of the many frustrating aspects of this game.

The game starts you off on Earth where you take part in a few different types of missions, namely – strikes, story or patrol. Patrol has an open world feel to it, where you can commit to hijinks (… well, you can dance with other players) and set about completing one of the five daily bounty missions. Strikes are missions where you essentially work your way past waves of enemies and two or more bosses. The game allows matchmaking for this and it is pretty fun. Story missions are played alone, but you can have a fireteam of up to three people. Once you have done all of this on Earth, you move to Moon (lather, rinse, repeat), then Venus and then Mars and then you’re done.

So what makes me go back every day like a newborn piglet looking for heroin? I don’t know, really. The loot system is frustrating (so much so that people were playing ‘The Loot cave’ instead of actually playing the game), there is no matchmaking on the harder challenges and I have done every mission at least 473 times. I guess there is something mindnumbing about it. I like to sit there with my earphones in and blow shit up. It’s therapeutic. I would counter that by saying it’s also a big missed opportunity, but I don’t think Bungie are going to leave it how it is and I think Destiny’s Child has huge potential. It’s just disappointing that after taking so long to make this game they were not able to get fundamental things correct – like a good storyline, a larger selection of weapons, larger areas, more diverse mission types, proper matchmaking, essentially – a more polished and more well-rounded game. Like the one they promised us.

The fundamentally frustrating thing about the game is that it is paradoxically better and worse than the sum of its parts. It feels like a really good shooter. The shooting mechanics are very enjoyable and there is a real weight to the guns (which are few and far between). You can feel every bullet you fire and you get a real sense of the difference between each weapon you have. There is a real satisfaction in gunning down wave after wave of enemies, which is a good thing because you are going to be doing a lot of that.

I am at level 28 and the only thing I am missing is a legendary auto rifle (which Bungie have just patched to be less effective [why I outta]), so I guess I will keep playing until I get it. After that, I am not sure what the future for me and Destiny is. I have few players on my friends list that are of a high enough level to join me in the end game strikes, so until matchmaking is introduced I don’t think there will be much for me in the game, which is unfortunate because I really enjoy playing it. Why you gotta do me like that, Destiny?

@podestrians: Have you done the Raids?

I have since done the raids. That review is a few weeks old. I wanted to upload my backlog of reviews, but i guess there is a content limit on Gamespot blogs.

No, you're new. You're limited to posts in the first days because of all the bots that have been here

Ah of course, that makes sense. Cheers for the info!

Good early review. I personally enjoyed the game since launch, despite the obvious flaws. Most fun I've had in a while with a game.

no worries, after tomorrow or something you will be able to post as much as you want

It's like Diablo disguised in Halo... It's bad.

I really enjoyed the game myself and put a lot of time into it since launch. I've put aside for awhile to play other games but will likely return to it when the dlc comes out. The only issue that I have with it is the story-telling, it's terrible. There's plenty of great lore and stuff there to work with but almost nothing is actually told within the game, most all of it is stuff you have to lookup and read outside of the game which is a lousy way to do it.

Yeah, pretty much agree with all of that. Plus - cool avatar!

Thanks.

Destiny would have to be the biggest dissapointment I have had this decade. I thought the game was going to be great while I was leveling up to lvl 20 to open up the game like Bungie said. I was dead wrong. The game didn't open up, in fact it closed down, with limited strike missions(3), a Raid I can never play because it does not have matchmaking! limited multiplayer matches( I can only play the same five levels so many times then I want to end my existence). Bungie + Activision = the biggest rip off, since to open up the game you have to buy the expansions.

It would be ok if Bungie had included a decient end game, like one of the expansion packs should be part of the main game. But to include almost zero end game and then say we have to pay more to get the real game! I played 50 hours trying to get this end game stuff Bungie talked about!

I will not be buying the Destiny expansion packs because this cannot become the norm for gaming in the future. We should not be given an incomplete game and then be expected to pay more money to get a full game. As I was building to lvl 20 there was an ok amount of things in the game, and I was content with it since I thought the game would really "Open up" as bungie put it. But as I played and passed lvl 20 and reached lvl 26 I realized i just wasted time with this incomplete game and my contentness turn into anger and the game has not been played on my console again.

Assasins creed unity for example is not as great as assasins creed black flag but it has three times the content and in this case i would not mind buying an expansion.

Can't argue with much of that. I enjoyed the game for the mechanics and it was a perfect podcast game, but just ran out of steam

played the demo today.. was OK.

It might have been that because you believed the hype instead of taking the game for what it is

The Skinner Box !