In defense of Destiny. Victim of hype and high expectations.

Destiny is not a victim. People that bought it based on the hype it got are the victims. And 90% of that hype came from Activision hyping it up themselves, and the name "Bungie."

And no game ever will meet hype. People love to convince themselves that they do, but they never will.

And that's because they are an art, and no piece of art has ever been perfect before. There have been masterpieces, there have been works that set standards, and works that break new grounds and push the art along into new territory that interests new people. But perfection has never been achieved in art, and if it ever somehow is then art will die.

"You don't have a problem going back and playing Max Payne 3 and being the EXACT same character, and in an extremely linear fashion, but the differences between the classes in Destiny aren't enough for you? Interesting."

Yes, I don't mind at all. Max Payne 3 has far far more interesting encounters, varied levels, and a fun story to boot. I also find the combat to be more satisfying as well.

"Not sure what you were expecting as far as coop. Personally I feel as though the call for coop in Destiny is far greater than it ever was in Halo, especially once you get over your head in terms of level of difficulty. I think having multiple classes in one session suits the coop just fine, and although I'm nowhere near attempting a raid, they sound very demanding in terms of coop. You mentioned that there is no sense of "tactics"...but that's what you make of it. You didn't need to use tactics to beat Halo coop either. My team and I planned everything out and used many tactics to take out the strikes. I learned from the beta that you could spend an hour or two trying to beat Devil's Lair just by shooting bad guys, or you could work as a team and get it done faster."

Nothing in Destiny is as interesting as the warthog-driver-gunner combo in Halo. I never felt like I was working as a team in Destiny, my partners were there just to kill stuff faster. The tactics in Halo come from the weapons you use, the vehicles you drive, and the grenades you conserve. In Destiny, you can use the same weapons and same lazy shooting and get by just fine. Strikes such as the Devil's lair take so long because the bosses are friggin bullet sponges. They don't require strategy, they are mainly endurance runs.

"I agree that nobody should play this game alone. Bungie even agrees with that. They set out to make a social game. I don't know that they are going to fully achieve what they set out to, but I also don't think there is another experience quite like it on consoles."

This game is so anti-social in a lot of things it does. The lack of matchmaking for some modes is insane. The lack of public chat is also very off putting. I don't see any form of community being formed in this game. I think this kind of game has been done better before. For example, I think Diablo and Monster Hunter are far better "shared world" games overall.

If you like the game, that's fine. However, I think this game is incredibly flawed and very disappointing. Destiny fails to even get the basics right a lot of the time and that is absurd.

I concur.

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@JangoWuzHere

Max Payne 3 had more interesting encounters, and varied levels? haha I guess aliens, spider robots, giant eyeballs, and walking statues on several different planets aren't as interesting as shooting up some guys at a soccer game. Personally, I thought "hit bullet time, shoot shoot shoot, hide, hit bullet time again" got kind of old fast. Definitely had a better story though.

I guess that's your opinion as far as the warthog-driver-gunner stuff. Personally, I got through almost every Halo game with nothing more than an assault rifle or a battle rifle. Also the use of abilities sort of adds to it all. It honestly sounds like you made no attempt at all to utilize any strategy in Destiny, so you'll have to excuse me if I shrug off your claim that using strategy doesn't help defeat enemies even faster. My experience has been significantly different.

Perhaps they are trying to make you a little bit more social? It's really not hard to meet a friend and get a game going together. Almost all of it is matchmaking, so I wouldn't go overboard. Have you watched any videos of people trying to tackle the first strike? If you think you are getting past that with a couple of dudes who may or may not use mics, and may or may not be committed to staying the whole time - you are wrong. It's not just mowing down bad guys and requires a lot of communication and coordination. The most you'll get are probably a few homophobic slurs and a few people who rage quit.

This was very well put, and I agree with damn near everything you've said. I felt like Tower was going to be a waste of potential even during the ALPHA/BETA. Also, the bullet spongy enemies, and lack of monster variety was a bummer. The game overall really felt "meh". Not a bad game, just extremely overhyped.

I'm not sure how different looking enemies makes them interesting. In Max Payne 3, all of the enemies are dudes, but they are definitely smarter and a a lot more interesting to fight against. You are fighting basic brazillian gang members near the start, and by the end you are fighting an entire geared up police force. There is no esclation to the combat in Destiny. You fight weird looking aliens at the start and end, and they don't require you to mix up the way you actually play the game. All of the levels in Destiny are the same, you can't even argue with me about that. The missions that you do on Earth are the exact same that you do on Mars. Max Payne has varying objectives besides holding square, hear Peter Dinklage spout nonsense, fight off waves of enemies.

This game really isn't that complex, I'm not sure what strategys you would need for this game. Yes, I can defeat stuff faster if I had a better group. However, at that point you are arguing for time spent instead of challenge. The only difficult moments in Destiny are the bosses. It's not because they are actually hard, they just have an insane health bar. I seriously don't feel like my time is being well spent if it takes 10 mins to fight one boss who never changes up its moveset.

It actually is quite difficult to meet people in Destiny. There is no public chat, so no one is going to join your fireteam if they have no reason too. About 60% of the game doesn't have matchmaking. You can only matchmaking for PVP and strikes. The campaign and daily heroics have none.

I'm enjoying it too I don't know what people we're expecting from Destiny the game is a ton of fun and thats all that matters.

@Thunderdrone: I have to totally agree. If this came out of nowwhere without all the hype and an uknown dev, it would have gotten GOTY nominations

@Thunderdrone:

You said it yourself. Gameplay and setpieces can only take a game so far these days. Lack of lore/stories is devastating when a game is as hyped as Destiny was. Just another example of Devs forgetting to hire dedicated writers to flesh out a game's quests/story/etc (they really need to take a page out of Bethesda's or yes, even Bioware's book).

That being said I think Destiny is good for what it does, and if people have fun playing it that's fine by me. Just know that for people who value stuff like lore/story, they aren't going to enjoy the game nearly as much as you do.

I have played plenty of games that scored below an 8 that I thought were excellent. I don't think the hype had anything at all to do with the scores the title received. If anything, the massive hype leads me to believe that the game might actually be worse than a 6. Video game reviews are very unreliable. Just play what you think looks interesting and try to ignore them.