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Destiny

Platforms: Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360, PS3

Genre: MMORPG/Sci-fi First Person Shooter

Publisher/Developer: Activision/Bungie

Destiny was originally a hugely ambitious title. It is the first game that former Halo developer Bungie has made since their split from Microsoft. Now with a contract to Activision and an apparent and massive $500,000,000 budget, they set out to create a fascinating new game with unique gameplay, storytelling, and overall extreme fun. Well, they failed.

The character creator disappoints right at the start

The beginning of Destiny screams promise and quickly begins to fall apart in the story area. After setting foot on Mars, humanity found the Traveler, a mysterious orb that brought about massive advancement to mankind, like expanded lifespans and technology. After a while, some strange force known as 'the darkness' apparently got tired of that and somehow nearly ruined everything. Now, you must fight off this terrible force. Whatever it is.

You start off with a very minimalistic character creator. You choose one of three races, your face, hair, and colors of the eyes and so on. This creator is ultimately limited and actually worthless as most of the time your character will be wearing a helmet anyways. Within this creator you can choose one of 3 classes, Warlock, Titan or Hunter. Each of these classes honestly have little difference in the overall gameplay and does little to make yourself seem any different from others. You do not get to choose specific outfits or cosmetics as those are your 'armor' and you will be using what has the best stats. So personalization in this game is pointless and nearly nonexistent.

After you are mysteriously brought back to life thanks to your Ghost (voiced by Peter Dinklage), you are immediately told exposition with little explanation about how long you have been dead and why you are so important now or even what is actually happening. Instead, you just start killing things and begin your journey of grinding for loot and frustration.

First off, I want to say what Destiny gets right. First, the visuals. The game has this wonderful graphical look that oozes in polish. The detail on areas like the moon and Venus are astonishing and the game's art is very well crafted. The skyboxes in particular are beautiful. Same goes for the music, the music in the game is one of the best parts of the experience. It ranges from peaceful to sheer intensity with wonderful orchestral compositions.

The graphics and atmosphere are very well done

The other thing that is done well is the gunplay itself. The control here is tight and like the music and art, it is polished with precision and it is very easy to get into and to start feeling powerful against your foes, in the beginning at least.

This goes well with the fun of early progression. You can level up Your character and the armor and weapons that you get as you use them. Eventually you unlock a subclass that also gets upgrades of its own. Early on, this system feels very rewarding but it quickly falls apart thanks to the games many glaring problems. Let's get to those now.

For one, the story in the game is almost nonexistent and what little bits of story that are here are told terribly. The game constantly spouts out exposition and tries it's best to seem 'intriguing' and 'mysterious' but in the end you are given little to nothing in terms of answers about anything. What exactly is the traveler? What are the other races? Why are the alien races fighting us? Who is that random Exo woman you met early in the game? The answers are you get no answers. The game even mocks you a few different times by telling you that they either could explain what the hell is going on or that they just don't have time to tell you anything, which they never tell you anything anyways. The voice acting is sub par and again tries to sound mysterious but comes off as boring and lifeless. Peter Dinklage as your Ghost fairs no better here.

Another massive problem is the way you get loot. Like an MMO experience, weapons, armor, and other things are acquired through completely random means. After you kill enemies or complete quests, you MIGHT get something good or something useless. Items have different rarities and getting anything higher at all will take countless hours of grinding. Even then, it is all random anyways. This carries over to PVP where the system is entirely out of whack. You can be the best player in the entire game and yet you may not get anything at all, while the lowest player may get a Legendary piece of equipment. This makes earning new things feel way less rewarding and more like winning the lottery. You feel great if you do, but you never know anything beforehand and it never takes any real effort, just sheer luck.

Mission design is one of, if not the biggest problem in this entire game. As you play through the 'story', you will be doing different missions called raids and strikes. These are the meat of the PvE experience. As well as doing these you can get a certain amount of bounties that are basically challenges that earn you experience and 'reputation' for an unexplained 'faction'. Increasing this gets you the chance for better loot but honestly I was unable to care about this. These missions are where you complete these, as well as the multiplayer. Where was I...Oh yeah, mission design. 'Design'.

This Strike boss only takes about an hour of constant shooting to kill

Here is the mission design in a nutshell: Run to point A, have your Ghost scan something, run to point B, have your Ghost scan something else, he says he needs time to scan it, you fight off waves of enemies, then you proceed to a bullet sponge boss, you kill it and you win. Yay. I am serious, this is basically the entire PvE gameplay. There is no innovation here, there is no interesting or varied mission design, it is just run, shoot, run, shoot, and repeat over and over, all against some of the most generic enemies I have ever seen in a game with a budget like this. It is tedious, repetitive, and above all else not fun, at least not after a short while. While other games like Call of Duty have you primarily shooting people, at least you get worthwhile leveling and other modes to play with, giving you variety. Here, shooting stuff is all there is.

All of this and for what? Meaningless progression. Like I said, early on, the leveling feels satisfying, but it quickly dies off. Soon it just becomes a grind for better equipment and gear as playing for the story is entirely useless. Eventually leveling doesn't feel rewarding and it feels more like a chore. Even then killing enemies themselves hardly levels you up, it is about completing certain strikes and raids and completing contracts. Enemies are just pure cannon fodder that might drop loot, loot that you may not even need or want. More frustration is added thanks to the asinine Strikes where you ward off tons of enemies and then get to fight a massive bullet sponge boss while the game is constantly throwing everything at you. You will get lucky if you complete these and they take an ungodly amount of time just to kill one boss. Again, you may not actually get anything good for doing this tedious and frustrating mission.

The PVP does not fare any better. Called 'the Crucible', it is what many other reviewers have praised despite the idiotic loot system. To me, the multiplayer is shallow, barebones, and unsatisfying. Here, unlike other games, you get no interestingly new modes, you don't get fun class building or extensive ranking up, there is no destruction in the environments, it is bare minimum shooter fare with maps that feel uninspired. There is nothing else here to give you satisfaction, it is just run of the mill multiplayer and feels incredibly tacked on. With so many multiplayer options out there, this one just doesn't even try to stand out. As ProJared once said, zero asses were put into this multiplayer.

One last thing I will mention, remember how I said there is little to no information in the game about anything? Well, here is Bungie's answer to that! As you play and find enemies, items and what have you, you are given a little notification at the bottom, telling you that you unlocked a Grimoire card, which tells you all you need to know about whatever you just found. Only problem, it tells you to go to Bungie.net to view the damn things! That's right, none of that information is in the game itself, it is all external. This is just one of many slaps to the face and makes the game feel even more half assed and shallow.

Final Verdict:

Thank you for reading. I know this review is much longer and more scattered than my regular reviews, but there was a lot too cover and I wanted to include as much as possible without making it too long. Also, I know some will disagree with my review on the game and that is fine, but this is honestly how I feel about this game.

Until next time,

Turbo out!