I don’t normally review games. In fact my only blog post on games was about the story for the Agent class in Starwars Galaxies (SWG). I had planned on writing a similar post about Destiny as I knew it was going to be worthwhile but my love of this game has got in the way.
My initial plan was to do nothing else other than go through the story arc on my own and then explore the rest of the game. I started playing on my own as was instantly immersed in the story. The tutorial if you can call it that starts with you running and quickly moves in to shooting and punching just to survive. It was quite intense. I’m now lvl 25 and parts of the game are still intense. There was a level of this game that involves no player interaction at all. Just a long scene. It sounds crap and it shouldn’t have worked but it did. There was a point to every cut-scene. The dialogue and the voice acting were of a quality that impelled you to watch and listen. The only negative for me is that so far the story dialogue does not alter if the player starts again with another class and so running through for the third time may get a little tiresome.
Visually this game was breathtaking. I created a second character just so I could watch the opening sequence again. Yes I know that was sad but I enjoyed it just as much. This has been my first next-gen game and if this has been any kind of indicator then there are great things to come. The soundtrack played an important role in my enjoyment of this game. As you approach a boss the music score ramps up the tension and I could feel my heart beating faster. These things combined to make this a truly enjoyable gaming experience.
As I said earlier I started out planning to run through the story. Then I started exploring. I ran around the open-world doing little Patrol missions just to get a feel for the worlds and then I spent way too much time in the team player versus player (PvP) games. Like Halo before it there is an Unreal Tournament feel to the PvP. This is a good thing. I’m too old for twitch gaming so I had to rely on cunning to get any kind of a decent score. I’m love to see an instant kill fusion rifle only mode harking back to the Insta-gib days. The jump and glide system is similar to Halo and gives a three dimensional feel to some of the levels. Death from above is really satisfying.
Destiny is not without a few niggling issues though. It is a hybrid first-person shooter and MMO. That means things like item farming and drop rates are always going to be an issue. Personally I’m all for rare stuff being genuinely rare and hard to get hold of. It was frustrating to have five legendary drops in a row all become rare items but it made that time a legendary pop seem all that more special. According to the next patch notes this will be tweaked this week. Even the patch notes for this game have been well done. The author of the final copy is obviously a gamer and has added a little humour to help us empathize with the developers. More importantly though they are clear and easy to read patch notes.
There is a lot of open-world but there is not a complete planet to traverse. I have wandered off the map a few times. There will be more content. There are rumours that Destiny has a ten year story arc. How many games that will cover is not clear but there are at least two sets of downloadable content (DLC) to purchase already. Personally I’d like to see a more detailed list of contents for these before I pay out nearly the cost of another game (but I probably will). The public events are an interesting idea that reminds me of the early days in Ultima Online (UO). Although the ones I’ve seen have only been small there is the potential for these to become epic battles that little the surface with piles of Fallen (pun intended).
Overall I’d say that this game has more in common with SWG than it does with Halo. I’d rather play this hybrid than either of the other two. Destiny is a well thought out game that will only mature and develop over the next year or two. I certainly don’t expect to be trading my copy in any time soon.
Tony's Thoughts 