The Destiny servers have been online for almost a week, giving the world its first real opportunity to explore Bungie's take on the front half of our solar system and run, jump, shoot aliens, hunt for treasure and battle their fellow Destiny players across a variety of environments.
Sadly, the Destiny gameplay experience doesn’t actually come together to form anything more than the sum of its parts, pairing an abysmal (at best) competitive multiplayer offering with some of the least-inspired games writing of 2014 and what might be the most repetitive campaign I’ve seen in a shooter. Destiny is far from unredeemable, and Patrol mode is likely to remain a regular weekend activity for me, but is this really the game that Bungie and Activision saw as the first step on a 10-year path?
To be fair, Destiny isn’t a terrible game. Bungie’s shared-world shooter features a solid mechanical base, its campaign does include roughly 15 hours of “entertainment”, and those willing to put up with a little repetition will certainly never run out of things to do after the credits roll. But, the real question is, will you have enough fun with Destiny to justify a 60-plus dollar purchase?
Right now, for most people, I think the answer is no.
Destiny casts players as a recently revived humanoid – either Human, Exo or Awoken – who’s been chosen by the Traveler to become the newest Guardian of the City. As a Guardian, you are imbued with special powers, which differ based on your class, and it will be your duty to protect the last remaining city on Earth. From what, you ask?
From the Darkness, a mysterious being/entity that apparently threatens the entire universe, and the handful of alien races ready to stampede over mankind in their rush to escape the game’s (incredibly generic) ultimate evil. Naturally, it’s up to you to both find and defeat the Darkness and restore order to what’s left of the human race and its allies.
It’s a substantially less-creative scenario than I expected from the team at Bungie and, at times, Destiny almost feels like it’s trying to figure out a way to slide itself back into the Halo franchise. Thankfully, the art design and surprisingly coherent AI driving each of your intergalactic foes is enough to give them the menacing aura that their respective backstories failed to deliver.
Truth be told, it’s your less-than-friendly interactions with the other inhabitants of our solar system that make Destiny something that I can even think about returning to with any frequency between now and the arrival of the game’s first expansion.
Gunplay is exactly what you’d expect from a Bungie shooter, with waves of grunts and slightly stronger commanders challenging you in small environments that force players to move constantly and seek out whatever cover they can find. A timed (but unlimited) supply of grenades gives you plenty of chances to flush out your opponents before finishing them off with everything from shotguns to rocket launchers.
Boss battles aren’t nearly as varied as I was hoping for; requiring little more than constant movement from lone wolves and asking fireteams to spread out and (more-or-less) teach their squad the triangle offense. While one or more players keep the bosses attention (and attacks) focused on them, the rest of your team has the freedom to line up rocket volleys and sniper rounds until your foe has been bested.
It’s not an especially complex formula, but one that could still prove popular among those who like to keep a variety of “podcast games” in their collection. Thankfully, your character’s ability to carry a substantial amount of loot also gives players having a fair amount of freedom in how you’d like to approach each encounter.
Now, let’s stop for a moment, take a deep breath, and pretend that these next few sentences exist almost separate from the rest of what has been a fairly negative Destiny review. I ask that because I’d like to take a moment to celebrate what has to be some of the most satisfying melee combat that’s ever appeared in a shooter. Multiplayer or otherwise.
In Destiny, players are able to melee pretty frequently, though each hit that you deliver in quick succession does seem to be a bit less-damaging than the last. Of course, the warrior-esque Titan class has one of the stronger melee attacks in the game, along with a special ability that makes melee kills both incredibly effective and a visual treat.
I cannot describe to you the sheer joy that I feel each and every time some enemy charges forth, only to fall victim to a quick right hook so powerful that it disintegrates the poor bastard who thought he was coming to pull my card. Later stages of the Titan’s Storm Fist ability can even generate a static charge that can also damage other nearby enemies.
The only thing that might be more fun than watching some of Destiny’s biggest enemies be consumed alive by an electrical charge of my own creation is inflicting the same fate upon the shotgun-exploiting monsters that seem determined to stamp any semblance of entertainment out of the Crucible. More on that in a bit though.
I think one of the biggest problems I’m having with Destiny is that Bungie seems to have completely bought into the notion that you have to earn the right to derive enjoyment from any game that is part of (or inspired by) the massively-multiplayer genre. Destiny makes you grind out reputation experience just to buy relatively basic cosmetic items from its vendors, for f--k’s sake. Who is that for?
Raids are apparently tuned for characters that have already devoted dozens of hours to grinding out the incredibly rare loot drops in Destiny’s endgame, many of which will yield little more than additional trash loot to be dismantled and added to your near-endless heaps of glimmer and crafting materials.
I’ve also pulled enough duplicates of the gear I was currently wearing to make me want to throw my DualShock 4 across the room. I understand the basic idea behind spreading out the top-tier loot drops that players encounter, especially when a game that’s hoping to be around for a while heads to market, but Destiny seems to have been designed for someone willing to put in dozens of hours for a single set of armor.
That’s not to say that Destiny won’t provide you with several dozen hours of entertainment, provided that you’re a fan of the “Kill, Loot, Rinse and Repeat” gameplay commonly associated with the Diablo, Torchlight and Borderlands franchises. But don’t go in expecting to see loot rain from the sky like it does in those other games.
I’ve seen a number of people compare the loot accrual in Destiny to that of the Monster Hunter series; another storied gaming franchise with a passionate (albeit limited) fanbase. And those comparisons aren’t far off base. Monster Hunter demands a dedication that many aren’t willing to give, but those who enjoy the series are happy to make the commitment.
You can already see similar communities forming around Bungie’s new shard-world shooter. I actually joined a group this very morning. But it’s going to take a steady stream of new content to keep people playing Destiny for more than a couple of weeks, and some serious changes to the systems currently in (or missing) from the game.
Those who prefer not to rely on others will be happy to know that an extensive Friends list isn’t required to enjoy Destiny, either. In fact, I don’t understand how “you just need to play with people” became the rallying cry of those upset with middling review scores for the game. Playing with others might be fun in theory but, in reality, I’ve found that playing Destiny with other people usually just ends in frustration.
Take the Crucible, for example; Destiny’s competitive multiplayer mode that allows three or six-man teams to face off in a handful of different match types. Unfortunately, they’re all just slight variations of the standard deathmatch, with a few seemingly-optional objectives in the mix to create the impression that a real struggle is unfolding.
Unfortunately, I’ve yet to have a single match in the Crucible that felt like it was won or lost because a player or team put any significant emphasis on completing that match’s objectives. In fact, I took home the medal for most objective points in almost every Crucible match that I’ve played, despite regularly being one of the lowest scorers on my team.
Instead, most Crucible players run around the map with a shotgun, forcing the same sort of mindless twitch gameplay that makes Call of Duty such a bore. The same can be said for Destiny’s first in-game event, Salvage, which was positioned as a timed-exclusive of some kind but just felt like another deathmatch with unnecessary match objectives added for appearances sake.
Worse, the fact that Destiny regularly gives you one or more teammates with significantly less gameplay experience means even those who decide to focus on team tactics still regularly fare about as well as your standard lone wolf.
I don’t know if Destiny is taking the Dota 2 approach to matchmaking – pairing top-tier players with those significantly less-skilled, seemingly under the misguided notion that every experienced player has some desire to teach their less-knowledgeable counterparts – but something needs to change.
Maybe I’m alone in this, but I don’t spend hours researching and/or playing the competitive games in my collection because of some secret desire to get stuck explaining that information to someone too lazy to do the same. I’m doing my damnedest to improve my performance so that I don’t feel bad seeking out mid- and high-level teammates, abandoning the casual community to a life of mediocre gear and multi-death dungeon runs.
I don’t enjoy holding up the low end of the leaderboards any more or less than I do getting dropped into a game where I lay waste to my opponents.
On the rare occasions that I’m hopping into a competitive shooter, I’m hoping against hope that it’ll be one of the five to ten rounds a year where I feel like I’m dropped into a completely level playing field. Where both teams are neck and neck, trading momentum and placement on the map at regular intervals until somebody grabs the very last point, ticket, kill, etc.
It’s the reason I keep returning to games like Battlefield, despite the fact that every moment that makes you sit back, jaw agape, unable to form a thought more intelligent than “holy shit”, must be paid for in a fee more precious than money. It takes time, and lots of it.
Finding those moments usually requires hours of jumping from server to server, lopsided fights against clans who’ve stacked the teams on their favorite server and all the other headaches that come with being a fan of DICE’s first-person military shooter. Sure, you could just browse YouTube for popular clips, but there’s something magical about seeing that chaos unfold in real-time.
And it’s a feeling I don’t think I’ll ever receive from Destiny’s rather lifeless multiplayer offerings.
This can become especially problematic once you’ve reached Destiny’s endgame content, which asks players to reach certain Light levels before attempting a variety of Heroic story and Strike missions, in part because Bungie doesn’t appear to have gated those missions in any meaningful way. Because it’s not like such systems have been a part of the MMO scene for years now, right?
So get ready to carry a non-geared level 20 through missions tuned for Light level 22, only to emerge from the Strike without any new gear for your Guardian, all because some other player on PSN or Xbox Live couldn’t be asked to put in the effort you did.
To be clear, my argument here is not that both players shouldn’t have a chance to play Destiny, or even to play the game exactly how they want to. My argument is that Bungie isn’t doing anything to make sure those players end up with others who want to play Destiny in the same ways.
And you’ll be ready to throw your controller across the room once the Reward screen appears and the same players that had you ready to stop playing Destiny forever are walking away with new gear while you get nothing but a couple of Vanguard marks.
You only have to run some combination of Destiny’s six dungeons a minimum of 15 times to start getting endgame gear. Sixty if you want an Exotic helmet. Those numbers can be lowered by completing certain missions each day, but you’re still looking at a multi-week process to acquire what appears to be the only full set of Legendary gear in Destiny.
Of course, that’s only if you’re high enough level to complete the dailies on a regular basis, bringing us right back to an issue where it feels like you have to earn the right to find some semblance of joy or achievement in the game you just bought. Is it really any wonder people are already finding ways to hack the game?
If I had to distill all of my issues with Destiny down into a single complaint, without question, I would’ve dedicated this entire review to tearing down what has to be one of the least-rewarding loot systems I’ve ever seen included in a video game. Worse, since many of the potentially valuable items that you find on your journey must be identified by a specific NPC – instead of an appraising tool or item of some kind – any significant accrual of loot forces players to spend 10-plus minutes traveling to/from Earth.
And don’t bother getting excited if/when you manage to pick up a Decoherent Engram, because you’re probably just going to pull trash loot out of your latest mystery drop, despite the increase in rarity. Yes, there’s also a small chance that you could pull a rare or legendary item, but it’s far more likely that you’ll pull low-level equipment or upgrade materials that you already have plenty of.
Seriously, everything about this game is just tedious bullshit layered upon tedious bullshit, to the point that even rare drops still require another low-probability roll of the dice to become something that might actually be useful. It’s probably not so bad if Destiny is the only game you’re going to be playing for the next 6-12 months, but those of us with other games and hobbies in our lives would like to make some progress every single time we pick up a controller for two or more hours.
Thankfully, players like me are able to compartmentalize (and largely ignore) the multiplayer aspects of Destiny, and can freely return to what I currently believe might be the only redeemable aspect of the game: Patrol mode
Unlike the Destiny campaign, a sizeable collection of Horde mode stages with cutscenes or brief dialogue tacked on to keep the game’s narrative moving forward, Patrol mode offers a limited amount of quest variety and the freedom to fully explore each planet (or moon). Provided you can remember all of the spots on the map that result in near-instant deaths for crossing some sort of boundary line, moments that make Destiny feel more like a next-gen port than a full-fledged next-gen game.
After landing on the celestial body of your choice to start a Patrol, players are given as many randomly generated tasks as they’re willing to compete. The tasks themselves aren’t especially diverse, and typically fall into one of three standard mission types (mob farming, item retrieval and exploration) commonly found in the MMOs that Destiny is vaguely aping. And many won’t take you longer than 10-15 minutes to complete.
That said, there’s also nothing stopping you from ignoring the mission-distributing beacons spread around each zone and freely exploring every square inch of Mars, Earth, Venus and the moon. And that’s where I’m finding most of my enjoyment during my time with Destiny. I just wish there was more content in those areas.
Public events aren’t nearly as frequent as they were during the Destiny beta, and the game currently seems to lack anything resembling a world boss. Increases in the total number of both would go a long way to giving Destiny a chance at longevity.
But even Patrol mode has its weaknesses. For some reason that I’m not sure I’ll ever understand, Bungie decided to put very real barriers between those simply exploring Destiny’s gameplay environments and those who are tackling specific missions from the Destiny campaign. And that sucks.
How hard would it have been to give me the option of staying on a planet after a mission comes to a close? Is there really no way that Destiny could make the transition from story content to open-world content a bit smoother? And why the hell do I have to make constant trips back to the Tower – which, let’s be honest, is almost completely useless – instead of opening some sort of futuristic communicator that lets me grab new bounties and decrypt my loot?
Even the best parts of Destiny still feel like they could have used a bit more work before being shown to the public, and that’s a serious problem for a game that was pushed like a Game of the Year candidate before it had even hit stores. It wouldn’t shock me if further updates lead to a wave of amended Destiny reviews in a few weeks/months, but what’s present now just doesn’t feel like it meets the expectations that many people have for a new Bungie game. Especially one that was as heavily-marketed as this.
Destiny Review - Final Verdict
Destiny isn’t the game I was hoping for, or anything close to what I was expecting from Bungie now that the studio has finally pivoted away from the Halo franchise. Yes, it has some of the basic building blocks needed to create a more-complete gaming experience, one that could very well go on to become one of the defining games of this generation. But that’s not what Destiny is right now.
If you’ve been looking for something new to play, possibly while listening to your favorite podcast(s), then you could probably do worse than spending sixty dollars on Destiny. I’d probably recommend Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls Ultimate Evil Edition before Bungie’s new shooter, but I’m not going to be the guy telling you that you wasted your money.
Right now, there are a lot of things about Destiny that frustrate me. But I don’t have any intention of putting the game down. Many of the things I disliked about the game could be improved with a few minor tweaks, and I remain hopeful that Destiny will improve as Bungie gets more feedback from players.
Long story short, I don’t blame any who feel moved by the call to “become legend”, especially if you and your friends want to check out the game’s multiplayer-focused endgame content. But, if you still aren’t quite sold on Bungie’s new shooter, it might be worth waiting to see if Destiny will ever become the revolutionary experience that we were promised.
Score- 3/5
What did you think of Destiny during the game’s attention-grabbing launch week? Disappointed with Scott’s take on the new shared-world shooter from Bungie and Activision? Think Destiny should have been given a higher/lower score than what we’ve given it?
Let us know in the comments section!
