Best Destiny review I've found

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Best Destiny review I've found
Sci-fi shooters are nothing new to the video game landscape, particularly for the team at Bungie. Having worked tirelessly on one of the most celebrated first-person shooter series before striking out to create something original for the first time in a decade, Bungie is no stranger to the open expanses of space, foreign landscapes, and heavily armored combatants capable of taking on throngs of enemies with little help. With Destiny, Bungie attempted to eschew the trappings of the first-person shooters of old, and instead hoped to fuse its battle-tested shooter skills with addictive quest- and raid-based nature of the MMO. Destiny doesn't quite fulfill it all, although there was plenty of potential in the combination.

Many years in the future, our solar system is home to a battle of good and evil. A massive being known as the Traveler arrives, with the antagonistic Darkness trailing behind him. Battle ensues, along with the Darkness is pushed away, but at a great cost to the Traveler. Now, after years of hovering dormant on Earth, the Traveler calls to you to help combat the forces of the Darkness once more. You are a Guardian, and you are the last hope. It's a tale as old as time, and at moments, it certainly feels like Bungie is quite okay with relying on memetic consciousness to do all the heavy narrative lifting. Destiny's plot is about as concise and elaborate as the Cliff's Notes to a movie trailer. Your hero's journey would be more engaging had the entire lore of the universe not been locked away outside the core game itself. Bungie clearly went to great lengths in crafting the backstory of this alternate future, and the inhabitants therein, but you have to go to an outside source, to even begin to grasp the nature of man and beast in Destiny.

Is it woefully unfair to expect every last bit of exposition and story to be delivered wholly in this first entry in the Destiny series? Perhaps. We do already know there will be more games to come, and that's not even discussing the planned expansions due to arrive over the course of the next year for the game as it stands today. Bungie has certainly crafted a vision of the future that is fascinating at first glance, what with Warlocks and Titans and strange new races populating the planetary system. But even dozens of hours later, Destiny barely dips beneath the surface on what any of it all means, and why it's all there. The great disappointment is that there's so many wonderful new things to be curious about, and there are very few explanations as to why they are so wondrous.

It's fortunate then that the combat of Destiny is quite gratifying. If one thing time and again has been demonstrated by Bungie, it's that it knows exactly what it's doing when it comes to shooting things with impressive weaponry. While the creativity in armaments isn't necessarily inspired, Destiny's weapon system provides ample ballistic mayhem for fans of shooters that are more serious. Most importantly, the feel of the weaponry is spot on. Assault rifles have a very true pull to their burst of fire, while handguns give a good kick between accurate shots. Heavy machine guns have an undeniable weight to them, and the shotguns pack a wallop that both you and the person on the business end can feel instantly. The upgrade and progression system for weapons is intuitive, and offers a tiny bit of customization to tailor your loadout special to your tastes. The lack of variety in base models is made up for by the varying degrees of simple numbers like accuracy and range, which gives each gun just a bit more flexibility along with the fictional manufacturers a bit of personality in design.


The guns themselves are a large part of combat in Destiny, but you'll rely on your own character's class just as much. All three possible classes (Warlock, Hunter and Titan) each offer distinct advantages and disadvantages over one another in the PvE sections of Destiny, though the Warlock still feels vastly underpowered comparatively in the PvP arena. We'll get to that in a moment though. Whereas traditional MMOs feature a variety of groups meant to balance one another in quests and raids, Destiny's classes don't really offer much in the way of teamwork compatibility in a familiar sense. All three include a core powerset to start, with the option of exploring a different series of abilities once you reach level 15. For the most part, only the super specific character abilities really offer any kind of differentiation, but there are over a dozen different ways to make your Guardian your own, from the type of jump you have to focusing on stats like defense or agility. Still, the variation between the three isn't all that extreme, without worrying about whether or not you picked the right class to enjoy Destiny and you can feel confident in your first choice.

In the Crucible, Destiny's PvP arena, it's unfortunate that classes do matter, and despite the continued balance support, Hunters and Titans dominate play. That's not to say you can't have a good run with Warlock, or that you're automatically going to win because you're a Hunter or Titan. It's just a matter of those two classes having specific abilities that are better tailored for the type of aggressive combat you'll partake in when battling against real opposition that is human. Additionally, there's still a bit of a problem with higher-leveled characters having a bit of an edge due to loadouts and abilities that have been unlocked. Again, it's not that you have no chance, it's only that characters that wield Exotic or Legendary items have a bit of a leg up on the competition and have leveled up a bit. This is in spite of Bungie's evening of the playing field in PvP that is standard. The abilities are not, and at times it can be frustrating to get matched up with extremely high level players while the attack and armor damage might be evened out.

All those previously mentioned elements could have been found in any first-person shooter, but what truly sets Destiny apart is the attempted meshing of more MMO sensibilities. Some mechanics translated quite well, like attack damage and critical hits, together with certain weapons offering more damage if correctly tuned for a particular enemy type. Furthermore, the loot and crafting systems are both fully functional and work fairly well. It's true you'll have to grind a bit at points for materials at higher levels, but right up until you reach level 20, everything is very accessible, even if it's not explained very well at all. Just as Destiny's plot suffers from being under-explained, so do many of the systems at the core of improving your character. There's figuring things out on your own in Destiny, which is not necessarily a terrible thing and plenty of experimentation, but it wouldn't have hurt to have a few hints or tutorials available in regards to any of the customization or crafting portions.