Destiny Review

Destiny is a FPS made by Bungie and is their first new IP since the creation of Halo. Destiny comes across as an FPS and MMO hybrid contrary to what Bungie has you believe as they said Destiny isn't an MMO but it plays and has a lot of content and attributes that link it to MMO games.

The story of Destiny is one of the most criticised points of the game and for me it's no exception. Destiny's story is absolute trash. Bungie have created a very interesting world for you to explore but for whatever reason, the world feels empty and misrepresented. The characters are forgettable and can't be taken seriously. The dialogue is horribly written, who knows, maybe Bungie purposely made the dialogue reveal nothing so that they can include the full story in DLCs to come. You are a Guardian, a soldier of Light that was given these powers by the Traveler. A large ball of some sort that gave way to the Golden Age of humanity, granting humans an extended life span and terraforming the planets and moons so that they provide resources and can be settled upon. This explains the reason Mars, Venus and the Moon, the only explorable regions to be able to be inhabited.Your mission is to fight against this 'darkness' which no one knows what it is because it's never explained in the story. The game spans over around 5-10 hours of story content of which of those hours you spend mindlessly shooting at waves and waves of enemies until the Ghost, who is your companion on your journey gifted to you by the guardian, manages to decipher a door code or scans some object. The enemies you face on your journey are the Fallen, an alien race that were once prosperous but now they're bandits, vandals and pirates, the Hive, another alien race that consists of magic wielding Wizards and heavily armed Knights and finally the Vex, an automaton type alien that can teleport and the Cabal, a monstrous race of large bodies aliens who are the military type of race. These enemies are very limited in how much each race has. The limitations of the variety of enemies in each race can be a bit underwhelming but because of their limits, calling them out in co-op gameplay can be easy to understand and deal with. The story has around 3-5 cutscenes of which do a poor job of explaining the scenario and why the cutscene needs to exist at all if the story can't even sort itself out. The worlds you can explore in this game are Earth, the Moon, Venus and Mars. The explorable areas are somewhat big but nothing compared to MMOs or even open world games which are single player. The areas are large but feel empty due to repetitive spawns and wasted space. Earth is, as you can expect, just earth, all you get to explore is the snow covered landscape of Old Russia. The moon is just the moon, a grey rock. Venus is the best looking place with lush grasslands and tall trees and tall cliffs over a large and mysterious backdrop of a landscape. Mars, finally, is the red planet you've always been reading about. It's just sand everywhere.

The Traveler, a white ball of Light that no one knows anything about.

For such a large solar system, there is only a few we can explore.

Each Guardian has available to them 2 variants of special abilities called SubClass. Of which all provide an elemental effect on them. These abilities are the main attraction of Destiny. The abilities you get depend on the class you choose which ranges from Hunter, Warlock and Titan. Your basic DPS, mage and tank. The Hunter has the Golden Gun ability which lets them kill an enemy instantly but it's only limited to 3 shots, their second ability lets them become stronger as they dash around and kill everything in site with their blade for a short duration. The Warlock has the ability to cast a large Nova Bomb which explodes and deals massive damage to enemies caught within the blast, their second ability gives them the power to instant revive and have low cooldowns on their grenade and melee abilities.. The Titan can jump and slam down dealing damage to enemies around, their second special variant is the ability to create a large dome that protects all guardians inside it. With these abilities comes extra unlockable skills that players can work towards and adjust to fit their playstyle. There is Toughness, which grants better resistance against enemy attacks, Agility, which grants faster movement speed and better jump height and finally Recovery which determines how fast your shields and HP regenerate. Alongside these attribute upgrades there are also different variants of the grenades you have, there are also different changes to your special ability which can sometimes be completely different in what they provide but you can only use one at a time.

The skill tree is alright and a nice touch to Destiny.

But the redeeming factor of all of this is that Destiny is undoubtedly a solid shooter. The mechanics are well done with movements and gunplay being extremely fluid compared to the likes of Call of Duty. You can wield 3 weapons at a time, the primary weapon can range from pulse rifles (burst fire weapons) to assault rifles and scout rifles (marksman rifles). Your second set of weapons range from shotguns to snipers to fusion rifles which are weapons that fire a quick round of bullets but they need to be charged before you can discharge. The final set of weapons is your heavy weapons which can be either a rocket launcher or a machine gun. The game features a loot system similar to that of Borderlands that provides weapons as well as armour which you can upgrade as you go on your journey. Weapons and armour also have a skill tree of which can be upgraded through continual use and the upgrades can be very useful. As with most RPG styled leveling systems, the lower level items are useless and don't need to be necessarily upgraded until you reach the level cap of 20 which can be reached in a short 10 or so hours. Once your level 20, then the real grind and upgrading begins as all items level 20 will provide good benefits to your guardian. Beyond level 20 is the light levels which currently cap at 30. These light levels increase by wearing level 20 armour that have the Light stat. You will need a specific amount of Light across all your armour in order to increase your light level from 20 to 30. These extra light levels help as they statistically help you do more damage against the enemies. An average player with all legendary equipment can get to a max of level 28 and once you have an exotic equipped you can go to level 29. You can only reach level 30 once you get raid equipment. There is also an element system in place to deal with the shields of enemies. There are 3 elements currently; void, solar and arc. The element needed to deal with the shields of enemies is shown  by the colour of their shield as you shoot at them.

To get these upgrades of weapons and armour, you're tasked with doing repetitive game content. Doing missions over again if specified by bounties which are basically the small quests in the game. You will find most of time doing Strikes which are similar to dungeons in MMO titles. These dungeons are by no means hard as you can solo them in a much longer time but thanks to matchmaking, finding a fireteam to finish Strikes is relatively easy. Though repetitive, Bungie have upped the rewards given by Strikes in a recent patch so they are no longer completely useless other than for their Vanguard Marks which are a type of currency to purchase items form the Vanguard vendors. Finally there are the Raids which is for the higher level players of level 28 which is the recommended level. These raids are tough but is where all the fun resides. A lot of players and myself have played the raid for their compulsory need of teamwork in order to conquer the current objective and the rewards are always better than that of the strikes. The only thing I can say that is bad about the Raid is that Bungie had to patch the raid access in around 2 weeks after the launch of the game which in my opinion is an unacceptable practice. More and more games are following suit in this type of content release by locking disc based content and giving it to players weeks or months after release, this could also be the case for the upcoming DLC but we'll see.

Finally we get to the only OK part of the game which is the PVP. The Crucible is where most players spend their time playing against other players competing in a PVP system and gaining Crucible Marks which are another type of currency used to buy Crucible based weapons and armour. There are only a few game modes currently available, Control, which is similar to domination in the CoD games, Clash, a team deathmatch gamemode and Rumble, a free-for-all and also Skirmish, a 3 v 3 team deathmatch mode mainly built around fireteasms. Sometimes we get patches to unlock gamemodes for a weak or so and those gamemodes are Salvage which is a fireteam based gamemode requiring you to hold a point for points, basically like King of the Hill. Combined Arms is the gamemode focused on big maps and vehicle only combat. There are only 10 maps currently available for play in Destiny and these maps range from good to why did Bungie make this. The good maps are the small maps which take no time at all for action but the bad maps are the bigger maps which are focused more on vehicle warfare but when you play a gamemode like Clash or Control on the big maps, most of the time you spend trying to find enemies than actually shooting enemies. The PVP experience can sometimes be a pain in the ass due to lag disadvantages and broken special abilities. Sometimes in PVP special abilities seem stronger than others and level definitely plays a part in the game even though Bungie said there is no level advantage in PVP. Stronger weapons always seem to do more damage as well as shotguns and fusion rifles doing mass amounts of damage which can kill you before you can even retaliate. It's the only game I've played where the laggier player gets the advantage as the zip across the map killing players because no one can shoot at them because their continually rubberbanding and zipping across the map. These small but annoying attributes can really make a PVP match feel horrible and before you go around saying that maybe I'm just shit at this game, don't, because I'm not.

We now come to the audio side of things. Music in this game is superb on the other hand. Sweeping instrumentals always give this game a bit of life. The music that plays during bossfights are intense and provide a good background to when playing. The sound of abilities are good to hear and somewhat different when playing in PVP so you can differentiate between the skills. The guns sounds on the other hand mainly all sound the same, just pitched differently or have different rates at which they're played depending on the weapon you're using. The enemies can be differentiated by their shouts but in general, the enemy sounds are as limited as there are enemy variants.

The visuals of this game are great for a 1080p game but definitely something that can be patched to 60 frames per second as it currently runs at 30 frames but the 30 frames of performance are extremely smooth as I've found no spikes or hiccups in my 100 hours or so of gameplay. There is a lot of lens flare from almost anything shiny which is something some may not like but I just like bright lights and lens flare. The guns looks nice but the repetitive weapon models can easily be seen repeated over and over with just slightly different adjustments and colours.

Overall, Destiny is a solid shooter experience for those looking to fill that gap as I found myself doing. Although the game is good, it lacks content but if you like redoing the same Strikes and playing the same 10 PVP maps over and over then it's the game for you. I've only found myself playing this long because of the Vanguard Marks and Crucible Marks cap which they've which makes me come back to finish them off so I can finally buy those last pairs of boots I've been looking for. I will continue playing this game until something like CoD AW comes out so I can yet again fill that void of a competitive FPS game to play because in my opinion, although Destiny's PVP is good, it's not great. It's frustrating most of the time due to imbalance in weapons and skills and some player levels but it's currently the only thing I have to play.

You should definitely wait for more content to release alongside Destiny before considering purchasing this game. Bungie have made it clear that they are providing content patches bi-weekly to keep players interested but the content so far in those patches have ranged from lackluster to absolute useless. I would refrain buying Destiny and spend your money on one of the bigger games coming out this holiday season and only consider Destiny if the December DLC adds any significant content that can bring this game out from the ground. Also, if you're sick and tired of all the FPS shooter games out there and looking for something different, Destiny might be for you.

6/10 - I like to compare this game to an MMO because it basically plays like one. Boring and repetitive missions with crappy uninspired dungeons and one raid. Singleplayer is a grind fest and a boring one at that.  A lackluster release from Bungie. Multiplayer is unbalanced and a bit broken with the Guardian skills that aren't design for clean and balanced gameplay.

It's your Destiny to not become Legend, and not purchase this game.