Summary:
Destiny is the latest progeny of the game development team Bungie. Its release was an over-hyped adrenaline rush straight to the mainline of every gamer nostalgic for the heady days of halo 1-3. Gorgeous vistas, an intangible robotic AI, alien aggressors, and a deep and storied lore were all heavily touted in the near incessant advertising campaign leading up to the releaseSummary:
Destiny is the latest progeny of the game development team Bungie. Its release was an over-hyped adrenaline rush straight to the mainline of every gamer nostalgic for the heady days of halo 1-3. Gorgeous vistas, an intangible robotic AI, alien aggressors, and a deep and storied lore were all heavily touted in the near incessant advertising campaign leading up to the release date. There were some ominous clouds, however. A large open beta prompted more questions than it answered, as the tenor of discussion was tuned by the single-hue beta testers (people excited enough to do a beta test).
Now the game is out, and I've played the game roughly forty hours. I have a firm grasp of all of the mechanics currently in play. Before I get into the pros/cons, let me color the discussion by saying I'm less than impressed.
Pros:
The game is gorgeous. Even on the PS3's extremely dated hardware, the scenery is gorgeous. The lighting is dynamic and outside of the odd hyper-low quality shadow, it looks amazing. There is also a good variety of level pallets because of the multi-world locales.
That's it.
The Cons:
The level variety, despite being decent, grows old quickly. You spend a majority of your time traveling between locales that you've been many times before.
The progression system; it's **** I spent a good 12 hours getting to 'max' level. My character stopped growing roughly an hour in, and the mild variations of skills gained thereafter are mere window dressings. I haven't even gotten all of my skill varieties yet, as you can reach 'max' before your character finishes their subclass (and long before you reach the end of the campaign). Then the grind begins to get gear with light, which adds to your level. Speaking of light...
The loot system is atrocious. From levels 1-18, the only things you'll find are trash. The problem isn't that it's just trash, the problem is that you barely even get trash. Then, from 18-21ish, there's a good amount of progression, where you move from mostly white trash, quickly through greens, and then straight into blues. Then the progression grinds to a halt. I've now spent roughly 40 hours in the game, and I've gotten exactly one purple weapon (the highest tier is one above that, and that's weapon, no purple armor yet either). There's no way to influence your drop rate or variety. The quickest way to get good gear is to farm the easiest/most grunts and chests you can find. Prepare to be stuck at some arbitrary level above 21 for a long, long time; simply because nothing better drops for you.
Also, whatever purple/yellow gear you get (if you get any) takes an eternity to level up. Oh yes, you level up your character, you level them up again with better gear, and then they expect you to grind the gear, so that it can level up. There is only one alternative to a colossal grind, and it's poor too:
The shop vendors are a horrible grind. The shop vendors that sell purple items require you to be a certain level within whatever faction you are. That takes so much time, that I've basically just stopped. There's no point. I could play hundreds of hours and be nowhere near the guild level needed to buy the gear they're selling. By the time I am, I'll have so many guild points saved up that my character will transform instantly into something much higher level. That's not good game design.
Everything, from leveling, to gear, to guilds is a massive farming grind. In the end, it isn't worth the time they're expecting you to spend, and there's no way to optimize what you're doing to make the process faster. It's a pure gamble, and a shameless Skinner box.
The controls aren't great either. Your look speed is vertically constrained arbitrarily. I wanted to set the look speed to maximum, as I like playing frenetically during pvp. The problem is that every character has a massive high-jump, and it takes you an insane amount of time to look up or down to match. When you have a clashing of high-verticality, and low vertical look speeds; the game will feel like **** unless you spend all your time in the air; and it does.
The story is nonexistent. The story feels like the first chapter of an idyllic world that will be flipped on it's head by the revelation that all isn't right with the narrative you're fed. It's the first third of a real story, and the problem is, the second two thirds simply don't exist. The voice acting is barren, and what little there is is forced cliches. It's forgettable to the max.
The pvp doesn't scale well. People will crush you in pvp because they have variants of abilities and weapons that are simply better than the starters (despite the level-constraining that happens off-stat). That makes newbies want to quit. In the long haul, it may balance out; but for now it's dreadful.
All in all, the game is a mess. It's sparse, hollow world and narrative fit well with the pointless aimless grind on the 5 varied enemies. Destiny is Bungie selling stale bread.… Expand
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