Destiny

Right now, it’s a rock-solid shooter with no underlying purpose … or soul. Destiny is a ship floating in space without a place to go.

Although Destiny isn't the brilliant start to a franchise that many had hoped for, it's a great game for those who can push through its flaws and enjoy the ride.

If you go into it knowing what you have today and that in the future something might - or might not change - then you’ll be left with an enjoyable and long-lasting experience. If you expect the future that might be now - if you have bought into Bungie and Activision’s chatter as being the day one solution, well, with that your joy will be muted.

The game does nail the mechanics of a shooter and it's certainly beautiful to look at, but everything else hasn't quite gelled into a cohesive whole. Since Destiny is obviously designed to be an evolving game played for the long haul, though, it will certainly be interesting to see how it progresses and grows over time.

If your friends are getting it and you like multiplayer, it's worth playing.

Once you distill it all down I did have fun in Destiny. I just wish the ride would have lasted longer. The endgame grind is not what I was hoping for and has turned me off completely. Bungie has stated repeatedly that the game really starts at 20. If that is true then this game will have a very short shelf life. The grind just is not fun. Hopefully these special events will keep the game fresh and new for most players to drop in and out of and get more value for their dollar.

Destiny is far from a perfect game, with flaws quite clearly apparent in the storytelling and the repetitive formula, but it’s also a game that can quite easily keep you coming back for more time and again, especially if you play with friends.

It has strengths. It has weaknesses. And whether or not it burrows its way into your own psyche depends on your tolerance for familiarity, that breeder of contempt, that warm blanket of comfort.

You won't find better gunplay and online features out there, but at the same time you wont find much to do in this huge project that seems to need tons of new and better content, improved writing and some of the "magic" Bungie failed to include in the initial package.

And yet, despite these glaring, obvious faults, Destiny is utterly capable of draining the hours away, via its excellent combat and its PvP. Flawed, yes. Fun? Certainly. A total failure? Not really.

Destiny feels like it wasn't ready, but it was shipped anyway. It tantalizes with glimpses of brilliance, but then confounds with clunky design decisions and baffling oversights.

As it is, Destiny is an ambitious project that isn't quite meeting its potential yet. All of the pieces are in place for a great dungeon-crawling playground, and I've enjoyed my time with it, but I'd like to see it come into its own as a more cohesive experience.

As someone who genuinely, deeply cares about games as works of art, to see a game as limited as Destiny become the game that is on the front pages of mainstream news is like a slap in the face. I can't deny that the game is entertaining, beautiful, or content-rich, but for all that Destiny is not even close to a masterpiece.

Destiny is a worthwhile distraction, a visually classy playground that regularly manages to entertain for a few hours. But a true calling, it is not.

Playing around in Bungie's galaxy for its own sake is still just so undeniable and compulsive a draw that the disappointingly threadbare "why" starts fading into the background.

Destiny is not really the revolutionary FPS we were waiting for, but it is still a good one. The gameplay, art direction, graphics and musics are fantastic, but right now the game lacks content at a high level and you can get bored easily from its repetitiveness.

It’s not short of spectacle but in terms of innovation and variety this is nowhere near as forward-thinking as Bungie would like to pretend.

Destiny isn’t a bad game, by any means. If you like sci-fi shooters, you’ll get a good 20 hours of enjoyment out of this. But that’s really all it is; a fun, forgettable shooter that plays it safe and sticks to what’s been proven, with nothing to really set it apart from it’s peers.

Today, of course, Destiny is a mess, but I sympathize with it.

The experiment “Shooter-MMO-crossover” has not completely failed. Especially the competitive firefights are quite entertaining. But then again, as a full-fledged shooter it doesn’t have any significant impact while as an MMO it doesn’t have enough content. Welcome to Destigrind.

Bungie has said it has come up with 10 years of content for Destiny, but I was bored at around 10 hours. The game has its moments, but it needs more. It needs adventurous thinking and risky ideas. It needs challenges that go beyond racking up headshots. It needs engagement among players to make them feel useful and important. It needs people and places within it that have more character than just pretty helmets and vistas and lens flare.

The story and setting leave a lot to be desired, but the gunplay is very sound, and the PVP element reminds me of some of my favorite shooters, filled with tons of exciting moments...But even after digging into the nitty-gritty, the endgame structure is rigid and has too many problems at the current moment to warrant a full recommendation.

Destiny has an interesting, original idea for an online shooter that is wrapped in some excellent production value but stands on really weak legs. Bungie's game has a potential to be adored by many, but it depends on their tolerance for repetitiveness. In time, all of this will probably be extended and built upon, but right now this is just a dream. I quite like Destiny, but I won't be spending many more hours with this game.

With a lifeless world, a hazily plotted, repetitive campaign, and an endgame that quickly resorts to a slow grind for marginally better loot, Destiny fails to deliver on the promise of its concept and the enormous potential of its gameplay systems.

Solid shooter focused on co-op gameplay, but it lacks story and variety, while sporting an ordinary RPG skill tree. [Issue#245]

For better and worse, Destiny is open-ended and nearly content-free gunplay for as long as you want it to last.

Destiny is more of a promising future than a truly absorbing game everyone enjoys from the very beginning. Its lack of game content along with its merciless repetition and grinding are spoiling a good impression of well-elaborated action.

A decent multiplayer doesn't make up for all that grudgingly repetitive gameplay and a bloated, clichéd story. The world of Destiny is a shallow and uninspired place that fails to capture the imagination, let alone the will to play on after mowing down the millionth wave of dead-eyed space robots.

Destiny prefers telling the same stories time and time again, hoping to transfix you with its rinse-and-repeat pace and ply you with the possibility of better loot, rather than with gameplay diversity that intimates surprises hovering on the horizon.

When you throw it all together, you're left with a game where the missions are designed to be repeatable, but all the missions are so repetitive that it's hard to get excited to see the same handful of environments again and again and again as you attempt to grind out faction reputation or hunt around for high-end weapons. It's a beautiful game, but a hollow experience.

As just another game, Destiny is a confusing combination of often at-odds elements — it presents itself as ambitious, almost boastful, while seeming strangely safe and reserved. It wants to eat its cake as a shooter, and have the longevity of an MMO — but it lacks the combat sophistication of the former, and the deep well of content native to the latter.

With its banal universe and flavorless style, Destiny is packed with content, but just ... well ... content. There's a great PvP mode, and the leveling system can be rewarding, but nonetheless this is a pretty, rock-solid, ultimately pedestrian product.