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Since a few people asked for it and I am dead bored at work, here is my review of Destiny. Keep in mind that I've been playing it on the PS4. The difference between the consoles is only aesthetic but considering how beautiful this game it, aesthetics are a big part of it.
Destiny
This game is basically a shooter first and foremost, but it has elements of RPG and a very similar feel to Massive Multiplayer games. The closest game to it would be Borderlands. The game is set at a number of locations which are basically open areas.
There are 3 different classes in Destiny including:
Titan – Heavy armour, lower damage but takes a pounding. Traditional tank.
Hunter – Medium armour, high damage. Best single target damage class.
Warlock – Light armour, high damage. More ability based than the other classes. Best area damage.
Each class has a sub-class you can choose to level up. You can switch between sub-classes but only the one you have active will level up.
Gameplay
I’ll tackle gameplay first as it is a game after all. As I said before the game is a shooter first and foremost. It plays similar to Borderlands except that enemies die faster in Destiny than they do in Borderlands.
Melee is one of the best things in the game. At first it may seem over powered but with most enemies it won’t kill them in one hit (depending on character/ability) and running into heavy fire to attempt to melee someone will get you killed fast. That said it’s the perfect close range weapon.
You have a range of guns including primary weapons that you have a large amount of ammunition for:
Scout rifle – semi-auto, low-medium fire rate, long range, moderate damage
Auto rifle – full auto, high fire rate, medium range, low damage
Pulse rifle – burst fire, medium fire rate in bursts, short-medium range, moderate damage
Hand Cannon – semi-auto, very low fire rate, short-medium range, very high damage
Then you have your secondary (special) weapons, ammo is harder to find for these:
Fusion Rifles – charged burst fire (takes a second to fire then fires a very powerful burst of 3 shots), short-medium range, very low fire rate, very high damage
Shotguns – semi-auto spread fire, low fire rate, short range, high damage
Sniper rifles – semi-auto, low fire rate, very long range, very high damage
And the Heavy Weapons, ammo is rare for these weapons often only dropping from more powerful enemies (hoard it for the big guys):
Machine Guns – full auto, very high fire rate, short-medium range, medium damage
Rocket Launcher – semi-auto, low fire rate, medium-long range, very high damage, slow moving projectile
At any time you can carry one of each weapon. Don’t worry too much about which weapon you want to choose as you’ll probably just go with whichever weapon you find that has the highest damage. You will use every weapon in the game at some stage usually changing weapons every 1-2 levels.
Everything else is ability based. You unlock a few different types of grenades and other abilities which are all class based abilities as you level up. Abilities usually involve doing massive AoE (area of effect) damage or putting up a forcefield depending on your class/sub-class.
You upgrade weapons and armour both by collecting new ones and just by wearing them. The more you use them the more abilities will unlock on the weapon/armour. Examples are: A helmet I use has an added ability that meleeing an enemy will reduce the cooldown of grenades. An auto rifle I use has a high fire rate when shooting from the hip but low fire rate/high damage when scoped.
For movement you have your usual first person shooter movement, you can sprint in bursts with a small cool down, early in the game you unlock a double jump (depending on class you get double jump, jetpack or levitate), and you unlock a speeder bike to quickly traverse long distances. In certain missions and multiplayer the bikes have guns attached.
Gameplay – Upsides
The gameplay is ridiculously well balanced. The battles are extremely fun and challenging. Often you’ll be under heavy fire on the verge of death and you’ll sprint to cover hoping that your shield regenerates before someone comes around the corner and finishes you off.
Headshots deal high damage and often finish an enemy off fast, this makes the Hand cannon one of my favourite weapons.
Jetpack/double jump adds a great element to combat allowing you to get up high in certain areas and rain death upon enemies. It’s especially great in multiplayer. It feels heavily influenced by Titanfall in this aspect.
The game has a semi-auto aim function called “Target Acquisition”. Early weapons in the game have a decent target acquisition making aiming easier early in the game. As you go on the target acquisition seems to drop down somewhat but you can unlock certain abilities on weapons that you give extra target acquisition.
Enemies have decent AI. They'll take cover and occasionally flank. While there is a large amount of variation there isn't anything overly different and after a while it feels like you're fighting the same enemies with different skins. Varied enough to make it fun but predictable enough to make it balanced.
Gameplay – Downsides
There are not many downsides to the actual combat and gameplay itself other than those created by mission structure problems and environment which I will touch on later
Graphics
You can see where all the money went on this game.
Graphics – Upside
This is a beautiful game. Some of the environments are so stunning that you have to stop and just look around. Everything from the particle effects to the amount of details in the structures is amazing. Open areas are lush with visuals and smaller enclosed areas have amazing lighting effects.
Graphics – Downside
The only real downside is the anti-aliasing. Most games use some level of anti-aliasing to remove the jagged lines. To get more detail into Destiny it appears that they haven’t used any anti-aliasing. Even on the PS4 you often notice the jagged lines on objects. Not a major issue, just something to note.
Environments
There are a number of areas in the game including Earth (the start point of the game), The Tower (the main hub where you can chat with other players, buy items, etc), The Moon, Venus and Mars (and apparently the Reef is coming soon too)
Environment – Upside
The environments get progressively better as you continue through the game. They all look quite amazing. The open areas on the surface of each planet are fun for long range combat, speeding around on your speeder bike, and just general adventuring. There are plenty of hidden secret stashes to search for.
The underground areas are very Halo-esque. Often you’ll walk into an area and have the most cinematic feel. It doesn’t hurt that the music is composed very well too.
Earth is pretty good with its open planes, rocky outcrops, and interesting underground facilities all set on a picturesque coast line.
Next is the moon that’s a fairly bland, yet easily traversable surface with some of the most epic underground tunnels you’ll see in a game.
Venus is a lush jungle planet. Think of a post apocalyptic earth. The planet is covered in buildings all overgrown by vines. Further into Venus you find alien structures which are amazing.
Environment – Downside
The lack of areas is a pity. While the areas are rather large and interesting, if you take out the Tower (hub) then you have Earth, the Moon, Venus and Mars. Each location can awe you but after spending many hours in the same locations it loses its sense of awe.
Missions
There are a number of story based missions and if you want to spend more time in an area or need to level up more you can do the Patrol missions. Patrols basically put you back on the planet with free reign to go wherever you want. There are a number of beacons scattered around that offer generic missions.
Missions – Upside
The story missions lead to some amazing fights. The pace is so well structured that you’ll completing them (which often ends in a big boss fight) gives you an overwhelming sense of achievement. There are some interesting ideas in some of the missions that leave you wanting for more.
Missions – Downside
Honestly, whoever was paid to manage the overall missions in the game should be fired. You quickly realise that the missions are very copy and paste. You are given a mission, you fight your way to a point then you either fight a boss and his missions to clear an area or you defend the area from waves of minions.
I don’t know how they spent so much money on the game yet couldn’t come up with much variation in the missions.
To make this worse, there is a lot of backtracking. When you arrive on a planet you’ll usually follow a path to completion. Often the next mission will send you down the same path initially before you get further down or take a turn halfway through the mission. It gets very repetitive.
Story
The story is a semi-generic story. The basic premise is that “The Traveller”, a powerful alien/starship… not really sure what it is, arrives at earth one day and helps humanity spread throughout the solar system. Then the darkness arrives (ancient enemy of the Traveller) and wipes out most of humanity. Thanks Traveller. Anyway, the last pieces of humanity are surviving in the Tower (the main hub).
That’s the basics of the story that you get at the start of the game if you really focus and maybe read a few things about the game. Without spoiling anything, as the game progresses the story adds more elements including other alien races, etc.
Story – Upside
While the story is fairly generic it gets very interesting later on after it adds a few alien races and you start getting a bit further into the story…
Story – Downside
What I wrote above is about the only thing I could find good about the story. The story seems like it has something interesting there that could have been great but the execution is terrible.
You are told most of the story by your companion “Ghost” who follows you everywhere. Often he will tell you little pieces of the story while you’re approaching an area or at the end of the mission, and this is the worst time to do it. If you’re approaching an area you’re usually concentrating on what you’re going to do next and at the end of the mission you’re given 30 seconds before being kicked out of the mission to quickly run around and collect the items and secrets strewn around the place. Suffice to say it takes a lot of focus to concentrate on what the Ghost is saying.
Even if you manage to focus on what he’s saying you still have no clue what is going on because you just aren’t told enough. Throughout the game it constantly felt like I was watching pieces of a movie and I had missed the most important parts. I haven’t quite finished the single player story yet but from what I’ve heard you’re still clueless at the end of the game.
There are some cut scenes which are excellent but these are very few and don’t tell you enough of what is going on.
The premise is that humanity has been almost entirely wiped out but you never really get that feeling. The whole game I just felt completely detached from the story and it’s the only game where I’ve actually yelled at the screen for not explaining something to me.
Multiplayer
You have two types. Co-op and you’re standard opposition multiplayer. Opposition multiplayer has several different modes but at this time I’ve only played Capture and Hold mode.
Multiplayer – Upside
After playing a fair amount of co-op it’s a bit hit and miss. There are some co-op only missions in the game which are some of the best. They usually end in a boss fight that can take up to 20 minutes and you feel like cheering when they’re complete. You’re limited to 3 players each mission which seemed odd at first but it’s very balanced. If you die a squad member can run up to you and spend 2 seconds reviving you. If they can’t get to you then you have to wait about 30 seconds to respawn. In the “no respawn” areas (most boss fights), if two players go down then the last player has to either get to one of you and revive you or try to stay alive for 30 seconds so you can respawn. It gets very intense ‘cause if at any stage all 3 players are dead then it’s game over and you have to start from the last check point. In the case of a 20-30 minute boss fight this means starting the fight all over again.
For the competitive multiplayer the game disables level based bonuses. You still keep your abilities but you deal and take the same amount of damage regardless of your level. This means that multiplayer is very well balanced and the only upside of a higher level is the extra abilities. The match making system is brilliant. I never once found myself completely outmatched in a game and I think the maximum I waited for a game (both co-op and competitive) is about 1 minute.
Multiplayer – Downside
Not much new here. The jetpack/double jump adds a sort of Titanfall aspect to multiplayer and makes it quite fun but other than that it’s really just a generic multiplayer. It’s still a lot of fun but nothing revolutionary.
For co-op it can be a bit simple. Strategy tends to be: Fire, take cover, fire some more. If an ally gets killed then revive them and keep firing.
Enemies and bosses just tend to attack whoever is attacking them so there’s no real strategy to draw fire and no real reason for co-ordinated team work. Destiny has pretty good voice incorporation but no one uses the microphones ‘cause you just don’t really need to. If one of your allies goes down then it tells you and there’s nothing else you really need to know. Unless you’re playing with friends then half the time you’ll forget your allies are there.
Conclusion
The game has some pretty big flaws especially in the Story telling and mission variability aspects but this doesn’t take away from what is a really fun game. The combat is the best I have ever seen in a console first person shooter and even after 26 odd hours of gameplay I’m still enjoying every fight.
I’ve been playing primarily as a Titan but have spent a fair few hours as a hunter and a warlock as well. All the classes start similar but change depending on their abilities and I am tempted to level all 3 classes to their maximum levels.
The main problem I see with the game is the lack of complexity. The missions and enemies are copied and pasted, the co-operative multiplayer requires no co-ordination and the gameplay doesn’t change that much throughout the game. While it’s a great game I can see myself getting bored with it pretty soon.
Overall I’d score it 8/10
Destiny
This game is basically a shooter first and foremost, but it has elements of RPG and a very similar feel to Massive Multiplayer games. The closest game to it would be Borderlands. The game is set at a number of locations which are basically open areas.
There are 3 different classes in Destiny including:
Titan – Heavy armour, lower damage but takes a pounding. Traditional tank.
Hunter – Medium armour, high damage. Best single target damage class.
Warlock – Light armour, high damage. More ability based than the other classes. Best area damage.
Each class has a sub-class you can choose to level up. You can switch between sub-classes but only the one you have active will level up.
Gameplay
I’ll tackle gameplay first as it is a game after all. As I said before the game is a shooter first and foremost. It plays similar to Borderlands except that enemies die faster in Destiny than they do in Borderlands.
Melee is one of the best things in the game. At first it may seem over powered but with most enemies it won’t kill them in one hit (depending on character/ability) and running into heavy fire to attempt to melee someone will get you killed fast. That said it’s the perfect close range weapon.
You have a range of guns including primary weapons that you have a large amount of ammunition for:
Scout rifle – semi-auto, low-medium fire rate, long range, moderate damage
Auto rifle – full auto, high fire rate, medium range, low damage
Pulse rifle – burst fire, medium fire rate in bursts, short-medium range, moderate damage
Hand Cannon – semi-auto, very low fire rate, short-medium range, very high damage
Then you have your secondary (special) weapons, ammo is harder to find for these:
Fusion Rifles – charged burst fire (takes a second to fire then fires a very powerful burst of 3 shots), short-medium range, very low fire rate, very high damage
Shotguns – semi-auto spread fire, low fire rate, short range, high damage
Sniper rifles – semi-auto, low fire rate, very long range, very high damage
And the Heavy Weapons, ammo is rare for these weapons often only dropping from more powerful enemies (hoard it for the big guys):
Machine Guns – full auto, very high fire rate, short-medium range, medium damage
Rocket Launcher – semi-auto, low fire rate, medium-long range, very high damage, slow moving projectile
At any time you can carry one of each weapon. Don’t worry too much about which weapon you want to choose as you’ll probably just go with whichever weapon you find that has the highest damage. You will use every weapon in the game at some stage usually changing weapons every 1-2 levels.
Everything else is ability based. You unlock a few different types of grenades and other abilities which are all class based abilities as you level up. Abilities usually involve doing massive AoE (area of effect) damage or putting up a forcefield depending on your class/sub-class.
You upgrade weapons and armour both by collecting new ones and just by wearing them. The more you use them the more abilities will unlock on the weapon/armour. Examples are: A helmet I use has an added ability that meleeing an enemy will reduce the cooldown of grenades. An auto rifle I use has a high fire rate when shooting from the hip but low fire rate/high damage when scoped.
For movement you have your usual first person shooter movement, you can sprint in bursts with a small cool down, early in the game you unlock a double jump (depending on class you get double jump, jetpack or levitate), and you unlock a speeder bike to quickly traverse long distances. In certain missions and multiplayer the bikes have guns attached.
Gameplay – Upsides
The gameplay is ridiculously well balanced. The battles are extremely fun and challenging. Often you’ll be under heavy fire on the verge of death and you’ll sprint to cover hoping that your shield regenerates before someone comes around the corner and finishes you off.
Headshots deal high damage and often finish an enemy off fast, this makes the Hand cannon one of my favourite weapons.
Jetpack/double jump adds a great element to combat allowing you to get up high in certain areas and rain death upon enemies. It’s especially great in multiplayer. It feels heavily influenced by Titanfall in this aspect.
The game has a semi-auto aim function called “Target Acquisition”. Early weapons in the game have a decent target acquisition making aiming easier early in the game. As you go on the target acquisition seems to drop down somewhat but you can unlock certain abilities on weapons that you give extra target acquisition.
Enemies have decent AI. They'll take cover and occasionally flank. While there is a large amount of variation there isn't anything overly different and after a while it feels like you're fighting the same enemies with different skins. Varied enough to make it fun but predictable enough to make it balanced.
Gameplay – Downsides
There are not many downsides to the actual combat and gameplay itself other than those created by mission structure problems and environment which I will touch on later
Graphics
You can see where all the money went on this game.
Graphics – Upside
This is a beautiful game. Some of the environments are so stunning that you have to stop and just look around. Everything from the particle effects to the amount of details in the structures is amazing. Open areas are lush with visuals and smaller enclosed areas have amazing lighting effects.
Graphics – Downside
The only real downside is the anti-aliasing. Most games use some level of anti-aliasing to remove the jagged lines. To get more detail into Destiny it appears that they haven’t used any anti-aliasing. Even on the PS4 you often notice the jagged lines on objects. Not a major issue, just something to note.
Environments
There are a number of areas in the game including Earth (the start point of the game), The Tower (the main hub where you can chat with other players, buy items, etc), The Moon, Venus and Mars (and apparently the Reef is coming soon too)
Environment – Upside
The environments get progressively better as you continue through the game. They all look quite amazing. The open areas on the surface of each planet are fun for long range combat, speeding around on your speeder bike, and just general adventuring. There are plenty of hidden secret stashes to search for.
The underground areas are very Halo-esque. Often you’ll walk into an area and have the most cinematic feel. It doesn’t hurt that the music is composed very well too.
Earth is pretty good with its open planes, rocky outcrops, and interesting underground facilities all set on a picturesque coast line.
Next is the moon that’s a fairly bland, yet easily traversable surface with some of the most epic underground tunnels you’ll see in a game.
Venus is a lush jungle planet. Think of a post apocalyptic earth. The planet is covered in buildings all overgrown by vines. Further into Venus you find alien structures which are amazing.
Environment – Downside
The lack of areas is a pity. While the areas are rather large and interesting, if you take out the Tower (hub) then you have Earth, the Moon, Venus and Mars. Each location can awe you but after spending many hours in the same locations it loses its sense of awe.
Missions
There are a number of story based missions and if you want to spend more time in an area or need to level up more you can do the Patrol missions. Patrols basically put you back on the planet with free reign to go wherever you want. There are a number of beacons scattered around that offer generic missions.
Missions – Upside
The story missions lead to some amazing fights. The pace is so well structured that you’ll completing them (which often ends in a big boss fight) gives you an overwhelming sense of achievement. There are some interesting ideas in some of the missions that leave you wanting for more.
Missions – Downside
Honestly, whoever was paid to manage the overall missions in the game should be fired. You quickly realise that the missions are very copy and paste. You are given a mission, you fight your way to a point then you either fight a boss and his missions to clear an area or you defend the area from waves of minions.
I don’t know how they spent so much money on the game yet couldn’t come up with much variation in the missions.
To make this worse, there is a lot of backtracking. When you arrive on a planet you’ll usually follow a path to completion. Often the next mission will send you down the same path initially before you get further down or take a turn halfway through the mission. It gets very repetitive.
Story
The story is a semi-generic story. The basic premise is that “The Traveller”, a powerful alien/starship… not really sure what it is, arrives at earth one day and helps humanity spread throughout the solar system. Then the darkness arrives (ancient enemy of the Traveller) and wipes out most of humanity. Thanks Traveller. Anyway, the last pieces of humanity are surviving in the Tower (the main hub).
That’s the basics of the story that you get at the start of the game if you really focus and maybe read a few things about the game. Without spoiling anything, as the game progresses the story adds more elements including other alien races, etc.
Story – Upside
While the story is fairly generic it gets very interesting later on after it adds a few alien races and you start getting a bit further into the story…
Story – Downside
What I wrote above is about the only thing I could find good about the story. The story seems like it has something interesting there that could have been great but the execution is terrible.
You are told most of the story by your companion “Ghost” who follows you everywhere. Often he will tell you little pieces of the story while you’re approaching an area or at the end of the mission, and this is the worst time to do it. If you’re approaching an area you’re usually concentrating on what you’re going to do next and at the end of the mission you’re given 30 seconds before being kicked out of the mission to quickly run around and collect the items and secrets strewn around the place. Suffice to say it takes a lot of focus to concentrate on what the Ghost is saying.
Even if you manage to focus on what he’s saying you still have no clue what is going on because you just aren’t told enough. Throughout the game it constantly felt like I was watching pieces of a movie and I had missed the most important parts. I haven’t quite finished the single player story yet but from what I’ve heard you’re still clueless at the end of the game.
There are some cut scenes which are excellent but these are very few and don’t tell you enough of what is going on.
The premise is that humanity has been almost entirely wiped out but you never really get that feeling. The whole game I just felt completely detached from the story and it’s the only game where I’ve actually yelled at the screen for not explaining something to me.
Multiplayer
You have two types. Co-op and you’re standard opposition multiplayer. Opposition multiplayer has several different modes but at this time I’ve only played Capture and Hold mode.
Multiplayer – Upside
After playing a fair amount of co-op it’s a bit hit and miss. There are some co-op only missions in the game which are some of the best. They usually end in a boss fight that can take up to 20 minutes and you feel like cheering when they’re complete. You’re limited to 3 players each mission which seemed odd at first but it’s very balanced. If you die a squad member can run up to you and spend 2 seconds reviving you. If they can’t get to you then you have to wait about 30 seconds to respawn. In the “no respawn” areas (most boss fights), if two players go down then the last player has to either get to one of you and revive you or try to stay alive for 30 seconds so you can respawn. It gets very intense ‘cause if at any stage all 3 players are dead then it’s game over and you have to start from the last check point. In the case of a 20-30 minute boss fight this means starting the fight all over again.
For the competitive multiplayer the game disables level based bonuses. You still keep your abilities but you deal and take the same amount of damage regardless of your level. This means that multiplayer is very well balanced and the only upside of a higher level is the extra abilities. The match making system is brilliant. I never once found myself completely outmatched in a game and I think the maximum I waited for a game (both co-op and competitive) is about 1 minute.
Multiplayer – Downside
Not much new here. The jetpack/double jump adds a sort of Titanfall aspect to multiplayer and makes it quite fun but other than that it’s really just a generic multiplayer. It’s still a lot of fun but nothing revolutionary.
For co-op it can be a bit simple. Strategy tends to be: Fire, take cover, fire some more. If an ally gets killed then revive them and keep firing.
Enemies and bosses just tend to attack whoever is attacking them so there’s no real strategy to draw fire and no real reason for co-ordinated team work. Destiny has pretty good voice incorporation but no one uses the microphones ‘cause you just don’t really need to. If one of your allies goes down then it tells you and there’s nothing else you really need to know. Unless you’re playing with friends then half the time you’ll forget your allies are there.
Conclusion
The game has some pretty big flaws especially in the Story telling and mission variability aspects but this doesn’t take away from what is a really fun game. The combat is the best I have ever seen in a console first person shooter and even after 26 odd hours of gameplay I’m still enjoying every fight.
I’ve been playing primarily as a Titan but have spent a fair few hours as a hunter and a warlock as well. All the classes start similar but change depending on their abilities and I am tempted to level all 3 classes to their maximum levels.
The main problem I see with the game is the lack of complexity. The missions and enemies are copied and pasted, the co-operative multiplayer requires no co-ordination and the gameplay doesn’t change that much throughout the game. While it’s a great game I can see myself getting bored with it pretty soon.
Overall I’d score it 8/10
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