User Review : Destiny

Destined for greatness?

Destiny is a space exploration action FPS RPG from the studio that brought you the iconic Halo series, Bungie. Venturung out of their comfort zone, Destiny is sort of a miniature MMO. If you played the Halo series then you will quickly adapt to the gameplay of Destiny as it shares similar mechanics,gunplay and overall design.

Before you start playing you must take hours deciding (these are always the toughest decisions) which of the three races you want to play as; Human, a Machine, or an Awoken...a Human with funky skin basically. Your choice here has little to no none impact on the game. Then you must choose one of three Sub Classes (each character has 2) which gives us some neat abilities that affect your super, jumps, grenades among other things. If you decide you don't like the current character you picked there are two other character creation slots. It is also advised to create more than one character which I will explain a bit later.

As mentioned, there are some basic RPG elements sprinkled that makes it sort of feel like a first person Mass Effect. You have 20 levels to climb before you max out, can upgrade your armor, weapons and subclass by earning XP by completing missions and killing the baddies. Once you reach 20 you can gain an extra 14 levels by equipping special armor that has "Light" which will grant you access to the more difficult challenges in the game. 20 might seem like a low number but if you're looking to maximize your loot by having more than one character leveling up grows extremely tedious.

Once you're finished customizing you're precious character you are thrown in to battle against fearsome enemies that patrol the Earth, Moon, Venus and Mars. You are a Guardian that must preserve the safety of humanity and the Tower that houses these heros. If you're a sucker for good story telling then it may be best to look else where. Nothing is really explained well--or at all. Your poor guy is revived from death with no reason given only to mindlessly do tasks for a floating piece of scrap metal. If you really want to dig deep and learn more about this world then you can go onto Bungies website or mobile app and read up on it, but why waste your time? It's sort of like Bloodborne, a game that has no visual story that is fed to you but if you read items then you can solve the puzzle. But what that game does (and others in the series) is that everything is in game, and tells a story through its amazing atmosphere, and enemies design something Destiny lacks.

Multiplayer however is certainly a bright spot in Destiny and that's really where I feel the game gets its addictive nature from. I can totally see how Destiny could become tedious and ultimately dull by having nobody to share this journey with, after all, us humans are social creatures But if you manage to have a group of friends or join a clan then you will give yourself an opportunity to enjoy Destiny to the fullest with a wide variety of game modes.

For starters, there are lots of PVE missions (Player vs Environment). The story mode is completely open to Co Op so you can run through the whole thing with two other people. There are also Strikes that will include modifiers which can make it a tad bit difficult. Generally speaking they follow a structured flow where you go from point A to point B and must kill the area boss to complete the mission. Depending on the Strike, whether it be Vanguard, the Daily or Weekly rewards will vary.

My personal favorite PVE's are called Raids where you can take a fire team of 5 other people (including yourself) to complete objectives. Where Strikes feel structured, Raids are more team oriented and objective based. In order to progress you might figure out minor puzzles, defeat hoards of enemies and multiple bosses. Unfortunately there are only two but there are the pinnacle of game and level designs.

Also you have an Arena based mode where you must kill waves of enemies for five rounds ( some include a boss) with two other players. Challenging and fun the Arena will reward your success with some goodies. If all this grows tiresome you can take a leisurely stroll on any of the four Planets (or moon) and complete bounties for the tower or the Queen, or engage in public events whenever they pop up. Also needed to be mentioned is you can only collect rewards once per week per character, so as mentioned, to take full advantage of your chances to get Legendary or Exoctic items creating more than one character is ideal. Exoctic Armor and Weapons are sort of like Pokemon...gotta catch 'em all. This is really want keeps gamers coming back by putting hundreds of hours into Destiny. But sometimes it's a little frustrating because it's entirely luck based, which is fine, but it would be nice to reward the players skill too.

PVP (Player vs player) jumps you into online game modes like team death match, capture points, and free for all. Your level doesn't really impact this portion of the game unless you do Trails of Osiris, a 3v3 one life per round mode and Iron Banner, a 6v6 control point respawn mode. You can enjoy these challanging types every weekend and month respectively.

Now a huge gripe with Destiny is that there is no offline option. With the PSN constantly going down like a prostitute on their client, Destiny essentially becomes a coaster. Even Bungies servers hit a snag once a week so it is frustrating that you can't progress through the story or even grind levels without having an internet connection.

In conclusion, Destiny is a solid game....at least now it is. I know there were tons of launch issues, connectivity problems and lack of content but thankfully I was able to bypass the growing pains and jump into a smooth game. Also a couple of my friends got me the two DLC packs so content wasn't a problem so my views are definitely different to those who have only played the game at launch. Even if I did pay the game at launch I would've definitely see the potential with Destiny. It doesn't do anything exceptional but does do a lot of things well.