Destiny's Skirmish: An Unbalanced Waste of Time or an Unforgiving Masterpiece?

I was at the Tower looking for some easy Crucible bounties when I saw it. The mission was simple: complete five Skirmish matches. It sounded easy enough, so I grabbed the innocent little bounty and blasted off to orbit, my cousin Zach joining my fireteam before I started the first match.

“Work together, and you might survive!” The Speaker warned as Zach, another player and I spawned in. Zach, a seasoned veteran of years spent playing Battlefield and Call of Duty, immediately sprinted off to hunt down the other team. This left me and our teammate straggling behind as we sought our own glory.

In what seemed like seconds into the match, we were down at least nineteen hundred points. Our teammate had already dropped out, and Zach continued to rage into my ear about his K/D ratio and how unbalanced and stupid this game type was. We had settled into that dark anger that every gamer has felt. It is a feeling felt right before a button-mashing, controller-throwing, steam-pouring-from-your-ears ragequit. We played a few more games before it became too much for my dear cousin.

This left one more game until my bounty was complete.

The map: Anomaly. My team: two random people who I had no way of communicating with. The Speaker gave us his ominous advice and we were off. The match started very much the same way all the others had. We were getting chewed to pieces. At every turn I was outnumbered at least two to one, ending up either cartwheeling through the air or floating up and away in slow motion as light consumed my body. I found myself in a near-shutout situation.

Suddenly, in my final fit of raging about how there were always at least two enemies whenever I finally found something to shoot, I realized what I had to do. I spawned in next to one of my teammates and as he blindly sprinted off to die, cold and alone in a dark corridor somewhere, I did my best to stay close behind.

We came upon the enemy team just as they started to swarm our lone teammate in a hallway. I vaporized one with my fusion rifle, causing another to panic jump out into Anomaly’s largest room. Rather than chase him, I joined my team in cornering and beating the remaining enemy to death. The three of us hesitated—a split second of silent realization—before turning and leaping out into the biggest space on the map to finish off the remaining target.

None of us were killed for the rest of the match.

Skirmish has no time, and even less mercy, for lone wolves and players concerned with personal K/D ratios. It is an unforgiving game type in which dividing your enemy while staying together is paramount. To be the ones divided is to be the ones that are slaughtered.

“Work together, and you might survive!”