Destiny Review: Become Legen- Wait For It…

Arguably the most anticipated game of 2014 is finally here; but with 2 years of rampant hype behind it and people’s expectations skyrocketing into the furthest reaches of space did Destiny, or even can Destiny, live up to what people are wanting from this almost un-definable genre mixing game. Well personally it has hit every single note for me, on an almost addicted level, with many, many, many hours logged into the game I am still having a blast in this unique and fun science fiction world which while does have some issues the overall experience is personally a “Booyah” screaming success.

The mysterious story of Destiny centres around you, as a guardian, trying to stop the darkness and its armies from destroying the universe and turning it into a dark pit of despair. Armed with the powers of light given to you by the traveller, an even more mysterious orb trying to protect and enhance the universe, and the choice between three awesome classes you are set off to clear out these armies of despair wherever their unfortunate feet land.

While at first this is an interesting plot line hardly anything is done to further or add to the story and what is isn’t that interesting; making the story never become anything more than an epic back drop for you to blast enemies through. This results in the interest for the plot flat-lining very early on, even with a star studded cast that does a serviceable job at voicing many small roles in the game. The only real stand out performance is Peter Dinklage as your trusty robot, Ghost, giving you a welcomed friendly companion and frequent information dumps throughout the missions giving you a basic reason for doing what you are doing. Saying this, the actual missions are really fun and a great way to explore this new universe that is teeming with potential.

Speaking of epic back drops for you to blast aliens through the worlds you are put into are at times truly stunning. With an amazing art design behind them many times I have been with a group of guardians just starring up into the majestically coiling cosmos twinkling in the skies above us. These absolutely absorbing landscapes of science fiction go a long way to creating a high level of immersion into this new universe that Bungie has created. It is very easy to find yourself lost in the world and that is because of Bungie’s amazing world building that grabs you from the very start.

While the art design is fantastic Destiny’s graphics never really fulfil the potential of the new consoles. Never stunning with high fidelity as games in recent past have done, such as the jaw dropping effect the graphics from last years Kill Zone: Shadow Fall did.

Another aspect that draws you deeper into the game is the amazing soundtrack that victoriously plays behind your heroic deeds. While there has been a lot of controversy around the creation of the music what has been produced is a great soundtrack that can really capture the moment perfectly in sound; from the triumphant sounds of entering this universe heard in the early moments of the game to the battle worn trumpets that accompany you in the carnage, the soundtrack always fits exactly how it is supposed to and sucks you into the moment even more.

One of the main components that has hooked me and promises to never let me go is the almost perfect gameplay on offer. With an adrenalin pumping gun play as your main choice of assault, a powerful melee that not only brings you closer into the action but when trapped in a corner really makes a difference, and the devastating supers that can obliterate an entire room of enemies when levelled up; taking down enemies is just varied enough that every altercation feels unique and always fun.

This armoury of ways to decimate your opponents is also very easy to get to grips with allowing you very early on to be able to slide into a group of oppressive aliens and take them all down in a plethora of fierce ways, utilising the full assortment of your weapons; swapping between the reliable assault rifle to the alien splattering shotgun and back with ease while taking full advantage of your powerful melee ability. All this finally concludes with you standing in a room full of downed enemies unscathed and feeling like a badass.

What’s also keeping the way you face a challenge different every time is the jetpack, or jetpack-esque, ability that is at all the classes’ disposal. This allows you to glide down to enemies while laying down a blaze of fury with your assault rifle or dodge incoming homing ammunition from the Fallen. What this ability also allowed the developers to do was create maps where you can take more of a vertical approach to clearing out the invading force, giving you a multitude of ways to get around the beautiful landscapes of this universe and giving combat more interesting dimensions to stop the main gameplay from becoming stale.

All these factors combined with the impressive variation in enemy types throughout the game that once again have great art design and an assortment of scaling abilities between them with scaling strength, range and brutality really help the game keep your interest throughout your assumably many hours of play time. 

However while the main gameplay is completely unfiltered fun there is a draw back to the experience that can bring the epic flow of a heated faceoff between you and an army of Vex to a stop or even cost you the fight. This problem arises when swapping what your weapon for the primary, secondary or heavy slot will be. To do so you need to open up the menu, move the cursor to the slot and click the weapon you want to use. In any other game this could be easy but in Destiny you can never pause the game, not even when on a solo mission out of the “shared world”. This issue disrupted the flow many times for me when playing and can become very annoying when needing a shotgun to take down a horde of incoming zombie-esque enemies but being stuck with a sniper; not being able to open the conventional ‘wheel of weapons’ method used in games such as Resistance 3.

Also a function that often rips me right out of the experience is the awkward spawning of enemies in the open world areas where other players can be freely met on the battle field. It seems that as soon as you turn your back and move slightly out of the small combat area the same exact enemies have re-spawned in the same exact area, breaking the illusion of the organic, living and breathing universe that Bungie has tried to create and making the scenarios feel slightly too forced and artificial than first thought. 

Another aspect of the game that has sunk its hooks into me and won’t let me go is the very addictive levelling up and looting system that has been implemented into Destiny. From buying, finding or levelling up your weapons of potential mass destruction (at the right level), to the amount of loot and upgradeable armour each character can get is so awesomely overwhelming in scope you can do nothing else but feel the need to upgrade all your characters utilities to the best and beyond. With loot drops from enemies or events frequent enough to entice you to play just one more mission or complete just one more bounty and with weapons and armour varied enough, even if just in aesthetics, to make you want them it is very easy to fall in to the trap of endlessly needing to find the next piece of legendary equipment; but thankfully the ways in which to get them are so fun it’s always a pleasure to go back on the hunt to make your guardian a real force to reckon with and look awesome while being so.

When you’re done with the story missions or levelled up enough for a bigger challenge you will be greeted by possibly the highlights of the game, the Strike missions. These are compulsory online missions where you and 2 other guardians take on a set of objectives, much like in the story missions, but with more waves of enemies hungry for victory and usually an impressive and dauntingly strong boss to defeat at the end of the epic tale. These missions at many moments are extremely intense and test your skills to their very brinks; making these missions the greatest way to really prove whether you deserve the level you currently sport as a badge of honour on your Destiny profile.

After hours and hours of helping your fellow guardian and decimating legions after legions of vicious foes together you need to definitively decide who is the best, the most kick-ass guardian of the bunch and there is no better place to prove this then in Destiny’s PvP arena: the Crucible. Here you can play in many traditional multiplayer modes such as domination (Control), team death match (Clash), etc. While the modes bring nothing new to the table in the multiplayer landscape the fantastic gameplay of Destiny certainly makes it an interesting battle each time. Here you are able to bring your character and all their abilities and weapons from the main game into the competitive multiplayer experience, making this an excellent place to test your equipment's might against your, usually, fellow guardians.

However when entering the Crucible there is a fairly steep learning curve you must first overcome before you can really enjoy the experience and for some new players, especially this late after launch, you may find you’re self on a constant cycle of doom in the early matches; especially as matchmaking doesn’t always pit you up against guardians of equal calibre making this multiplayer experience harder than most to fully get into but personally was defiantly worth the extra effort, especially thanks to the lucrative Crucible bounties on offer.

Once you’ve gotten a crate load of loot after blazing around the surface of your planet of choice you can go back to the social hub, the Tower, and reap the rewards of your hard days work. This is the area you can interact with the other guardians out of combat, look proudly at your own guardian in the third person view and buy/decode all your items from the various shops of the last city on Earth. While the design and assortment of likeable shop keepers is amazing and a great way to spend your in-game down time between exterminating whole nest’s of enemies it can be very confusing at first. With no real pointers to what each shop offers on the first few glances the Tower can be an overwhelming place to land in if uneducated in its inner workings. In-fact even after much experience with the location some shops have little significance or are almost exact copies of shops on the other end of the palace. But overall the Tower is a nice change of pace to sit and admire the juxtaposing tranquil setting before leaping back into the fiery pits of battle once again.

To get to these astounding locations sadly you must trudge through the painfully slow loading that you must face before entering every new area; an experience that is slowly becoming my guardians one true enemy. While I understand there is a grievous amount of data to be processed and loaded to fully embrace this game and its ambitious “shared world” concept (which thankfully isn’t forced upon you as you can go through most of the game alone, which does get quite difficult though in the later levels and weekly challenges) these loading times can be horrendous to wait through and sadly there comes a point where watching a ship fly through space in the same exact way can become immensely boring, a problem that is also shared by games in the Ratchet and Clank series.

Once you finish the story and reach level 20 Destiny becomes a slightly different experience where taking on the next big bad and increasingly difficult mission is your main focus and thankfully there are a plethora of things to do after the last story mission. With a new daily hard mission and weekly impossible strike mission to tackle as well as a playlist of strike missions, new 6 player raid missions and DLC on the horizon there is a lot more fun to be had; keeping you and your guardian around for the foreseeable future.

But with levelling your guardian to the heights of level 20 comes a very confusing twist in your progression, with almost no real guide or explanation you must turn your focuses to getting more light than XP. To do this there are many different avenues to go down but yet again these are not really explained or pointed out to you, making levelling up post level 20 a very unnecessarily confusing and head scratching experience that with more aid could be avoided. I recommend finding a wiki or YouTube explanation to help your guardian on their way to achieving new cosmic heights.

If you couldn’t tell from this huge review (sorry about that) there is a lot to Destiny, too much to mention otherwise you’d be looking at another few pages of review. But that is one of its main strengths, there is so much to this game that I always find myself wanting to go back and dive head first into this fantastic world and explore, destroy and level up as much as I can. This experience is the most fun I have had in a while, certainly on the PS4, and it just seems to keep getting better.

…dary, Legendary

Destiny = 8.5/10

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