In light of the new DLC coming out I decided to pick up Destiny, a game I haven’t really touched since a month after its release over two years ago (I write this paragraph as a 12 gigabit update downloads to my system). This game was the reason I picked up an Xbox One in the first place though it was fairly lackluster with minimal content, especially compared to what was promised. I have heard over and over again that the DLC (downloadable content) has fixed all the major problems and added tons of new content. With that in mind, I will be presenting to you my review of Destiny, with absolutely none of the DLC installed, because that’s a shitty way to operate a business. It’s like releasing a crap movie and then telling me it’s okay because the spin off TV show is really good, or the bonus scenes on the Blu-ray version make it all worth it (looking at you Batman V Superman).
The plot:
Truth be told I’m starting a new character from scratch and will give you the plot as I figure it out. If I remember, you are a zombie brought back to life by a robot ghost to fight the darkness. It takes a while to get through the loading screens and admittedly still beautiful cinematics (I especially liked the explorer astronauts who were carrying assault rifles for some reason). And I believe there are lore things that pop up every once in a while, with hundreds and hundreds of lore facts available on Bungie’s website, which does not count for game plot. It’s like making a Lord of the Rings game and for all plot just saying “well the books are there so…”, which to be fair I think is what Pandemic did with Lord of the Rings Conquest; either way it’s just not proper story telling.
The characters:
There are three distinct classes, each with 2 play styles and 3 powers per play style, though everyone can use every weapon, so there is that. The enemies are functionally pallette swaps of each other, with larger enemies being semi-unique, at least the first time they appear. The subsequent appearances are just as mini-bosses, not even full on bosses.
The enemies are a number of alien races, whom I believe are tangentially related to the darkness, or are otherwise just bad guys. There is a robot bad guy, an underground race like gears of war, a spider group called the Fallen, a big brutish one like the bad guys from the Fifth Element, and a mystical void-y one; I’m not sure what any of their motivations are.
The gameplay:
The gameplay is good, Bungie knows how to make shooters. The guns feel like they have weight and there is a little bit of variation in play styles with the different weapons and powers, though this isn’t really enough of an MMO for that to matter. The loot drops are completely random, though always scaled to your current level.
But here’s the thing (many, many things):
Where to begin… the lack of substance, the grind, the interface, the meaningless numbers on your weapons and armour, the dozen or so different currencies…
Lets begin with the lack of content, since this game was hyped for basically the full year before its release. It was Bungie’s first game since Halo, and a space shooter. That’s their wheelhouse. It’s an MMO too (sorta), which is okay I guess… The cinematics looked gorgeous, the universe portrayed in the trailers was deep and rich, but then it wasn’t there. The released game has 5 worlds: Earth, the moon, the citadel, Mars, and Venus, which are all just different coloured wastelands with 4-8 missions and a free roam place. The entire game as it was released could have been beaten in about 10 hours, maybe less if you rush, and there wasn’t much reason not to rush. Seriously Bungie, you have entire planets to work with, maybe put more than like 4 loot boxes on the whole damn place, since there are literally no rewards for exploring what is a pretty and rich environment. It’s a disappointment for some world spanning MMO. It’s got less content than the starting area of WoW, hell it’s got less content than Halo did, and you would think that they would have that as a reference point.
Then there’s the grind… the grind is unreal. You finish the main quest around or under level 20, which was the starting level cap, and then you could slowly and artificially do some weird shit to go higher. It’s now 40 but I don’t have any extra content to get there, you just need to replay the same missions over and over again, to do repetitive challenges for minimal experience points. I don’t want to guess the hours (days really) all these level 40s have put in and I certainly don’t want to invest my time like that. Hell for some reason they make you hold buttons to make sure you are sure of your choice and it’s like 3 solid seconds of holding to decide to teleport to your ship. If you reach level 40, that alone has contributed to an hour or so of your life. I mean really, just ask me if I’m sure I want to do a thing, it’s way faster than this hold button shit.
Also the gun progression is annoying, I understand that the first revolver I get does about 20 damage. I also understand that my best one at level 20 does 120 damage. What I don’t fucking understand is why both take 2 shots to kill a minion. I played mission 1-4 with my new character and them played them again with my level 23 badass hunter of death, and it took me exactly the same time, and roughly the same amount of ammo. Sure the bosses went down a little quicker and I have more health, but the vast majority of small minions are equally susceptible to my pea shooter of fluff as they are too my phallic hand cannon of death. And I don’t get why, I mean I know Halo had zero weapon progression, but surely they needed to figure this out before giving you fucking levels. The number for the damage is way higher, but it’s roughly the same percent of the health bar taken down, and that’s just bullshit. I want the Borderlands style cut a fucker in half with my pistol type progression. I want to feel scared of things at or above my level, and I want to feel that anything 5 levels or more below me isn’t worth my time. I feel neither.
Then there’s also the weird market thing. You could buy anything, weapons and armour or any manner of ship, cosmetic, bike, dye, whatever to make you feel special. Pro tip for any gamers reading this, if the only requirement for whatever gear or cosmetic thing you have was to pay real life money for it, then no one thinks better of you for having it, usually the opposite. But only like 3 of them accepted actual in game currency (‘glimmer’). The rest need random collectables as additional currency, some dropped in specific locations from specific bad guys. I’m not gonna lie, when I played through this first I got to level 20 (max at the time) without ever accruing enough random currencies to buy anything, just glimmer for weapons and schematics. That’s it, help I don’t know what half the items they sell even do, because they never show up any other way.
So overall all I can say is that maybe this game is worth it now. They have released a new version with all the DLC for less than the original price of the game, effectively shitting on everyone who decided to buy any part of it beforehand. I hear the DLC is great, and the story is deep, but that’s not what they delivered when I bought the damn game, so fuck 'em. Don’t give them the money, buy it used if you feel the need to.
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