Hype and endless PS4 commercials later, Activision and Bungie have sold $500 million worldwide of Destiny since the release on 9 September 2014. Reviews are hard to come by because professional reviewers received their copies on Friday and only had access to the game when the servers went live on 8 September 2014.
So, here’s my review … not worth the price of admission, and certainly not worth the pre-order bonus we paid.
The game is a beautiful and accessible first-person shooter but it is not ground breaking or anything new even. What it is instead is a lonely and empty planet that has a lot of mixed-up, mashed-up ideas from other games and a cerebral not visceral story telling like the Halo franchise. Halo grips you from the get go and really never lets go. Destiny is not that way, instead it tells a story in short bursts without really saying a lot.
The Good:
- Game is gorgeous
- Darkness zones: you must start from the last in zone checkpoint to kill the boss of the checkpoint if you die in the zone.
- Accessible first person shooter: you don’t have to be a twitch shooter player to hit the enemy
The Mediocre:
- Shadows are jaggy and horrible
- World is EMPTY
- Too much of the game relies on the game’s companion app and website for information about events in game
- Too much is left unexplained mechanics wise and the user stumbles upon the answer by luck (I.e dismounting your mounting)
The BAD:
- For a game the touted it’s cooperative play, it is unforgiveable that two friends in the same room cannot join the player playing. Kills the title as something a group of friends can pick-up and play together.
- Lobby system: empty planets, players hang out on their mostly useless space ships waiting from matchmaking
- Three classes that are all the same, just different melee skills which then flavor their bland and dull covering
- Too much has been pulled from other games:
- Public events like that that exist in Everquest 2, Rift, Defiance, Guild Wars 2 … the list is endless really
- Reputation grind – really horrible, slow reputation grind for factions you neither care about nor understand why you are grinding the reputation
- Space ships: other than travel to other planets what purpose do they serve and why on earth would you ever upgrade one?
- Loot drops are horrible? Oh look an unidentified green loot piece dropped. Fly back to earth to get it identified and you get? Oh look, white gear that was not worth the time to fly back and deal with the loading screens.
- Halo’s influence is clearly seen throughout the game:
- Thrall are the new Flood
- Ammo readouts on weapons just like Halo
- Jumping just like Halo
- PvP is the core of the game, sure there is a single player, that can admittedly be played through with two other players, campaign but it isn’t the quality or the depth of the Halo single player campaigns.
- LOAD SCREENS: seriously load screens are alright but when they last longer than 10-1 seconds it is unforgiveable.
World is just soulless and empty. You log in and play for a bit and then you realize you are lonely and bored and would rather be doing other things. If you haven’t already, wait until it goes on sale in a few months before picking up the title.
