Destiny Review- Does it live up to the hype?

 

By Sam Coles:

Destiny was one of the most anticipated and hyped game of this year along with Watch Dogs, but unfortunately the game falls flat in some places, however it is a fun and addicting game so it’s not terrible it’s just doesn’t deliver in some aspects of the game. So let’s dive in and explore the world of Destiny.

The story of this game (what is there where you don’t have to do background reading) is that you play as a Guardian and you have been dead for a while as you are found by a hovering robotic entity, which reminds me of 343 guilty spark, finds you called a Ghost. You are then taken to a hub area called the tower where you meet the Speaker and he explains that you were revived by a spherical object in the sky called the Traveller. The Traveller has been around for centuries helping raise humanity into the golden age of space travel and extending life throughout the galaxy, until the darkness came along and start to fight against the traveller, which is where you as the Guardian come in.

Before you can unleash yourself into the galaxy you must first pick one out of three classes although there are only three it gets out of the standard soldier, engineer and sniper class that you’re usually burdened with in the FPS genre, no you have classes that take traits from traditional high fantasy RPG’s instead.

 

You have the Hunter which specialise in being sneaky and backing you up from a distance so when you’re playing as this class you’ll more than likely be sticking to sniper rifles, the hunter’s special  ability is that he or she can use solar light to burn enemies into ashes.

 

The Titan uses a vast array of offensive and defensive skills and has a lot of power with melee and general attacks so this class will be your support in battle.

 

Finally you have Worlock who has mastery of the void so he or she can cast magical blasts to vaporise your enemies.

 

 

Then you are unleashed in the word and considering that I played this game on PS3 a console that is eight years old at this point, the game still looked surprisingly beautiful. That’s what I like of the latest shooters in the new gen is that they’ve ditch the greyish brown (for the most part) and have created these awe inspiring and vibrant worlds with lots of colour. This game has some fantastic looking environments from the Moon, the jungles of Venus even to the desolate deserts on Mars, Bungie are renowned for creating detailed worlds and they don’t disappoint here.

The musical score absolute amazing another aspect Bungie gets right again to help you feel the tension in battle with operatic scores that get you pumped when you’re surrounded by enemies or if you are fighting a boss.

 

The gameplay is familiar if you have played Halo Reach before then you’ll feel right at home with the gun play because the controls and shooting mechanics feel like Reach except you can aim down sights now rather than the classic hip firing. The gameplay has a sense of verticality which a lot shooters seem to abandon these days, you’ll find yourself jumping all the over the place from places and then doing a ground pound on mobs of enemies.

 

Throughout your journey you’ll obtain experience and high levels which will then let you upgrade your characters abilities this could be anything from learning the ground pound ability as a Titan (which I played as) or just the simple unlock of grenades, it feels awarding each time you level up. After you hit level 15 you can use a different class which there are even more skills for you to play with which encourages you to take different approaches in raids or PvP multiplayer.

 

Similar to Borderlands there are lots of varied weapons (far less than Borderlands) that you can find and unlock on your travels by finding some that you have to unencrypt or you can find them in loot chests, it’s always fun to find out what your weapon will do if it’s a fusion rifle that spits out fire or ice or even a traditional rocket launcher to take down a boss.

Now I’ve got all the positives out the way let’s go into the negatives which make the game fall flat in places. The story is the main thing that bothers me because there isn’t much of a story here and if you want to know more about the lore you have to go online and read about it which isn’t even in the game most of the time. It doesn’t help the story as well when the voice acting is delivered poorly especially Peter Dinklage who plays the part of your Ghost and is the voice you’ll hear throughout most of the campaign and it just sounds like he doesn’t get on with the material.

The other sticking point is that the game gets incredibly repetitive and I know what all of you are going say “It’s an MMO what do you expect”? I expect something to keep me engaged, but the thing is I can’t put the game down for some reason despite the repetitive nature especially when you play with other people. The repetition does get annoying especially when the game spawns in the same place every time you land on the same planet, I wish it would put you somewhere else to make it seem like that there is some variety. The loading times can be obnoxious this might be the fact that I played this game on the PS3 but the load times where long sometimes but not always.   

Finally the Crucible the competitive multiplayer mode in Destiny, the matchmaking is terrible because as a low level you can be fighting someone from level 15-29 which means you’ll get your arse handed to you and you’ll never want to play again, but the game modes are fun they have the usual domination and team deathmatch modes but I would recommend levelling up a bit first before jumping in.

In conclusion Destiny does not live up to the hype and marketing, but does it make it a terrible game? No I don’t think so I had a lot of fun with it and yes it can get repetitive and the voice acting is flat but when you play it with friends or strangers it can be a fun experience I would recommend playing it, but maybe wait for the price to fall.