Destiny Review

Hi guys,

Seeing as Destiny is such a large game, I will be breaking this review down into small segments each disecting the components of the game, enjoy!
     Story: You have doubtlessly heard a lot of bad things said about the core story of Destiny, and unfortunately they are all very accurate. There is a minimal plot line in the game, with most levels devolving down to a three wave system of enemys while Dinklebot(your Ghost) does something, using the same floating animation, to a computer. The only reason I stuck the campaign out was for the XP you got at the end of every mission. Before the game came out, we were led to belive that there was a vast and complex lore behind the game, and to some extent there is, but firstly you can't access said lore(in the form of Grimouir Cards) via the game, instead you have to make and connect a new Bungie.net account. And secondly the cards aren't the easiest thing in the world to navigate, I personally want to find out more about the Cryptarchs, but know very little because the Grimouir system is to complex for me to bother to hunt out specific infomation.
      Weapons: The weapons in Destiny are a strange afair, once you get to level 20(which took me 12.5 hours) you want to start collecting Legendary weapons and armour(more on light levels later!). To give you some background, there are five levels of rarity for weapons, White, Green(Uncommon), Blue(Rare), Purple(Legendary) and Exotic(Yellow/Gold). So post level 20 you need Legendary gear to do decent damage to enemys. However the problem is that Legendary weapons feel un-satisfying at least for me, knowing that their is still one rank higher of rarity to earn, I am never quite satisfied with Legendary, this coupled with the fact that Legendarys are basically the weapons you have been using so far in the game, with a higher damage cap and more perks to invest in. Though non of said perks drastically change the wepaons and Legendary rarity. Then we move onto Exotic, which are somwhere between rare and mega rare, the difference with this rarity is luck. I have currently been playing for about 60 hours, I have 4 exotic peices, one weapon bought from Xur(unsatisfyingly), and from an Exotic bounty(to random to be fun), one chest peice as a random reward from the Weekly Nightfall, and my last peice is a chest peice which I got from an exotic engram, which I bought from Xur. I know someone who less than two hours after reaching level 20 had a legendary engram drop from a level 2 enemy, which then got decoded into an Exotic weapon. To sum up my thoughts on the weapons of the game, I wish there were tied to bosses and mini-bosses like with the high end weapons in Borderlands 2.
     RNG: If you don't know RNG stands for Random Number Generater, ie luck. Far too much of this game rests on the shoulders of luck, there is no sure fire way of getting any specific weapons, or armour apart from doing near endless amounts of Tiger Strikes to get Vanguard Marks, or tons of Crucible matches for Crucible matches! You either get lucky with mission reward drops, or level up the Vanguard, who post level 2, gives you a package with legendary gear in every time you level up. You level up the Vanguard by doing a lot of the daily bounties, which get rather repetitive.
     Crucible: Right moving onto the Crucible or PVP in this game, going into the games launch, I was super excited to get into the Crucible, and that was where I thought I would be spending most of my time. That really isn't the case now the game has launched, it's quite a fun side persuit, but I have put very little time into it, I have played a total of around 7 hours in the Crucible. About 4 of those hours were because I was forced to be in there for my Thorn bounty! The largest problem stopping it from becoming awesome, is the lag, the netcode for the game is aweful, and any time you get a kill, the score for that kill won't show up for up to 10 seconds! I've had it where I have got a kill, then been killed, waited for the repawn count down, and only a few seconds after getting back in does the kill notifier pop up! This may not sound like a lot when you are just reading about it, but in person when you are playing it yourself, it is the worst thing that could plague a Multiplayer game in my opinion!
     Gameplay: I know I have been dissing this game a lot, but the moment to moment gameplay of Destiny is very fun and satisfying, the weapons do feel very nice to use, though once you have used one Scout Rifle you have used them all! The enemys are diverse, and unless you spend an extended period of time on one planet, then you won't get fed up of the enemies.
      Replayability: This is a tricky issue to raise for Destiny, becuase it is the most subjective issue in gaming. The amount of fun you have with this game post 15 hours will solely rely on how much you enjoy doing the same activities over and over again. Technically there is an infinite supply of things to do in the game, the daily bounties, daily story mission, weekly strike, weekly Nightfall strike and occasional timed special events will keep certain players busy for many hours. However for some gamers this constant grind fest(Destiny summed up in two words!) will be highly unappealing.Which brings me onto my next point:
     Post Level 20: Once you pass level 20 you will have to aquire special gear which has a new stat on it called Light, with that peice of gear equiped your character will now have as many light points as where on that peice. This is not only a strange system of leveling, but also highly unreliable, as RNG rears its ugly head again, as you could reach level 26 or 27 quite quickly, or someone could take dozens of hours to reach that mark. However long it takes you to get to level 27, you then have to start grinding what are called Ascendant Shards, which are required to rank up you gear to give you more light points. These Shards are very hard and slow to aquire unless you do the Raid frequently, which brings me onto:
     The Raid: On paper the raid in the game, works extremely well, but in practice when you give the game to the real gamers, it falls apart. The Raid is a six man event which will take bare minimum 1.5 hours first time. Put it this way on the first day the Raid was released the first team to complete it took in excess of 11 hours! All in one sitting. Communication is an absolute esential, and you all need to be very experienced players with high rank weapons. Here come the big problem, there is no matchmaking. So you have to personally find five other players who can all sit down with mikes for a good few hours in one go to complete this mission. Now somepeople may argue that you can just play the game without doing the Raid, and yes you can. However whilst doing the raid you can get up to 15 Shards, in a few hours, at the moment I can get up to 4 Shards in 2 hours if I am extremely lucky. Most days I get none. Added on to this the fact that all primary weapons(exotic weapons included) have no elemental damage on them, ie Solar, Arc and Void. But if you play the Raid enough, you will get a whole host of primary weapons with elemental damage on them. Effectivly, think of the Raid weapons as Exotic(they are Legendary) weapons that you can use 3 of(you can only equip one exotic weapon). These high teir weapons really come into their own when you do the Nightfall Strike, which always(bar one week in ten so far) has a burn on them, which means that a specific elemental damage deals around 300% extra damge, both dealt by you and the enemies. At the end of the Nightfall Strike, you are guaranteed high rank gear, be in legendary or exotic gear, or Ascendat materials, or Strange Coins, all of which will come in very usefull. The clincher come when you put 2 and 2 together and work out that if you do the raid enough, you are given a much, much easier time of the Nightfall than someone who hasn't done the Raid. This coupled with the fact that you can only get to level 30(the max rank pre-DLC) by earning the very rare and random drops of Raid armour from the various chests and enemies in the Raid. All told the Raid makes a very large part of the game unplayable for far to many people(myself included) for the amount of time and energy Bungie put into it! My last note on the issue is this, according to the Playstation trophies a mear 13% of players who have Destiny have completed the Raid!
      Round Up: Although I have bashed this game alot, it is still a very fun game to play, and one that will suck a lot of time from you if you give in to it. You can spend fun filled hours, doing Strikes, Crucible, Exotic and normal Bounties, material farming and more. The most important thing to bare in mind with this game, is that it will get better, multiple patches are in the works as we speak(write?), the next one which will be out by the release of The Dark Below(the first DLC), which will give a drastic change to all Exotic weapons. Bungie are one of the best developers out there for listening to thier audience, changes for a ton of stuff are in the pipework, and I have near total faith in Bungie to bring Destiny up to the level that I know it can be; we just have to wait.
My total review score for Destiny is: 8.5/10, with the capacity for Bungie to make it a solid 10/10.
Thank you very much for reading my long ramblings, check back soon for more new content!
Ed