Destiny review

This is one of the hardest reviews I’ve had to do for a while. It’s hard because I have to put aside my love for Bungie and the Halo franchise to look, unbiasedly, at this new IP from the guys that established the first person shooter genre on the Xbox. And we’ve deliberately not posted anything yet because I wanted to sink a load of time into it before I wrote this. It’s fair to say that I was, initially, very unimpressed.

You see, Halo was to the Xbox shooter what Project Gotham was to the Xbox racer, a flagship title that would allow sceptics to see the power of the console, the console that was taking on Sony’s PlayStation after the complete marketing failure of the Dreamcast (an amazing console nonetheless).

But Destiny isn’t Halo. It’s a new IP on a new generation of consoles, and whole new concept for a game. There are places where Destiny shines, but there are also as many places, if not more, where it falls flat on its face.

But let’s start with the positives. The game is genuinely beautiful. You can really admire the art of the world, and it looks great on both the next gen platforms. There’s been a lot of work that’s gone into the back-end. Community manager David “Deej” Dague told us that Bungie had concentrated on creating a “platform agnostic” game with the help of an internally developed game engine that would allow the team to create the game on one platform only and syndicate it to the relevant systems. And this seems to have worked brilliantly for the game, with hardly any loss of quality on both the legacy ten consoles and minor graphical (hardly noticeable) differences on the current gens.

And of course Bungie know how to make fire fights work. The weapons are well weighted, the different types of weapons also allow players to explore their favourite style of destruction and desecration. You’ll also find that your load out will change depending on your class, of which there are three. The Titan (assault), Warlock (mage/healer or similar) and the Hunter (sniper). There are only three classes and it really is best to play this game with a fire team. Again, fire teams are also restricted to three players. At first I was a little annoyed about that, but it actually is a good number to have. I don’t think it would have hurt having a fourth player, but my guess is that we’ll see that with the expansion of the game and the introduction of a different class.

Without going into too much detail, each class has it’s own RPG tree to explore and specific skills. The best class to play with, as a unanimous decision by myself and those that I’ve played with, was the Warlock as it was most fun. The most useless special power weapon goes to the Hunter.

But unlike any other RPG game, there isn’t much variety in progression of your character. I was hoping there would be a deep RPG tree, but there wasn’t. Instead you upgrade your character linearly and choose what you want to have ‘equipped’ if you like from the progression. I keep returning to Borderlands and how every skill point I would agonise on what to spend it on and how that was going to help me achieve my ultimate level. And each character of the same class you played or met (if you were playing with friends) would be different, unique. The only thing that makes you unique in Destiny is your armour (which again isn’t very varied) or the accessories which are class-specific or the shaders. There is nothing unique about your character. Especially when you’re out of the tower, the hub for your Guardian.

I’m afraid to say that it doesn’t stop there. This is supposed to be the first attempt at an FPS-RPG-MMO. And with any MMO or RPG the game changer is the loot, the variety of loot and just the sheer amount of loot. Destiny here also fails. Big time.

You can spend an hour grinding down an enemy or a level boss and you’ll get NOTHING for it. Literally. Nothing. Not even ammo. You’ll run out of ammo, guaranteed. And you don’t loot share, or ammo share, or weapon share. It’s the most frustrating thing in the game. Well, one of. And to top it off, you can’t trade ammo or armour with friends or your fire team. And don’t even get me started on the level cap (20 - but you can continue to upgrade as long as you grind your armour and weapons). I’m not even going to go into that because it’s a waste of time. If you stick with Destiny long enough, you’ll figure this out. Basically, once you hit level 20 you’re able to unlock ‘legendary’ equipment that allows you to upgrade. Your currency changes from XP to Motes of Light. I’m saying no more because it’s stupid.

And it’s not just the loot, the world, as beautiful as it is, isn’t particularly engaging. Whether you’re playing a story mission, a strike mission or a patrol mission, the game mechanic works exactly the same. “Go here, scan this, shoot the shit out of these aliens which you’ve already seen before”. It’s as if Bungie spent four years developing the engine, the beautiful engine, but forgot to make a game to go in it. And when they did, it was too late to fix the glaring holes (like INVISIBLE WALLS), or lack of loot and treasure and things to do. It just feels a little empty, a little confused. A little bland.

I do think, however, the gun play is brilliant, and the music is phenomenal (you’d expect nothing less from Bungie), but it’s not enough. I expect the gun play to be good. I expect the music to be good. These are the basics and for a developer that made it’s name with those two specific mechanics, I would be rightly furious if it’d not at least got that right. I also think the vehicles (the very few that are in there) are well handled, but I am bitterly disappointed at the lack of space combat, which I think would have added a great dimension to the game. Having said that, I completely get that it might have been too much to do considering it’s a new IP. Well, I say that, but really, I don’t think that. Even the story is a steaming pile of festering shit. I know, I know, you’re not going to change the world, but you’re establishing a franchise guys, come on! And I think I know why all of this grated me, which I’ll get to in a little bit. But I want to go back to the point I was trying to make earlier. Bungie seems to have stuck to what it knows, and done it well in Destiny, but they’ve not done anything new from a game mechanic perspective. Yes, the idea is great, but it’s not executed well. It’s like sleeping with a much older person. You know they’ve got the experience and they’d be great if they just managed to get into gear, but they’re just not all there; a little bit dead behind the eyes. This is how I feel about Destiny and Bungie.

So why did all this grate me? Well, I think it comes down to the simple fact that you’re not special. You’re just another Guardian. With Halo there was only one Master Chief. With ODST and Reach you were one of an elite team. And you had Cortana. Beautiful Cortana. Emotionally charged Cortana. In Destiny there is a Ghost. And every fucker has one.

Now, having said all of that I have managed to sink a lot of time into the game. The only reason, I believe, is because I’ve not actually played it alone. I’ve only ever played it with a full fire team. And that is fun. But if I were to play this alone, even though the world is populated with others, it wouldn’t be the same.

I feel I should celebrate the things Destiny does well, apart from what I’ve said before about gun play and visuals. I also believe the way in which the world works and how you can just see all real players in the world is great. I understand this is the start of something, but I’m not reviewing the future of a franchise. I’m reviewing the now. And I’m very disappointed. I thought the Beta would be just a taster of what was to come. Unfortunately it wasn’t. It was pretty much half of the game.

Destiny has a pretty rough road ahead of it. There has to be a complete re-structure to make this the game it wants to be. And if you are thinking of picking it up, wait till it drops in price. Honestly, you’ll regret it otherwise, especially with games like Borderlands and Shadow of Mordor around the corner.

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Click here to watch our exclusive interview with Bungie community manager David 'Deej' Dague, or here to read what he has to say about weapons in Destiny.