Destiny

Intro

Destiny starts off very promising, with a floating character flying up to you, resurrecting you from the dead, and telling you that you are a Guardian that has been dead for a very long time. Then, you start to play the game. You wake up in a desert looking section of Old Russia that has burned out cars and sand everywhere, and a giant wall behind them. It looks amazing visually, with the wall looking giant and the lighting of the area showing off the great artwork. You then go into the wall to see the first set of enemies named The Fallen, who aren't really explained well in the lore of the game. As you go forward, you come across a dark room where your companion, which is a Ghost, turns on his light and lights up the area, and it looks very impressive. You then progress the level to the point where you find a jump ship, which takes you to the main hub of the game, named The Tower. From here, the game really begins.

Story

The story of Destiny basically begins and ends with The Darkness. You learn that The Traveler, which is a giant sphere that was found by Mars has gone to Earth, and the people there used it's power to research. They prolonged human life to three times the normal life expectancy, as well as giving us the power to travel to other planets and for us to believe we can travel to other solar systems. However, The Traveler has an enemy, named The Darkness. For a very powerful enemy that destroys all life in its path, I believe it has a very poor name. You then begin to play the game more and learn that there is a place on Mars that contains The Heart of Darkness, and that ends up being your goal to win the game. There is more to the lore of the game that you unlock by earning Grimoire cards, but you can only access them by going to Bungie's website. I find this to be a terrible way to learn about the lore of the game. Every time you accomplish any task in the game, you earn one of these Grimoire card, and a message appears at the bottom of the screen, and at the end of it, it just tells you to learn more, visit Bungie.net. There ends up being a little more to the story, but it comes in as two cutscenes at about halfway through the game which introduces two new characters, and I believe that is the best part of the story. It is a shame that it is the only time you see them, hear from them, and you can't go back anytime unless you start a new game.

Gameplay

The shooting in Destiny is the only reason I kept playing the game. It feels great. The guns feel like they have great impact when you are taking out each enemy with headshot after headshot. Each gun seems to look and shoot differently from one another, which makes you wanna try most of the ones you pick up. You carry three weapons at a time, starting with Primary weapons, which can be a Hand Canon(Pistol), Pulse Rifle(Battle Rifle), Auto Rife(Machine Gun). The Secondary weapons go from Snipers, Shotguns, and a Charge Rifle that I never used. The shotgun feels like the one from Halo, depending on the one that you end up finding in the game, and feels powerful if you are surrounded by several enemies or if you are shooting other players online. The shotgun feels like the one from Halo, depending on the one that you end up finding in the game, and feels powerful if you are surrounded by several enemies or if you are shooting other players online. Lastly, there is Heavy weapons, which are just a rocket launcher or a heavy machine gun.

You also have a special power in each class that is used to destroy enemies that are effected by it. You earn upgrades for them by leveling up and using the powers. After you get to level 20, which is the soft level cap because this game says that it is an MMO, requires you to upgrade by getting new armor. In order to get armor to level up, you gotta replay the levels that you already played to possibly get a armor drop that happens to have light in it. by having multiple pieces of armor that contain light, you will level up all the way to 30. Your reward for doing this? You can play the same levels again with the difficulty up to your level. However, I don't see a single reason to do this as every enemy that is near your level can be killed with the same amount of attacks, so the levels really mean nothing other than it is a higher number. You can't be level 8 and take on level 15. But being level 8 and fighting level 8 enemies feels exactly the same as being level 15 and fighting enemies that are level 15. You feel no reward for your progress. if you like MMOs, I'm assuming this is something that you will enjoy, but this to me is the bad parts of MMOs.

You then go out and start to play the game. You pick what you wanna do from an overview map of each planet or moon. You pick a story mission, patrol, which is an explore mission that lets you play the entire map and do side missions. And then there is Strikes. Each mission can be played with two other players that must be part of your Fireteam before getting to the main part of the mission. The beginning part of every story mission is you entering the same part of the world, usually going to a different spot on the map, finding a thing that your Ghost wants to scan, defend that spot, and repeat a few more times. The only variation to this is that sometimes at the end of the level, you will find a boss. My problem with this is that every boss encounter feels exactly the same. They have an attack that resembles some type of explosive as well as a machine gun attack. You then shoot at their weakpoint until they die. However, they have way to much health that this takes a while, and the way that the game gives you more ammo is by sometimes getting them off of a fallen enemy. So during every boss encounter, enemies will constantly respawn near you so you have to stop what you are doing, take them out, then go back to shooting the boss. I even had times where the enemies will respawn directly on me because I found a good spot to shoot at the boss without getting shot at too much. This is every encounter for the entire game, from guarding a position to bosses, everything feels the same. Strikes, are basically the same thing, but you always have two other people with you, and at the end of every strike you will have a boss to defeat.

Next, there is the Crucible, which is the PVP part of the game. The modes are Control, Clash, Rumble, Salvage, and Skirmish. Control has you going after three points on the map, capturing them, and defending them. It is basically just Domination from the Call of Duty games, but you also get points for kills. Skirmish is the same mode but instead of 6v6 it is 3v3 and longer respawn times that require you to revive teammates. Clash is Team Deathmatch and Rumble is Free For All so there isn't much to explain there since they have been done in practically every game. And then there is Salvage which is the most unique mode in the game that has each team of three to capture a relic, defend it, then score points. This and Rumble is what I had the most fun with in the game, but I feel that the game is rather unbalanced. Some levels have vehicles that I feel has no place being here in multiplayer as they are very difficult to take down without heavy weapons, which you can't use until almost halfway through the match. Also, most weapons can one shot everyone, and I feel that the Supers should be earned instead of just acquired by playing.

Conclusion

Destiny feels like they wanted to make an MMO that has good First Person Shooting. I don't believe they did this. They brought in the parts of MMOs that aren't great. From instanced sections of the story missions to poor story, it is a disappointment. If you are looking for the next great Bungie game, you should probably wait until the next game in the series to see if they fixed the story and add more content. Everything you do in the game is repetitive, from needing to constantly go back to The Tower get some new armor and weapons after every mission, to a non streamlined story set up. With every mission ending and going back to orbit, to then go right back to the same planet for the next mission becomes very annoying. If you like how Bungie games play, I'm sure you will enjoy this, but if you are looking for the next MMO shooter, you should wait, as this is no where near an MMO.