Destiny - Two Weeks Down the Line
"Destiny is a fun, but hollow experience." I think most everyone on the internet is familiar by now with this sentiment about Bungie's online shooter which is kicking off their ten year plan to create a new powerhouse IP. I'd like to offer my own headline worthy quip: We were promised the world and given a country.
It's clear that Bungie and Activision's marketing team were too vague for too long about what Destiny actually was. This, and a number of other factors, contributed to the less than stellar critical reception of the game. Huge expectations of the studio which gave us the Halo franchise, outlandish ten year plans, quite a bit of over-promising late in the marketing plan, and the desperation of console owners for something, anything to play with their $400 video game systems all contributed to the response of Destiny. Well, those things, and a few puzzling choices in regards to rewarding players for playing the game.
Here is a list of the content that you get with Destiny when you purchase it for a PS4: 19 story missions on four planets, four patrol missions (open exploration of the game's locations with repeatable fetch or kill quests), six strikes (five on other consoles), nine guns, four multiplayer modes (with others being rotated in and out by Bungie), 11 multiplayer maps, and one raid.There are three classes in the game; the Titan is a tank like class that has the capacity to take a lot of damage and can be played defensively, the Hunter who is fast and is heavily rewarded for headshot kills and precision, and the Warlock who can be a support class or a bursty damage fighter.
I've played the game for about 40 hours over the past two weeks as a Hunter. In that time, I've completed the story, played every strike, and have not yet dipped my toe into the multiplayer. I've reached Light Level 26 (more on that later) and have had a lot of fun with the game. I did a bit of grinding at the loot cave, and I've cleared out the Devil's Lair more than I care to admit. I can't count how many bounties I've turned in.
There are two distinct parts of Destiny - before and after level 20. Level 20 is the "soft cap" for the game, or the point where you no longer level up via experience from killing enemies, completing quests, and other sources, and instead have to collect gear which has the Light stat. The more Light on an item, the more it contributes to your Light Level, allowing you to advance. Before level 20, Destiny plays basically like Borderlands. You'll begin a mission, run around and shoot guys, get new guns, learn new skills and abilities, and probably do a couple strikes. Most of your leveling will come from either the story or multiplayer, both of which reward experience. You can run any mission or strike with three friends, or engage in strike matchmaking. Multiplayer can be played with up to six friends, but of course has matchmaking associated as well. However, it is important to note there is no matchmaking ability whatsoever for the core story missions, the endgame raid, or any number of daily and weekly challenge missions the game offers.
After your character has hit level 20, the game immediately gets extremely complex and does a very bad job of explaining it's systems. If you've played many MMOs you'll most likely experience an easy transition into the currency and material laden systems of Destiny's endgame, but if you're new to the genre you may want to read a guide online. There are materials that can be harvested from the game's four planets, ascendent materials which must be attained from multiplayer or high level strike and raid play, vanguard and crucible marks for doing select PVE and PVP activities, and the list goes on. There are bounties which reward reputation points with one of the game's five factions (six after the addition of the Queen's Wrath event), a vendor who only appears on weekends, hidden collectibles, and more. Virtually none of this is explained in the game without the player having already engaged with these items, as explanations are only found on the tooltips. You'l have to do a bit of digging into the systems to get a rewarding experience out of Destiny's post-20 life.
Speaking of rewarding experiences, Destiny's biggest problem is its stingy attitude towards high end loot. Bungie has made every reward aside from items purchasable with Marks and reputation completely random, adding a layer of frustration to an already bloated and confusing endgame. A player can finish a multiplayer match with the most kills and receive nothing but three Crucible marks, while someone lower on the contribution totem pole receives items. You could play a challenging Vanguard Tiger level 24 strike mission, which takes 30-45 minutes to complete, and get just a blue "rare" item when you only could access the missions with heaps of purple legendary gear. Encrypted "engrams" drop in the game which must be identified by the game's Deckard Cain character, the Cryptarch, and more often than not the rarity of the engram does not match the rarity of the item received. It all adds up to a reward system that seems to have contempt for the player, not exactly the desired feeling when you're supposed to have "A story for every item."
At this point, you may be wondering why in the world there are four stars above the text of this review. I can't say I blame you. I'm a bit puzzled as to why Destiny has been some of the most fun I've had in years playing a video game, and why the game has engaged me on such a deep level. The simple fact is that Destiny is just a ton of fun to play. The game controls fantastically, movement is snappy and every class has a special enhanced jump ability, so the game doesn't play with the slower, plodding pace of Halo. The enemy AI is very good on harder difficulties. The game's four enemy races each behave differently in battle, forcing you to change your play-style depending on who you're fighting. The Fallen tend to hang back in cover, so grenades and a sniper rifle are a great way to smoke them out. However, the late game Cabal tends to rush towards your character and overwhelm you with rockets. A shotgun and melee attacks are your best friend against them. The game lets every character class use every type of gun, and each class has a sub-class which completely alters its abilities which can be switched to on the fly from the start menu.
The strike content is akin to group dungeon content in an MMORPG, with a variety of big bosses and waves of smaller enemies to be killed through careful coordination by you and two friends. You may all hunker down in a Defender Titan's defensive bubble shield to avoid damage, or send your Bladedancer Hunter in to a sea of enemies to slice them apart with their trance-like Arc Blade ability. Sunsinger Warlocks even have the ability to reduce nearby ally's cooldowns on enhanced melee, grenades, and super abilities, turning your team into a killing machine for a short time. The game is truly at its best when played with friends and voice-chat, since the harder difficulties of endgame content can demand some serious strategy.
Destiny is an immensely fun game with many odd design choices. It can get a bit grindy by the time you've hit higher Light Levels and require large amounts of time investment to get better gear for leveling, and it remains to be seen whether Bungie's special timed multiplayer and PVE events will be meaningful additions to the game or just new flavor on old gameplay (the latter seems to be true so far). The game has two announced expansions, purchasable at $19.99 each, with the first becoming available in December of this year. The game is begging for new environments and enemy types, but Bungie has not yet announced whether these expansions will add these things or not. Destiny is the type of game that lives and dies on it's combat and ability to keep players engaged in the loot game. Today, Bungie announced they'll be attempting to address reward concerns, and we can only hope they do so adequately. At the end of the day, though, it's just a hell of a lot of fun to play.
