Decent gameplay and atmosphere, but lacks substance
Honestly, within the first half hour, this game feels like a four star experience. It starts off with wonder, mysticism, and an atmosphere that makes you feel outgunned and ready to fight back. The gameplay feels smooth, the fights feel satisfying, and the leveling feels adequate. Unfortunately, once you come out of the first mission you really don't experience much of the story or mysticism after that. You listen to the vague hints given to you by Peter Dinklage and realize that they don't tell you much of anything. Darkness, must die, same part of Earth (coincidentally), go fetch me this. After the first few missions you realize you've been playing the same mission over and over again. Land on planet, robot explains what you're looking for and a brief history of the area, you walk into ruins, scan a machine where you defend against enemies, rinse, repeat. If you want to actually get in depth, you have to go on Bungie's website out of the game, and then you can read the Grimoire Cards you collect throughout the game. This bothered me, as a game maker shouldn't put the story-telling on the responsibility on the player. The repetition of missions aren't exclusive to the campaign; after four or five Strike missions, to your horror you realize you're required just play them over and over at higher and higher levels with enemies that just absorb more and more bullets. After a few days, you realize the bounties are just recycled every couple of days, and you know you are just doing chores for a couple hours. One of the only redeeming qualities are the Raids, which take teamwork and coordination, and you don't just breeze through them in a half an hour. Multiplayer feels empty, almost as if they threw it in just because they have a responsibility. It seems like if they had left this out and just focused on the in game world, the full potential of this game might have been realized. The multiplayer contrasts to coop, which feels fun to just mess around with friends. Coop is integrated smoothly and I rarely had problems with lag (some server drop outs did happen). Overall, the coop is a riot with friends no matter what you are doing.
Something which could have been added could have been side missions instead of five bounties that are recycled ever other day and can be completed in an hour or two. The single saddest thing about this game is how much potential is recognized when you're in game. With every planet, the atmosphere tells you the story and life of each place. The beautiful landscapes of the each planet still got me every time I initially spawned in, but then Dinklage reminds me I'm supposed to go turn on my hovercycle computer that he needs to scan. The only reason I didn't give this game a two is that I still couldn't put it down every day. Maybe it was the madness of trying to collect better gear after reaching a minor level cap of 20, or maybe the gameplay felt comfortable that shooting AI for a couple hours was a good stress reliever, or maybe I was just in denial hoping that the game was going to magically snap to being what I hoped it to be. One thing for sure is that the ball was dropped hard somewhere along the line, and I wish I knew how.
