Quick Look: Destiny: The Dark Below

500 Million dollars and somehow a game based on a bad Scifi (Scify?) series with an infinitely lower budget does better things with its formula, and I bet it has more than 6 hours of content that it expects you to repeat over and over. I bet even the story is better oh wait of course it is Destiny LITERALLY has no story so its better by Default!

Yes, if you disregard more than half of the content it certainly is terrible value.

Raids are not part of the normal content, god damnit. They need to separate the raids and the actual normal content. I'd buy this for $10. I'll never touch it at $20.

If you regard all of the content its still a bad value.

the people who like destiny should just admit they like destiny. no shame in liking what you like (as long as it isn't murderin puppies or something)

Future weapons that require reloading are super weird. It might as well not be the future.

Destiny is a harsh mistress.

The story in Defiance isn't great either, but .. I guess it's there at least. There are characters and dialogue and stuff like that. I've mostly enjoyed doing the non-story missions, the arkfalls are essentially the same as the public quests that appear during the patrol missions in Destiny, only they have much more regularly, and can have a lot more players participating. 40-50 people attacking that giant spider tank instead of 8 or whatever the cap is in Destiny, I've never seen more than 8 or so people participating in a public quest in Destiny at least.

I think the major thing that makes me enjoy stuff like Defiance and Borderlands (and even Diablo III) more than Destiny is the way they handle progression and mini-quests/challenges. Everything in Destiny is a long uphill battle. Even after they gave everybody 1000 free vanguard points, I'm nowhere near reaching Vanguard Rank 2, which you need to be to be able to even start buying the gear you need to level up beyond level 20, and the rewards for most missions is 10 vanguard points, so the grind to get there is incredibly long. Not to mention that every random drop you get, even it it looks like it should be a blue item can turn out to be a useless green level 4 thing, when you're level 20.

Contrast that to how the other games I mentioned do it, pretty much whatever you do - be it travel in your vehicle, do elemental damage, kill enemies of the same type or whatever brings you rewards in faction rep, loot and xp. In those games you're always close to finishing a challenge, always close to leveling up or getting better stuff (and the stuff is always at your level and usually better than what you've got).

@john1912: Perhaps for you, and that's fine. But if you look at other games in the same genre, the likes of Titanfall, Call of Duty, Battlefield, even The Last of Us has at best similar value to Destiny in content for their DLC packs. Call of Duty in particular is laughable in comparison.

I'm the last person to try to convince you of its value, but people seem to want to single out Destiny for something that other big games do a much worse job of.

@chalkcharmer: No argument here. I think all games would be better off separating their DLC by type.

Wait, you have to read quest text and there's no Here You Dummy arrow?

Well, never let it be said they never did anything right on this. :)

This renders all of the gear acquired, and a majority of the content, thus far obsolete. Went back and tried the Vault of Glass Hard raid to see if any of the gear had scaled/upgraded, and neither the gear nor the weapons scaled up (above 300dmg or anything above 30 light).

As far as I know the sword is just on a timer. The enemy just happened to shoot the sword as it blew up.

Huh, that last area shown with the diamond shaped door has been in the game since launch. I glitched into it a few months ago.

NO SHAME BUT WHAT WE MAKE

So sad. I was really hoping seeing the new content would make me want to play Destiny again. I never got over level 25 with my main (Hunter).

I don't really have any plans to buy this DLC, but I have vacation coming up after Christmas. 12 days off work... I can't justify $20 on this, but if I get bored enough I may give it a go. See if I can max my Hunter, at least.

@grondoth: I wouldn't call Titanfall disappointing if you had realistic expectations. If you were expecting it to have the impact of Modern Warfare then I can understand why you might feel disappointed but I don't think that was realistic to expect. It was a very good shooter that is still fun to play.

That banshee type enemy has the same screeching laughter as the animal noises in The B-52's "Rock Lobster." That is the darkness below, I reckon.

I don't regret buying and playing Destiny. I had fun, even if the flaws were glaring and huge. Sometimes I think it helps to play mediocre games sometimes. It helps the truly amazing games stand out for me. As for this DLC, I'll pass. There's one big problem for me. I really only care about the story missions and strikes. I didn't much care for the PVP compared to other shooters, so the new pvp content does nothing for me. It's the same with the raid. I don't have friends to raid with and I'm not going to try and set something up on some 3rd party site. That means for $20 I'd get three missions and two strikes. I think that's why a lot of people don't care for the price. Many people don't care about all the content included.

Maybe they could have split the content up somehow? Like $8 for the pvp, $8 for the raid, and $8 for the missions + strikes? Buy all three for $20 like it is now.

Steaming hot pile of garbage. Appropriate dlc for a game that is itself, a steaming hot pile of garbage.

It's more than a little funny how Brad gets so defensive about everything regarding this DLC. He talks up these minor changes as if they aren't completely sad and pathetic and not at all worth the money (unless you have tons of free time and a bunch of friends who are just as insane as you are).

@wemibelec90: I wasnt gonna say anything, but yeah, it wasnt very subtle. ;)

i played and in 10 min on the first mission. mission end (countdown) WTF! smh,:(

@wemibelec90: I have like 4 friends right now that fit your description. It makes me and my other friends in that group sad to see them whenever one of us is on our PS4.

The fact that level 3 mobs were hurting Jeff is a good reminder of a how shitty that mechanic is.

It's a drop in the bucket at this point, though.

I'm enjoying the DLC, but I'm lucky to have more than 6 friends on PSN still playing Destiny. Running the weekly Raid and Nightfall Strikes are still fun to the group though.

@brad The Radiant Energy and Radiant Shards are used exclusively to upgrade Exotic gear past their previous limits. Its how the Exotics stay relevant despite new weapons and stuff being introduced.

Hmm? I don't get that impression at all. Brad seems to be just as aware of Destiny's flaws as everyone else, even if there are things that he does like about it. Which, to varying degrees, seems to be everyone's experience with the game.

@wemibelec90 said:

Yeah. I don't know. Good on him for staying positive, but you're definitely right. Teleporting one generic enemy out of the level at health intervals and giving it a name is not anything to be applauded. The new areas are seriously sad. The first one was a long hallway that led to a circular boss fight room. The second was a long hallway that led to a circular boss fight room.

I am so glad I got my fill of this game in the Alpha and the Beta.

@whatisdelicious: That was my problem as well, these 'mechanics' if you can even consider them that are extremely weak. I mean Jeff circle strafed that second boss to death. That's just poor design.

So..... I'm still waiting on a PC version

I'm getting Sander Cohen vibes

It's literally the entire game. Obviously there are variations here and there, but the game, like most shooters, revolves around shooting dudes.

If you can't get past that, then you are going to have a bad time with this game. With that said the shooting is REALLY good. The reason so many people still really like this game is because it has all the trappings of an MMO but with really great combat. This game's problems are a lack of content variety and a non exisistent story. Seriously, the story in this game just... isn't there. It's super fucking weird and horrible

As someone who only played the beta, there's a severe lack of new areas in for a DLC.

Is the raid a new area along with new competitive maps?

Man, the game may not have lived up to the hype everyone had, but I would play this in an instant on PC if it ever comes out for PC. Come on Bungie, work your magic for PC once again, ONCE AGAIN!

I know, it'll never happen though.

Nothing about this looks interesting to play.

Wasn't expecting a QL of this....yep as expected, looks like a huge ripoff not worth the money whatsoever. I really don't think a dev such as Bungie could of made a more underwhelming IP. Such a big disappointment.

More like The Dark BLOW IT OUT YOUR ASS

Weird ... I feel like even in other shooters there are some more hooks to make "shoot dudes" a little more interesting. Be it story, interaction with the environment or something else. This really was just 3(?) waves of enemys running at you and a big enemy after that. Now I actually would like to try it to see why people like it so much.

$20 for 1 hour? 1/5

Outside of the combat the entire draw is just the character progression/loot. If you have ever gotten really into a game like Diablo then you will probably enjoy Destiny. Destiny has far less loot, but it does get you into similar loops with the gameplay.

I really like Destiny and think the endgame grind is the best part of the game, but I'm seriously addicted to Halo 2 again and I picked up a ton of games on Black Friday that I still have to play. I do have this expansion, but I feel it'll be a long time before I get around to playing through it all. Also, I have no interest in Destiny's Crucible PvP, which is pretty bad.

Oh Destiny, why'd you have to be so disappointing?

Also Destiny has little to no story, so if you're cool with that as well, then go for it.

I bought this.

The story missions are underwhelming and over in a couple hours-- but between them, the new items, the MP maps, and the strike, it might be worth it? But I won't know until I get to play the raid, which is where the majority of the interesting ideas in the game show up, but which is locked behind so many walls that it might take weeks to get to.

The game itself still looks and feels fantastic to play.

So overall, uhh...

It's a very weird value structure Bungie has created.

I got a serious itch to play recently, but thoughts of the new gear treadmill, rep grind, daily quests/weekly quotas, and raid drama all came rushing back and bummed me out. The gear treadmill especially, I peaked into the subreddit and the process of upgrading your old Exotics sounded tedious, and I assume one would have to do it all over again come February.

At the very least, I enjoyed some of the weapon variety and often juggled between Exotics, but the grind to unlock the upgrades and perks to make some of them even usable was my least favorite part of the game. The new system basically forces you to start over either with leveling a new drop or upgrading your old weapon to DLC tier with another new valuable currency, which in turn resets its experience. Why not just add damage upgrades above the existing ones? Maybe I don't want to know the answer. This is content/value/core gameplay complaints aside.

I really should just quit MMO's and their ilk forever. The thing that hooks me is being able to multitask while grinding, but it feels insidious at this point when I look at the amount of time and work you have to put in to make meaningful progress, often built around running the same instances over and over.

It's more than that. It's still not good value, but they just did the story part in the QL, and there's a raid (+ another raid for the PS4?) and a few Strikes.

1 raid, 2 strikes (1 of which is the Sony exclusive) and some multiplayer maps. As someone who mostly plays single player games, those are terrible value.

But it's way more than "1 hour". As I said, it's not good value, but it'll take you a good amount of hours to get through the raid alone.

Also you have to realize, the entire game with this DLC included is centered around the absolute end-game. All the beginning missions are fodder or an extended tutorial to get you to that end-zone. For example you can do vanguard missions or the crucible early on but you only start accruing Vanguard and Crucible marks after level 18. You play vanguard strikes and the crucible so you can earn marks and purchase vendor gear - you do daily missions for materials to upgrade your vendor gear and then use that vendor gear to get to the raid. God willing the raid will drop raid gear and then you start the process all over again - grind daily's for materials, do crucible bounties to level up your gear, play the raid again to get weapon drops.

The DLC isn't meant for people that just want to play "a strike" or see some new story. No one that plays this seriously cares about any of this story. People will play these missions dozens and dozens of times over in the form of weekly heroic strikes, daily missions or nightfalls - all with the purpose of gathering enough of whatever arbitrary currency so they can beat the new raid.

It's kinda weird but thats how it works. So in short yah it is more than that, and yes it's still not a good value - but those that have gotten entrenched in the loot-trap or feel obligated to keep playing with their group will purchase it regardless because it's almost pointless to keep playing the game without it.

EDIT: It's kinda weird seeing people like Brad and Jeff play this, knowing that they have no idea about many of these aspects. I mean the people I played with all had 3 fully leveled up characters for the sole purpose of being able to do the raid 3 times a week and increasing their chances of drops. When the weekly missions reset on tuesdays they run through every single one on every single character they had. That is the target demographic for this DLC.