PSN Review: Destiny

DESTINY

For the last few years we’ve been watching with rapt attention every bit of story, gameplay, and article that has crossed the internet about the highly anticipated game Destiny.  With it’s release on the ninth of September, Destiny is the highest preordered game in history.  My level 20 Titan and my high vanguard scores are proof that I haven’t had much of a life this week, so I could bring you another Comicbooked P.S.N. review for Destiny!

PLAY

Quite possibly the most important part of any game ever created is the aspect of Play.  Destiny does not disappoint.  The space epic is a Massively Multiplayer Online First Person Shooter; Hundreds of thousands of players shooting, exploding, and punching aliens in grand fashion.  Everything about the shooter portions of the game is tight, fluid, and mobile.

Each of the three classes, Titan, Hunter, and Warlock, play remarkably similar early in the game, allowing for an excellent learning curve.  As the game opens up, and your character levels up gaining more specialized skills, even a secondary class, the nuances that hardcore gamers live for become more apparent.

The game is set up in a set of missions that cover the expected range of video game mission objectives: reach a specific point, survive waves of enemies, kill a specific target, collect these items, etc.  These are more to show off the story, which I will discuss in a moment.  The most interesting things about the gameplay come in the forms of replayability and patrol missions.

Replayability is a games ability to entice players to play through it again.  With a soft level cap of twenty that you will most certainly hit in your first play through Bungie had to tackle this obstacle early.

I must say, they did a splendid job.

Every level has several difficulties.  Normal is the level it is meant to be played on your original difficulty.  There are two hard setting, one at a medium range level, and the second at level 20.  There are also two harder difficulties meant to be extremely endgame levels.

The patrol missions give you access to the entirety of each zone and there are missions that can be taken during play.  You can literally play these levels endlessly.  They allow progress, intensely slow progress, but progress towards your Vanguard level as well as allowing you to complete bounties taken at the Tower.

I was most impressed by the second class for the Titan, Defender.  All of the original subclasses are very clearly offensive and tailored for each classes play style.  The secondary classes all have different purposes.  As a titan, my secondary class is built to be in the middle of a fray, utilizing melee attacks and absorbing damage.  Every single skill is built to enforce that.  It has been an incredible experience, clearly built and polished by the veterans who brought us the Halo series.

My Rating: 5 / 5

STORY

My opinion on the story is both excellent and dismal at the same time.  The events in the game are an excellent introduction to a space epic.  The idea behind the Traveler is great, and the more we learn about each of the darkness races the more interesting they become.  The lore of the world isn’t exactly readily available, but as you unlock grimoire entries, you can go to Bungie.com and read each bit you unlock.

Each zone follows a specific pair of races and deals with a zone story.  The problem I have is that this release is more introduction to the story than anything.  There are a lot of hints at larger storylines; the Darkness fueling the Hive, Rasputin taking over more and more communication systems, the Awoken and their intrigues, etc.  So I am rating this story as an introduction, and just an introduction.

My rating 3 / 5

NETWORK

So Destiny is Massively Multiplayer.  They hit it right on the head.  The multiplayer portions show up in a couple major ways.  Strikes are 3-man fire team missions for cooperative gameplay.  Raids are larger, but essentially the same thing.  There is a competitive multiplayer section called Crucible as well.  The cooperative was clearly the purpose of the game but the Crucible is well done, if just standard fair.  I don’t have terribly much to say about the multiplayer beyond that the cooperative really sets Destiny apart, while Crucible is just in the middle of the pack.

My rating 4 / 5

OVERALL

Destiny is an experience that every gamer should try to be part of.  It is a triple A title in every send of the word and while the story feels truncated due to where it is ended, it has all of the momentum that would have carried me through another two weeks of solid play easily.  This has me chomping at the bit for the first two expansions and all of the new zones and planets that await the next decade of success for Bungie’s most impressive work to date, Destiny!

My Overall Rating 4.5 / 5