Destiny Reviews
As someone who genuinely, deeply cares about games as works of art, to see a game as limited as Destiny become the game that is on the front pages of mainstream news is like a slap in the face. I can't deny that the game is entertaining, beautiful, or content-rich, but for all that Destiny is not even close to a masterpiece.
It's a truly epic experience once the real endgame content is reached, but until that point, the player constantly hits brick walls, and the only thing they're able to do to progress any further is start the mind numbing grind and hoping that they get lucky enough to receive some armour with light.
In our opinion, Destiny is at its absolute best when the odds stacked against you require teamwork to overcome, and there's no shortage of those moments.
Destiny has many great elements at its core, with solid action mechanics and especially if you were already a fan of Bungie's previous work. But there are many design concerns which bog down the experience, from the boring story to the underdeveloped MMO concepts and dull mission design. Destiny rarely feels engaging or feature-complete. We can only hope the franchise finds its footing in the future installments.
Minor improvements make for an all-round better experience, but not without a few steps backwards
It doesn't quite shed the feeling of being an unfinished game though. If Destiny is meant to be this multi-year, multi-game shared-world experience is this it and will we just get more of it? If so it's good but it's not genre-defining. What genre is it trying to define actually? What have Bungie got still to come and how will that change things for better or for worse? It doesn't really matter in the here and now; this is the game we have to play. But the fact it shows promise and pain both at times throughout its life, as well as making us question if this is it or what more there will be, doesn't really garner it with glory. If you go into it knowing what you have today and that in the future something might - or might not change - then you'll be left with an enjoyable and long-lasting experience. If you expect the future that might be now - if you have bought into Bungie and Activision's chatter as being the day one solution, well, with that your joy will be muted.
Destiny isn't a bad game, by any means. If you like sci-fi shooters, you'll get a good 20 hours of enjoyment out of this. But that's really all it is; a fun, forgettable shooter that plays it safe and sticks to what's been proven, with nothing to really set it apart from its peers.
If your friends are getting it and you like multiplayer, it's worth playing.
Destiny . . . can hopefully do what other successful MMOs have done before and build on its foundation by adding new content. It doesn't have the drilled-down focus of a shooter nor the grand sense of exploration or community of a good MMO so it might be a hard sell for purists of both genres. If it manages to bring together the best elements of those two game types together, however, then it still has a chance of realizing its destiny as a game changer in the gaming space.
Despite its flaws and despite its repetitiveness, I haven't been this invested in a shooter in a long while. Whether that lasts is up to fate.
So far Bungie has failed to exert their dominance but the foundation has been laid. In a year, will we still be talking about Destiny, or will we be looking out for what's next? That's the real question at hand.
Destiny is a good game, but not a great one. You'll want to spend tens of hours with it, but you'll wish certain things could be better all the while.
By overlooking features that have made other massively multiplayer games and first-person shooter/RPG hybrids successful, Bungie has created a game that lacks immersion and is in need of a wow factor. Still, thanks to some quality gunplay, addictive multiplayer and beautiful presentation, Destiny exists as a decent game and isn't a bad way to spend one's time.
Playing around in Bungie's galaxy for its own sake is still just so undeniable and compulsive a draw that the disappointingly threadbare "why" starts fading into the background.
'Destiny' is a beautiful and addictive shooter despite its punishing loot system, dated MMO inspirations and incomplete story.
Destiny is an ambitious and content-rich shooter that pushes the genre forward, but it lacks the quality storytelling that maker Bungie is known for.
Flawed, yes. Fun? Certainly. A total failure? Not really.
Destiny, Bungie's ambitious space opera, has vision in spades and is mechanically sound--but it falls short of its lofty goals.
Destiny is far from a perfect game, with flaws quite clearly apparent in the storytelling and the repetitive formula, but it's also a game that can quite easily keep you coming back for more time and again, especially if you play with friends. It's a shame that some of the ideas in the Vault of Glass Raid couldn't trickle down into the earlier stages, for more variety and intellectual challenge, but it does at least point to an exciting future for the game.
Destiny feels like it wasn't ready, but it was shipped anyway. It tantalizes with glimpses of brilliance, but then confounds with clunky design decisions and baffling oversights. Hopefully future updates will fix these, and Destiny will realize its full potential.