Being one of GHG’s most anticipated titles this fall, the Destiny beta was something neither your Christ-ine or Templar couldn’t wait to dig in to. As long-time Halo loving, plasma grenade-tossing, tea-bagging bitches (yes even you, recently married man!), Bungie’s new IP has us both enthralled and undoubtedly wanting more…
CHRIST, I LOVE THIS GAME!
To be clear, while this isn’t Halo, the controls do feel very Halo-esque, something you’ll appreciate if you’re a fan of the franchise. Bungie’s penchant for creating an addictive multiplayer setting is given full reign here, as you’ll most likely be playing Destiny with two of your buddies.
Exploration and elimination of the Fallen is a ton of fun and can only be made better alongside your two favorite respawn jockeys.
My playthrough saw me as a Hunter (Titan and Warlock were available as well), with a hand cannon and sniper rifle. A progression bar at the bottom of your HUD indicates how close you are to leveling, and completing missions, headshots and all manner of things can attribute to that bar. The higher your level, the better loot or crafted items you can use.
The setting and atmosphere combined with the leveling system feel like… well… say Halo and Borderlands were together. Then Mass Effect comes along and has a baby with Borderlands. Just like that. Yeah– that’s one hell of a cute baby, ladies and gents.
Getting into the intricacies of missions, you’ll have full capability to explore whatever you damn well please. I happened to find an underground base on my third or fourth mission, deviating from the compass goal, and Level ?? Fallen came out and wrecked me. In a way this is exciting, because we can potentially revisit these early battlegrounds at a higher level, and possibly find some crazy cool loot and shit.
I also found the end-of-mission, no-respawning “boss fights” to be pretty damn cool. Whenever that message pops up, it’s like an adrenaline rush and I’m down for a tough encounter. Not to mention the excellent Share function on PS4, so when your teammates lag out (it happened a bit during my time) you can share a nasty video where you wreck the opposition all. By. Yo’self.
The Tower is a cool hub world where you can get ship, weapon and armor upgrades and find the Crucible, Destiny‘s PvP mode. While I didn’t personally fight for glory, exploring the Tower was my mainstay in-between mission excursions. Merchants restock within the hour, and it’ll become a bad habit to wait on some new item you know you’ll want at some point. Your gear is fully customizable right down to pigmentation and I can’t stress enough how excited I am to try and create the Green Ranger with the available armors.
My people of the parish! I had a great time with the Destiny beta. There are some underlying issues that could deal with some polish, and I know Mark is all too eager to tell you about them, but for what it’s worth, I can’t wait for September 9th to get here so I can get the full experience. And my own personal Ghost nav voiced by Tyrion Lannister himself– Peter Dinklage?
GOD YES.
Uhh…”I’ll have what she’s havin’!”
Destiny is absolute amazeballs. Unfortunately, nothing is perfect and Bungie’s new masterpiece is no exception to that rule. Your Templar being the cynical bastard that he is, I have to inform you about the negatives of the game. Hey, it’s a beta; of course there’s some.
As soon as you create your character you start off in the ruins of Old Russia. The first enemies you fight are these.. high-tech aliens in cool-looking armor that shoot lasers and these little blue needle things at you— that can even track you behind some cover. Some of them can turn invisible and attack you with swords.
The next group of enemies that you get to fight are these.. organic enemies that have taken over the bodies of dead creatures in the world— and attack you in a space zombie rage. Bungie calls these enemies the Covenant and the Flood… wait… I mean the Fallen and the Hive!
Although there are other enemies that you face later on in the game, you start off basically playing Master Chief. Way to go on originality! If you like to play PvP multiplayer shooters like Battlefield or Titanfall and you can’t wait to try out the multiplayer in Destiny… don’t buy it. The PvP is absolute garbage. Hell, the only reason to play is to try and get some of the cool gear you can only obtain with the points you earn. The levels are small, and matches are only 6 vs. 6.
Six on… six.
With the massiveness of this game it can only support a miniscule freaking multiplayer! Add the fact that absolutely nothing in the matches is destructible (I was trying to shoot someone in the face with a shotgun who was peering at me through a freaking glass window to no avail), and it just goes to show that the PvP arena in this game needs a MASSIVE overhaul for it to compete in the multiplayer market.
Disclaimer: When multiplayer was referred to in the previous paragraph the author was NOT talking about the cooperative multiplayer which is spectacular to the point of initiating an immense gamegasm of epic proportions.
There are three classes you get to play as in Destiny. The Most High Christ-ine already listed what they are named, so let me tell you about the differences between them. During the beta we were only allowed to level up to a measly level 8. During this time, I was able to play as all three classes and let me tell you; the differences between the three classes ain’t jack, Jack.
Seriously, all three classes, at least as far as the beta goes, are almost completely identical. All three classes can use every weapon available in the game. There arent’t any armor or sniper damage skills handed out (at least as far as the beta showed). In fact, when you level up all three classes get more or less the same skill: grenade first, double jump, then melee bonus.
Sure, the Titan’s grenade will stun enemies where the Scouts will set them on fire; but the differences between classes are so subtle, they matter little.
Some other aspects of this game that irritate my hemorrhoids are as follows:
-Destiny only takes place in our solar system. No taking the fight to the enemies’ home planets.
-The PvP is HORRIBLE!!!! Yeah, I just repeated that. That’s how much it sucks!
-No dogfighting with your bad ass ship! (at least not yet)
And that’s about it because this game is — otherwise — freaking amazingly awesome-sauce spectabularific!!!! Yes, Destiny’s so good I had to make up words to describe it, regardless of the negatives I have listed. Plus, with the expansions scheduled to come out (10 entire years’ worth of them!) who knows where this game will take us or what it will let us do. So Bungie… please take my money! You deserve it!
@TBD
Activision/Bungie’s Destiny hits both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on September 9.