Apparently Destiny has a story, so I’ll explain it the best I can.  Around seven hundred years from now, humanity faced inevitable extinction by evil alien forces.  The human race had survived this onslaught, but only just.  The reason why humanity survived by the skin of our teeth, was thanks to a mysterious object known as The Traveller, the very first protector known as the Guardian.  But now we face the threat of extinction yet again against forces known as The Darkness and The Fallen and now The Traveller has called upon you so now the fate of mankind rests in your hands.  In all honestly, that pretty much sums up the depth to Destiny’s plot, I kid you not.

Now that the brief detail of the story is out of the way, let’s talk about arguably the game’s best feature, the visuals. Destiny is a beauty, especially on the new generation console.  Almost every box is ticked in the visual department, as the weapons not only feel great, but they look great too.  Upon landing in destinations such as the moon, you will no doubt rotate the analogue stick as you take in your surroundings.  Even the backdrops that you cannot explore, is almost teasing you to wonder what’s beyond that invisible wall.  For example, when I first visited the Moon, one of my first instincts was to locate the Earth backdrop so that I could utilise the PS4’s share function.  The world around you that allows exploration will have you believing that it at some point in history, civilisation once existed, before the buildings became derelict and abandoned.  It’s just a shame that you don’t really have the opportunity to learn more about these marvellous locations.

But it’s not only the beautiful surroundings that will have you examining the obvious strict attention to detail, as the weapons look very believable, I even found myself zooming in, just so that I could get a closer inspection of my firearm.  The alien life forms are also very well designed and it is obvious that developers Bungie have some very talented artists among their team, and some of the enemies within the game look downright terrifying, as well as intriguing.  During the new generation’s early life cycle, we have already seen plenty of stunning games, but perhaps none that look quite as good as Destiny, well for the FPS genre at least.  I only just wish that there were more open areas for us to explore, hopefully I’ll get that wish with the inevitable sequel.

Upon starting the game, you will be able to create your own Guardian.  Now while I do appreciate the character customisation, I had hoped that the basic options that featured in the Alpha and Beta would be added to in the full retail release.  Sadly the character customisation is still relatively basic and it’s just screaming out “please give me more customisation options!”, as a consequence, for a game that has millions of gamers within its community, it becomes increasingly difficult to help your Guardian stand-out from the crowd.  Whether or not we’ll see further options included in DLC or within the sequel remains to be seen.  If I’m honest, obviously I would have preferred more options from the off-set, but unless this arrives as free content via DLC, I guess I’ll have to keep my fingers crossed for the sequel.

As I’m sure you’ve already known before now, Destiny is a game best played with others, preferably with friends if possible.  You can of course playthrough each mission on your lonesome, but then you wouldn’t be getting the most out of your Destiny experience.  It may sound a little cliché, but Destiny is an experienced best shared, even with random’s.  Some missions you will be able to get by on your own without a hiccup, but then on many occasions you will encounter an over-powered boss that is next to impossible to beat on your own.  Don’t get me wrong, it can still be tough with others, but at least you’ve got back up, someone to flank and someone to distract that big bad boss.

I have to admit, I’m not the most sociable of individuals and even I can still find it difficult to play online with people that I don’t know.  But I don’t get that feeling so much with Destiny; in fact I almost prefer playing online with that faceless, random that doesn’t talk into the headset.  Many a times have I shared an experience with a random on Destiny, we’d tough it out and see the mission through, then come its end we would wave or salute and then we’d never see each other again.  There’s a certain mystique playing a mission with a random and never seeing them again afterwards.   Suppose this is the pleasant videogame equivalent of calling someone a cab the following morning.

Unfortunately unless you can organise a group together, Destiny can feel like a lonely place at times.  Wondering the moon on your tod can feel very empty when gazing up at the stunning Earth backdrop, then by chance you meet a random and all is good.  Then when your spirits are picked up by meeting the faceless random, then they disappear into orbit as you then shake your fist in protest in the general direction of the TV screen.  Thankfully Destiny plays as good as any FPS that you will likely find and if you are used to playing a game on your own, you very well may be content with Destiny.  But my advice would be always try to arrange a group of friends for a Guardian get together.

We should also make this clear, that Destiny is by no means an MMO, not even by a far stretch.  Bungie and Activision has billed Destiny as a “Shared Shooter” and I think that pretty much sums up its genre, other than being an FPS of course.  While in essence Destiny is an FPS, it does have some RPG elements.  Such as a levelling up system that is reward via in-game XP by defeating enemies and completing quests, not to mention the story missions and so forth.

Levelling up in any RPG influenced game is always addictive, especially when you’re determined to become the most powerful Guardian on your friends-list.  However, levelling up the traditional way is not the only way to become almighty and powerful, as by completing quests and defeating certain enemies will gift you some valuable loot that will upgrade your amour, abilities and weapons.  Destiny has a XP level cap of 25, but should you acquire the correct loot, then you can exceed that level cap.

You may have seen that famous loot cave, in which it requires you to gun down infinite respawning enemies and only your patience will put a limit to how much you want to reap from this system.  Though Bungie has recently patched this “Loot Cave”, but we gamers always find a new way to exploit the system and many have already found a new “Loot Cave”.  How long Bungie will be able to keep on top of this is anyone’s guess.  Where there’s the internet, there’s always a way.

The galaxy in Destiny urges you to explore and the enemies make you believe that they come from a world, that you do not belong and vice versa.  For the most part the world of Destiny will keep you immersed throughout, though much of its mission structure can get a tad stale at times.  As you can pretty much guarantee whether it is the end of the mission or the half-way point, it will always result in your Ghost (your artificial companion in the game) scanning an object or artefact, while you fight of waves (often three) of enemies.  You will see many caves and some rooms in your pursuit for loot, sadly much of these locations will give you the feeling of déjà vu and has you suspect that a lot of copy and pasting has gone on with some of the smaller locations in the game.  Hopefully when we see the Destiny sequel, Bungie will mix up the mission structure somewhat and throw in some surprises to help keep us on our toes.

In terms of audio, Destiny is a mixed bag of tricks.  On one hand you have a sublime soundtrack and on the other, you have some very questionable dialogue, despite the rich array of talent.  Destiny’s soundtrack is composed by none other the Martin O’Donnell, the man behind the masterful soundtracks of the Halo series, and you can certainly tell that Destiny has that Halo-esque vibe when it comes to its soundtrack.

The music perfectly complements your current predicament, whether it is peacefully exploring a mysterious planet, uncovering a hidden wonder or whether you are being hunted down by a sinister Vex, in which at times the soundtrack kind of reminds me of a 1980’s sci-fi horror flick, which in my book is a good thing.  Though Martin O’Donnell is not the sole proprietor of the Destiny soundtrack as it involved Michael Salvatori, who has been working with Martin O’Donnell for many years and none other than the legendary Sir Paul McCartney.

Considering that Destiny has an extremely talented voice cast that includes the likes of Bill Nighy, Peter Dinklage, Nathan Fillion and more, you’d think that the story would be far more gripping then it is.  I’ve heard much talk of the questionable voice acting that features in Destiny; but in my humble opinion the voice cast is certainly not the main problem here, for me it’s the script and story writers.

While voice actors can only perform the words put before them, I believe that the voice cast of Destiny have perhaps not done as bad of a job that some had made out.  The story however fails to keep me interested and to be perfectly honest, after the first hour or so of playing the campaign, I’d completely forgotten that Destiny even has a storyline and if you asked me what the main protagonist’s story is, the most I’d come up with is that he was brought to life to save humanity.  Sadly there is no depth or rich history here to complement its intriguing universe.

 

Which is fine perhaps for other games, but when you are talking of a game that was created by the folks that gave us the legendary Halo series, a franchise of games that had me gripped with every instalment and had me always wondering, what will the next game bring?  It’s a dam shame that Destiny doesn’t give me that same level of intrigue that I had when playing the Halo series.  Perhaps my storytelling standards were set to high, I don’t know, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable of me to expect a truly immersive story from the extremely talented developers over at Bungie.  If I was to wish for one change in the next instalment of Destiny, I’d wish for a change in writer to bring us its next tale, to have a truly immersive story that this new franchise is clearly crying out for.

Long after the Destiny campaign has finished, this is not really the game to then remain dormant within your games collection or should it be a game that is traded in instantly.  While I’m not a fan of “grinding” for loot or the benefit of levelling up, those that like to endorse a super-soldier type character will be able to put in many, many hours of levelling up you player and searching for those rare items.

Me personally, I prefer to do things the less repetitive way and a good way to be rewarded with extra special loot is to take on the Raid missions, which can be accessed once you reach level 15.  While the rewards will be greater to that off the story missions, they will pose more of a challenge, so it’s wise to group up with skilled and loyal friends that will see out these missions from start to finish.  You can of course always start up a new campaign with a different character class as not only can you have more than one character class attached to your account, but as long as you store items at the Tower, you can also share weapons and your various items among them.  It all depends on the type of gamer that you are, but while I enjoy Destiny’s campaign, I can’t really see myself playing it through on more than two occasions.  As for me where the true replay value lies, is within its competitive multiplayer matches or the Crucible as it’s known in Destiny.

Many perhaps might not give the Crucible much thought, but that would be a grave mistake and a great missed opportunity.  After all, this is multiplayer created by Bungie and all those that have played their multiplayer modes in the Halo series, will know of the high levels of quality that you can certainly expect.  You can also carry over your armour and weapons from your campaign into the multiplayer, though many have questioned that those that bring over the most powerful weapons, has a distinct unfair advantage to the gamer that can’t dedicate as much time to the game.  At the moment, there doesn’t seem to be much of a fix to that problem, so I would suggest that before jumping into the multiplayer, get whatever goodies you can, get as much practice as possible, before taking on the Crucible.

I would say that you could rely on the match-making system, to an extent you can, but there were a lot of occasions when I was pitted against players that are a far higher level then I.  But don’t let this put you off; because once you get into the swing of the competitive multiplayer, it is a fantastic and self-satisfying feature to the game, which is far more than an added extra.  If first person shooters are not your usual thing and you were lured in by all the hype, then I urge you to take a punt at the Crucible, because you might just find yourself playing it for many, many more months to come and beyond.

Over the last year or so especially, the hype for Destiny has been unparalleled, perhaps even more so then Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs.  So as a result, expectations are sent sky rocketed through the earth’s atmosphere and lost far, far away into the universe.  So when a good game like Destiny comes along, if it’s not hitting 9.5’s and 10 out of 10’s, many gamers will be outraged.  You can lie the blame on the publishers for building up their game to the point that many gamers expect nothing less than absolute perfection, but even the 10 out of 10 games are not perfect (as odd as that may sound).  But can you really blame the publishers?  After all, they do want you to buy their game (it would be crazy of them not to think that way).  Or can you blame the developers/writers for the severely lacking story? Or can you blame the gamer for having extremely high expectations?

We all have our own opinions on games and we all have our own expectations, it’s what makes our community so varied and diverse.  For me personally I did buy into Destiny’s hype and perhaps I was expecting more of an open and diverse world.  I guess when the dust settles down, what we have here is a template for developers Bungie to build upon.  We have gameplay mechanics that are as good as any top quality FPS that you will ever find.  You have a levelling up system that makes you want to reach that extra level and gives you that desire to have the most powerful Guardian on your friends list.  We have a world that looks fantastic and intrigues us to what could lie beyond the next galaxy, what species or treasures will we uncover next.

Yes, Destiny is not without its faults and it has fallen victim to its own hype, but not many games can have this kind of starting point to build upon.  What Bungie does next is up to them and I have no doubts that they have endless ideas on where to take the series to next and I am sure they will strongly consider fan feedback for when the inevitable Destiny sequel comes along.  If Bungie do build upon what they have started here and make the most out of the games huge potential, then I have no doubts that Destiny will fulfil its destiny.

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