Destiny: A Static Adventure

There I was, standing at the edge of a martian canyon, peering down on the rocky red wasteland. Surrounded by a ruined city, and enemies of all types that had one thing in common. They all wanted the Guardians like me dead. With wonderful vistas, landscapes and brilliantly detailed enemies, NPCs and player characters, Destiny appears to have it all. Appearances can be deceiving however.

Bungie really went out of their way to make this game and it shows, at least in some respects. In other aspects of the title though, the player is left wanting or wondering why certain things were done they way they were. A perfect example of this is the beautiful, yet seemingly sterile environments. Outside of the Tower, the place where our Guardians call home, is a very empty and sad galaxy. Places like Venus and Mars have abandon and collapsing dead cities that only seem to be populated by your enemies. No humans or even other races out there, it's just a large expanse that has so much potential that seems to be wasted with nothing in it. Even the player's side-quests are called in via some intergalactic intercom that dishes out a slew of similarly themed missions. For a protector of the light, and one of the most powerful warriors in the known universe you may not be able to shake the feeling that you're simply a paw, someone sent to do the shitty jobs that others are too busy for.

While there are plenty of games that have come out with sterile, cold and soulless environments, this strikes a particularly rough chord with Destiny. For a game whose ad campaign spoke of exploring and saving the galaxy from Darkness and protecting life everywhere, you will find that there really isn't any life worth protecting, except for one, massive city on Earth. For all the wonderful design choices that were made for this game, it seems Bungie missed a few key things that could have easily made this title one to go down in the history of First Person Shooters. The players can't really help but scratch their collect head and wonder "Why?"

To the credit of Bungie and Destiny, the title does a whole lot of things correctly. Combat feels good, really good. The weapons all have a different balance and function, especially in the campaign and cooperative portions of the game. Having a few teammates that are rolling with different firearms than you really helps to add a feeling of tactical control on the battlefield. Whether you're wielding a shotgun and Auto-Rifle with a rocket launcher or a Pulse Rifle, Sniper Rifle and Heavy Machine gun there are plenty of choices for load outs. The Hand Cannons are a nice touch, these revolvers pack quite the punch and add a nice gunslinger from the wild west feel to the game, while still maintaining it's strong connection the science fiction. All these weapon options are also available in PVP, however the choices you make may affect your score more then it would in the story or cooperative portions of the game.
The competitive side to to Destiny's multiplayer side of the game is also pretty fun. The learning curve is pretty shallow and there's really not much to the simple game-types that are available. The types of PVP missions available in Destiny's Crucible are modes like "Control," which is exactly like it sounds, simply a capture point-style game. "Rumble," which is the everyone for themselves, classic death match we're all used to seeing. "Clash" is the team death match option. There is a mode called "Skirmish." Which is a smaller team-sized twist on your standard team death match and finally "Combined Arm." That's the vehicle based team death match. All these modes are pretty strong and fun to play. The PVP aspects of Destiny feel very competitive and exciting. While the modes may be simple, they are certainly done right and have a good balance to them. A higher level player does have a bit of an advantage to lower level players in the realm of gear, but ultimately it's experience that sets these players apart. It provides a good challenge and some nail-biting close fights. What seemed like something that could have been tacked on or an after thought to keep players happy who enjoy the PVP arena of MMO titles and online play turned out to be one of the most attractive and riveting options for players.

Unfortunately the story mode does not hold up to the same quality and guidelines Bungie seems to have put forth with the PVP parts of the game. There just doesn't seem to be any meat to it. The story is forgettable, the characters are sparse and lack any sort of definitive personality. There are characters that seem to pop up in the game that do have a stronger screen presences but are never revisited or are expanded upon in any meaningful way for the players. Most gamers can recall playing games with stories like this. The real travesty here is that it seemed to be a development choice and there is honestly no good reason for a choice like this to be made when considering the good of the game. The player collects Grimoires throughout the game. Progress for these are achieved by defeating various enemies or collecting certain, sparse items through the games world. These Grimoires manifest themselves as collectable cards the player can go and examine at Bungie.com when they log-in to check out their character. Not a poor idea by an stretch of the imagination, the problem with this is there is a lot of backstory and explanation given on the backs of these digital cards that is not in the game. If Bungie is trying to build an in-depth, immersive universe for our Guardians to exist in and the players to fight through, this was a decidedly poor choice to say the least. To willingly cut so much substance from the game, making it only accessible through a player's web browser breaks the connection to the game and the world that the player has. This decision, arguably more than any of the other poor choices made during the development of Destiny, hurts it the most.

 With all this said it is hard for a lot of gamers, myself included to put it down. After logging somewhere around 40 hours into Destiny, it feels like the title has hours more of good gameplay to offer, especially as you approach the end-game content like raids. With the core mechanics of the game being as close to perfect as they can get, combat is satisfying, whether in the PVP arena or you're just cruising around a few of the planets in our solar system. Once you've tackled a mob of enemies, blasting your way through every one of them with extreme prejudice, it's hard to shake that. While it is certainly a bit of a grind, similar to many other MMO titles, the level of twitch play and fast-thinking in the moment really makes this game something special. Unfortunately, it's not as special as it could have been. Populating planets like Venus and Mars with remnants of  advanced life, desperately hanging on to their homes or including much more back story directly into the game and it's plot would have dramatically improved the game, but for some odd and completely misunderstood reason Bungie left these sorts of things out of the game. What could have been a ground-breaking, online shooter experience falls short, ultimately landing amongst the droves of competent, but short-sighted shooters. If you're looking for a game that's going to beat-out their previous Halo series, this isn't it. If you're looking for a good reason to get together with your friends and kill a bunch of NPC aliens and robots, or maybe even a few other players then I'd recommend it, but  "Game of the Year," is just not fainted for Bungie's Destiny.