GAME OVERVIEW
From the Creators of Halo and the company that brought you Call of Duty. In Destiny you are a Guardian of the last city on Earth, able to wield incredible power. Explore the ancient ruins of our solar system, from the red dunes of Mars to the lush jungles of Venus. Defeat Earth’s enemies. Reclaim all that we have lost. Become legend.
A Bold New World
Embark on an epic action adventure with rich cinematic storytelling where you unravel the mysteries of our universe and reclaim what we lost at the fall of our Golden Age.
More Ways To Play
The next evolution of the first-person action genre that provides an unprecedented combination of storytelling, cooperative, competitive, and public gameplay, and personal activities that are all seamlessly woven into an expansive, persistent online world. Venture out alone or join up with friends. The choice is yours.
Create Your Legend
Personalize and upgrade every aspect of how you look and fight with a nearly limitless combination of armor, weapons, and visual customizations. Take your upgraded character into every mode, including campaign, cooperative, social, public, and competitive multiplayer.
FEATURES -
- Online only and requires a PlayStation Plus membership.
- Exclusive content for PlayStation 4 owners includes the Exodus Blue Competitive Multiplayer Map, Dust Palace Strike, Weapons, Ships and Gear.
- An incredible story set within a newly-imagined, always-connected universe filled with action and adventure.
- Create your character, forge your legend by defeating powerful foes, and earn unique and customizable weapons, gear, and vehicles.
- Unprecedented variety of FPS gameplay that redefines the genre and breaks traditional conventions of story, cooperative and competitive multiplayer modes.
SAMPLE CUSTOMER REVIEWS –
1) Mileage will vary depending on what you are looking for - It's difficult to review this game fairly. It's value and rating will greatly depend on what you expected from it. It was sold as an mmo/rpg space opera shooter with an expansive story and galaxy spanning exploration. From those categories, I can give it different scores.
System, Music, and Graphics
First, the graphical and gameplay aspect. In this area, Destiny shines. It is well polished, graphically impressive, and easy to handle. The music is top notch.
-5/5 rating
mmo/rpg elements
This is where the game is the weakest. MMO-wise, it is pretty terrible. You cannot type to chat. You are limited to 4 emotes mapped to a controller button. It is difficult to form a party with people. People in your party might not have headsets plugged in and won't hear you or be able to talk with you. They can wander off and not really help you at all. The process for joining or forming parties is cumbersome. In the first 20 hours of playing, I have had 1 person join my fireteam (even though I had it open to all and invited people often). So socially, it is an single player game where you see other people are playing. The Tower area advertised as a social hub really just has people standing around dancing. There is no way to communicate so there really isn't any other way to interact. I found it immersion breaking to see people just dancing with npcs. You are told the galaxy is threatened by darkness, but have people breaking that dark atmosphere by dancing childishly.
Rpg-wise, Destiny flops terribly. Almost nothing is explained or resolved. There are three playable races...but what are the Awoken? Are they aliens? Are they evolved humans? You'll never know. There are multiple alien attacking races. But if you don't read the website explanation, you get zero insight as to who they are or why they are attacking Earth (and attacking each other). You start off in what feels like the middle of a story. I kept hoping it would come back and explain the back story of what happened to Earth, to the Traveler, etc but it never does. None of the mysteries are resolved.
Now, I know the main argument against this point is 'the game is supposed to span multiple years, installments, and expansions'. That being said, as an rpg fan, it is a cardinal sin to release a game without a complete story. If it had a whole and fulfilling story on release, and each expansion and sequel built off it, that would be one thing. What you get is chapter 2 of a 10 chapter novel.
You only go to Earth, the Moon, Mars, and Venus. So not a lot of 'galaxy exploration'. And finally, the actual story chapters follow the following format: get to point, scan with ghost, face hoard of enemies. The ghost narrates 90% of the story. There are some story cutscenes.
-1/5 Rating
Shooter
In this area, I cannot complain. The game controls very well. It has very well balanced abilities and weapons. The enemies are smart and tough without being unfairly tough. The crucible deathmatch areas provide vs multiplayer that is a lot of fun. The strikes provide team based multiplayer that is also a lot of fun and pretty well balanced. As a non shooter regular player, I found the shooter aspect of this game to be the most polished and very entertaining part of the game.
-5/5 Rating
Expansions
This is just a personal point of contention for me. 2 "expansions" have already been announced. They have 1 new story mission, a strike, and a crucible. The first says it will re-use existing maps. Cost $20 for one, or 2 for $35. So I bought a $60 game with an unfinished story and will have to pay $20 every 2-3 months to continue the story? Not to mention that $20 is pretty steep for such minimal content. To me, it feels like a cash grab.
-Rating on the idea 0/5
Conclusion
As I said to begin, this game will be divisive. If you wanted a grand story, it will disappoint. If you wanted a great shooter with polish and great balance, it absolutely delivers. And if you aren't a fan of nickel and dime cash grabs for content that should be included with retail version of the game, then definitely wait for a bundle that contains all the expansions in a year or two.
Overall, I would give this game a 3/5 stars.
September 16, 2014
By William & Krista Foley
2) A solidly 3-star experience - Destiny has some pretty big shoes to fill. With it's pedigree consisting of Bungie, the team behind the cultural monolith that is the Halo series, along with Activision pouring upwards of $500 million dollars into advertising, it's tough to remove one's self from the sheer hype surrounding the title. Can destiny possibly deliver on that hype?
The short answer is no. If you come into the experience hoping it will be the next halo, you'll be sorely disappointed.
That's not to say Destiny is a bad game by any means. The gunplay is solid and the art direction is wonderful. Unfortunately though, I don't foresee this game having much staying power beyond a weekend or two, as there simply isn't enough substance here to really push you to play beyond those initial 20 hours or so.
For starters, there isn't much respite from the incredibly repetitive missions. Pretty much every mission involves touching down on a planet, walking or riding to a instanced area, and then slowly pushing forward through waves of samey enemies until you reach a waypoint, where you hold down a button and your "ghost" companion gives you some vague or nonsensical plot information entirely through speech. At which point, you return to your ship so you can do it all again (But not before sitting through up to a full minute of loading screens). I've played for 20 hours so far and I have yet to play through a mission that deviates from this structure.
The levels themselves are beautiful and wide open, and you can often find loot boxes in little alcoves off the beaten path, so traversing them can actually be quite fun. Unfortunately you'll be visiting the same ones over and over and over again. The landscapes are otherwise fairly sparse of actual gameplay, besides the occasional firefight, so revisiting the areas often leads to them feeling rather lifeless once you peel back the beautiful exterior.
This is all tolerable when you are playing with friends, as the game encourages you have 2 other people in your fire-team. But if you are alone, the completely milquetoast missions and sparse gameplay will start to grind on you and you'll likely lose interest fast.
Speaking of multiplayer, it can be a bit of a mixed bag. There isn't really any sort of chat outside the 3 people in your fireteam, which is somewhat puzzling considering the obvious multiplayer focus. There also doesn't seem to be any sort of matchmaking for those who only want to play PVP, which is a bit surprising considering this is the team that made Halo for crying out loud.
I've been focusing on the negatives in this review, and that may not be entirely fair. The gunplay is actually very satisfying and the sound design is superb. Everything just feels right and has the appropriate impact. If you can get a group of 3 people together to romp through some missions and then get a group together to play some PvP, there is certainly a satisfying experience to be had here. If you're just looking for a good FPS multiplayer experience to break in your PS4 at a time where there isn't that much of a selection, I have no reservations recommending Destiny, because it is actually a solid title with a lot of graphical and gameplay polish.
But if you're coming at the game expecting it to be the next Halo, or are planning on playing it alone, I'd say this is safe to pass on.
September 10, 2014
By goldentoaster
