Destiny

Platform: PS3

I've not blogged much lately. Where have I been? Playing games mostly! For shame.

Destiny, the new game from Bungie, the makers of (most of) the Halo games, has been super-hyped ever since its announcement, whenever that was (I can't be bothered to check) and is set to be one of the biggest selling games of the year.

There's 4 ways to play Destiny: campaign, strike missions, raids and pvp multiplayer. The game is always online, so even when doing the story you need to be connected to Destiny's servers, which can be annoying if you get disconnected for no reason in the middle of a game. You start by choosing one of 3 classes (each with 2 sub-classes, 1 offensive, 1 defensive): Hunter, Titan, Warlock, though you get given no information on any differences between them before you choose. You get 3 save slots though, meaning you can have one of each, though by the time you level each class up, the difference is kind of minimal as you can make choices in each class giving you the exact same stats for each, and all weapons work with each class. You can level up to level 20 by yourself, though to get higher than that you need to get gear from playing multiplayer or buying special armour using credits earned from multiplayer or the strike missions or raids.

The campaign is a bit of an oddball experience. You can do it by yourself, or can team up with 2 other players to do the (by my calculation) 20 missions. These can be PSN friends or people you meet out in the game world and invite (or be invited by). I did it all by myself at first, though have since done some missions with some PSN friends. I didn't notice any real increase in difficulty when having 3 players doing a mission than when I did it myself, so it seems slightly pointless, though a nice touch nonetheless.

The story itself is a bit non-existent. You seem to be awaken (from death?) at the start of the game by a little floaty metal thing known as a "ghost", who the guides you through what you need to do, though it doesn't get involved and start killing baddies or anything. It seems most of Earth has been overrun with baddies and there's one last safe city left, which has a big round thing hovering over it called "The Traveller" which is here to protect us or something. You then go around Earth shooting baddies (there's no stealth, just out-and-out shooting and occasionally punching), then the Moon, then Venus, then Mars. This saves the Earth I think. Though some killjoy known only as "The Watcher" then tells you that the fight has only just begun or something. Isn't that always the way?

The nonsense that is the campaign is saved to some extent by how well the game handles. The controls are exceptional for a shooting game, and the addition of a rather fun double jumping (or jump then float) mechanic and special power (one for each sub-class) give it a bit of much needed variation.

The strike missions are one-off missions that take place in the same game world, designed for 3 players. These are more difficult then story missions, mainly in that the final boss has a ton of health and takes quite a bit of killing. These have matchmaking for the lower level missions (up to level 18), though the ones over level 20 do not, which is a bit puzzling. I've done all of the sub-level 20 strikes, they're a bit boring. They're easy all the way to the final boss, then they just get repetitive as you and your team-mates essentially just shoot loads of bullets at the same big monster.

The raid missions are designed for teams of 6, and are meant to take up to 10 hours to complete. There's no matchmaking for these, and they're all over level 20 only, so it's for you and PSN friends only! I haven't done any of them, I can't really be bothered to spend 10 hours of my time doing one mission for minimal rewards, and I've only got 2 PSN friends who've got Destiny, and they seem to have got bored with it pretty quickly as they've not played the game for a while that I've seen.

Like the campaign, the multiplayer (known as "Crucible" in the game) is a bit of a mixed bag. The weapons and armour from your campaign carry over (and vice versa), meaning you can try out your weapons in the campaign or free roam, though level advantages are disabled. In other words, a level 20 gun does no more damage than a level 5 gun, though in reality, the higher level guns tend to be better anyway (less recoil, better range etc) so you're better off playing the Crucible games when you're a higher level. Also, there's no advantage in having higher level armour.

The big downfall of the multiplayer is a lack of game modes. There's only 4 basic games (with an additional 5th at weekends), and of these 4, one is domination ("Control"), one is free-for-all, and two are team deathmatch (one is 6v6 and the other 3v3). I've never really been a fan of basic team deathmatches, I much prefer objective game modes, so only having one game mode to pique my interest isn't that exciting. The extra weekend game modes tend to be variants of the other 4 game modes and don't really add much.

Overall, Destiny is a bit of a let down. It has many things going for it: the excellent controls, smooth gameplay and more customisation than you normally get in shooters. It's lack of real variation (especially in pvp multiplayer) and nonsense story though means that it's not a game that will have a long life with me or much replayability.

Rating: 3/5