PR vs What people really think (Destiny)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Tuesday, April 29, 2014, 23:03 (3863 days ago) @ Reconcilliation

Something tells me you're just a tad biased at this point. Every single opinion you saw on the net or among your circle of friends was negative? Really? And are you claiming your list of negative impressions is a fair representation of what people really think of this week's Destiny info dump?

As for the gaming articles, are you sure you aren't cherry picking from there either? For instance I found the Game Reactor article to be quite good as it talked about general impressions, gave a few good details, and had some great quotes and info. A small taste:

Halo muscle memory confirms that the universe and format may have changed, but for those of us who've saved the universe with Master Chief, survived with the ODST and died with Noble Team, we're still right at home. Character control still carries the studio's legacy. A sense of familiarity to this new frontier. If you've lost evenings to their past, you'll be wholly confident in your first steps into Bungie's future.

And that's not the only hallmark the company's carrying over with it. From our first thirty seconds to our last thirty minutes with the game, we experience the same sense of fun, of enjoyment, that these developers have brought to futuristic battlefields before. We're in a new world facing new threats, but that sense of excitement and evolving strategies while engaging aggressive aliens alongside friends mirrors what we felt in the near-decade of warfare alongside the UNSC. Rest easy, long-term fans of the studio: Bungie have retained the fundamentals of Halo.

Combat is fast, fun. At times, difficult. We'd put the intensity a couple of notches above Halo Normal, a little below Heroic - we die mainly because we're cocky, not crap. The tank's not even the Strike's end-boss; that comes later when we're given a sneak glimpse of a massive sphere collecting souls (the full battle will be at E3 apparently). We run through this Strike three times, and only in the last do we start using our Supers - the big differentiation between Bungie's old firefights and its new ones.

It's cool stuff. And sadly something we don't get enough time to tinker with or test, even as we rotate Classes - Hunter, Titan and Warlock - during our trio of plays through the Strike mission. Expect a lot of column inches dedicated to this in future. Bungie's showed that the traditional Halo feel is still present, but they've only teased the really interesting new combat abilities.

The game's ambitious. No doubt about that. And from the sliver of what we've seen, Bungie are able to maintain the idea of both shared world and story-driven campaign by keeping numbers down and areas fragmented. It's an idea that, on paper, works well.

So, there's a least one good impression from the gaming press that isn't told in silly PR speak. I just pulled out the bits describing gameplay, there's a ton of other good, non-pr stuff in there as well if you care to read through it.