First impressions (Destiny)

by car15, Tuesday, September 09, 2014, 12:37 (3527 days ago)
edited by car15, Tuesday, September 09, 2014, 12:44

Honestly?

It kind of sucks.

****

Yeah, I said it. This game is incredibly disappointing. Only four explorable areas? On which all of the story missions take place? What a joke.

"Exploration" is supposed to be a theme of this game, but it's impossible with all the kill barriers on the maps. Is finding loot chests and dead ghosts really the extent of the exploration? That's pathetic. I'm sorry, but it's pathetic!

The story is thinner than a Brazilian supermodel, and there's so little of it that it's impossible for me to actually get invested in. It's mildly interesting, nothing more.

Story missions are too short.

The campaign, taken as a whole, is too short.

For a game of this scope and longevity, there is far too little actual content.

The game hasn't been out 24 hours and I'm already sick of the wave-after-wave Firefight-esque mission structure. Open those doors faster, Dinklebot!

Loot grinding is boring as hell. I like cool weapons and unlockables, but to make that the main focus of the entire game was misguided at best.

AI is ridiculously stupid until you get to higher levels. Bosses have only one move set (shoot, shoot, shoot) and do not react dynamically to anything the player does to them. This ruins Strikes for me. When they did it with Sepiks Prime in the beta, I assumed it was just that specific boss's preferred form of combat, but nope - every boss fights this way. Every boss battle feels completely identical. Pathetic.

For a supposedly "social" game, there are shockingly few ways to communicate with your fellow players.

I will concede that PvP is fun, but unfortunately it has balance issues (still). This is the only game mode that has any long-term viability, IMO.

Basic combat is also fun. Purely from a game mechanics POV, Destiny succeeds. The shooting feels good. This is the main reason why PvP is as good as it is - it's just unadulterated shooting, with no repetitive mission structure or stupid AI to soil the experience.

****

Holy shit, even after lowering my expectations significantly from what was advertised by Bungie's insane hype machine, I'm still disappointed. I can honestly say that this is the first Bungie game that has inspired these feelings in me.

I don't mean to shit on anyone's parade here, but I can't help but be massively disappointed with this game. I like the idea of it - a shared world shooter has incredible potential as a story and a social experience, and the universe Bungie has built for this game is fresh and compelling, but the execution is just awful. Bungie focused on all of the wrong things. Early customer reviews seem to fall in line with that general assessment.

Sorry, Bungie. I really, really, like really wanted to love this game.

But I don't.