Some of it is definitely the impact from over-hyping. I assume the majority of the HBO veterans here more or less expected the game to be along the lines of what we got, in a general sense at least. A lot of people and reviews seems to bitch about the story, which cutscene wise is a lot less than the average Halo, and the Grimoire being totally unaccessible in-game does blow.

Anyways, reviews are generally worthless unless you really know how the reviewer sees things, their own personal preferences on virtually every aspect of games. I wish Metacritic would stop being a metric for this kind of stuff. I would think sales should be the most important to publishers anyways. At least Bungie didn't get totally fucked like Obsidian did for being one point away from their bonus requirement for New Vegas.

All that really matters is how YOU feel about a game.

The super-early reviews were fairly positive, yesterday the game was mid-80's. Overall, later reviewers have been significantly more negative, giving the game a pretty huge downward spike.

I guess Bungie was right: early reviews didn't tell the whole story :-p

All I can say is that you're far more optimistic than me, particularly where game industry executives are concerned. (I could absolutely see Activision dangling a bonus in front of Bungie based on the game's first-week Metacritic score.)

One of the biggest complaints now has very little to do with gameplay design but with narrative issues, or lack there of. The second biggest complaint is lack of variety/intersting/non-grindy boss fights, which can't really fall under the "don't know what's good for you" umbrella.

It's actually not.

Halo 4 > Destiny

Yeah, I said it. It's true.

I think Bungie should have communicated more about the game. I realize that they were trying to break some rules, and so didn't want to define what the game was for fear that it would be misinterpretted. However, the public was going to put Destiny in a box, and with BUngie not clearly defining what that box was, we get people trying to put it into existing boxes. Take this review for example:

"[...]I rate it lower than I normally would because I feel deceived by the developer and publisher. They sold this game as an MMO that you could explore the universe with and go into massive battles with your buddies against tough enemies, and it's nothing like that"

The scope of the playable area is huge compared to Halo games, and is about what I expected for round one. I don't think Bungie ever said it was an MMO or had an MMO sized playable area, but since they didn't define size and scope people came to their own conclusions, and were disappointed.

There's been a lot of that. The giveaway is when they call it an MMO in the first few paragraphs, or they seem surprised by the three-character limit on the fireteams. It's either a failure of communication or people hearing only what they want to hear.

You'd see this in interviews with gaming "journalists" over and over before the game came out.

Journalist: This is a really an MMO.
Deej: We borrow elements from MMOs, but it's really not that.
Journalist: So it's just like Planetside, huh?

but since they didn't define size and scope people came to their own conclusions, and were disappointed.

???

From where I'm standing, it looks like the issue is that they DID lay out suggestions. Their analogy was that each area was supposed to be like an entire Halo game in scale. They also flat-out pointed at skybox in the E3 2013 presentation and told us it was playspace.

And Bungie talked about areas that didn't make it, right along alongside areas that did. When the news surfaced a month or two ago about the entire game being only four areas, that was a big surprise not just because it would have seemed standard to have more than four, but because Bungie had discussed more (and it arguably goes beyond "implication" that we would have certain areas that didn't make it).

The scope of the playable area is huge compared to Halo games, and is about what I expected for round one.

But Halo FELT bigger.

1. The campaign in Halo was connected via narrative, giving more of a sense of it being part of a larger universe. Destiny's different planets all feel like tiny slices of completely separate dimensions.

2. The spaces are big, but so much of it is basically null. A bunch of it you just speed by on your sparrow. Very little is actually used for combat or meaningful exploration. Halo did more will less.

I'll tell you all exactly what went wrong next week in my review.

Rolling, rolling, rolling, ROLLS EYES!

Yeah, I'll probably look (eyes squinted) at your review but ... you're too late. The rain train has already left the station.

Cody on Destiny, the also-ran (or rain) review.

I'm going to guess your review has something to do with an investment system.

Maybe They'll meet in the middle at 7. A rousing success!

Why would Activision use some website's relatively ambiguous game ranking to determine if Bungie gets a bonus? I've always assumed that the sales figures of a new game determines if it is a success or a failure!

Future sales potential. For non-launch Destiny sales (including people explicitly waiting for reviews before deciding to buy), DLC sales, and sales of future Destiny products.

That it launched well was basically guaranteed by the marketing. The rate at which people continue to buy it, and the extent to which they stick around (and thus have future sales potential) is in theory going to be somewhat dependent on how good the game is, which is in theory related to reviews.

Whether metacritic is actually a good (and/or non-offensive, hehe) gauge is debatable, but there definitely is a sales-related logic to it.

It might rise a point or two if they keep getting little reviewers dumping on the decent scores.

The real interestingness will be when Edge, Eurogamer, and IGN do their thing.