I get it. I love it. Hope Metacritic wont hurt it. (Destiny)

by Numinar , Saturday, September 13, 2014, 08:38 (3523 days ago)

Wow, hope this low Metacritic dosn't kill the Bungie deal, I feel like this game was made for me, as do some of my mates who are often Halo hating MMO/Moba jerks.

All the criticism of this title seems fair and reasonable. Don't get me wrong. When Jeff Gerstman eventually says this is a 5 for him and he hates the story and the dead worlds and lack of loot or whatever, I understand. If it was trying to be WoW, Borderlands or Diablo it would be more than fair. But it's not. It's trying to be Destiny. It's really fucking good at being Destiny, and nothing else is being Destiny, and Destiny is approaching some kind of persistent co-op friendly Halo sandbox playground Nirvana.

It's easily an objective 8/9. It has lost a lot of what made Halo great, but it has gained so much at the same time. Which is ok as again, it's not Halo (whilst leveraging most of that awesome combat). All those massive levels in CE/H2 that went on forever in every direction and begged exploring but didn't deliver except in our imaginations? Well, we have that now. That janky, non join in progress co-op that was ahead of it's time but far from perfect? It's so much better now!

With one lvl 16, one level 11, Moon and Cosmodrome cleared and Venus given a good run and having already worked out that the title would only be 4 or 5 times the size of the Alpha (http://destiny.bungie.org/forum/index.php?id=27419) whilst everyone was imagining 100 hours of unannounced content, I was not disappointed with the actual release and am more than pleased with the purchase. The first few days I felt that maybe it wasn't a good SP game, but I've already had more great SP moments than in Bioshock or CoD combined, and forget SP in Borderlands or Diablo. Wack a mole city, this game is 80% classic Halo style war of maneuver encouraging creativity and aggression. Cannot get enough. (Will update thread when/if I have had enough).

It is almost perfect at being Destiny, which is it's own thing. Unlike roller coaster shooter 8 from AAA publisher X which, if you play it TWICE, might get you 15 hours of fun. (I love some of these titles as well BTW)

Unskippable cutscenes bookended by loading screens, lack of custom games (Which has the positive of forcing everyone into hoppers), and lack of that finely tuned Legendary difficulty (replaced by something that may be better given the sheer number of encounters and flexibility in difficulty setting) being the biggest sins for me. Story, well, whatever. I'm sick of being the center of the universe. Being a semi anonymous militia member does me just fine thankyou. Taking down that Strike boss on the moon after struggling to work it out through a few restarts was something that myself and 2 strangers experienced alone, and that's enough. Oh how we danced.

Slow start wasn't great, mostly due to alpha/beta fatigue and unskipable cutscenes/loading times. Those early missions are great. It's a start I still enjoy more than Borderlands or Diablo 2 (Which I still think are great games!) after doing it more than both those games combined through Alpha, Beta and Release.

Like Payday 2, an amazing co-op shooter with light RPG elements that gives back what you put in. There is less loot, but that means that blue Regulator will look after you for hours at a time, instead of 20-30 minutes until the next drop. Perhaps some better objectives/scenarios like in Payday 2 would allay some peoples issues with repetition in the title, but at the end of the day most shooter break down into kill everything, or stay alive for x amount of time. Few are as fun as this.

Hopefully the lukewarm reception doesn't mean budgets and plans are curtailed, as I was looking forward to more regular Bungie content (As opposed to the old 2-4 year wait for SP adventures).

Desperately hoping I can get the daughter down to bed early and that the Missus has enough bad television on tonight so I can do more of that relic gametype and check out those Venus raids. (2-0 so far! Go team!).

Thanks Bungie, big love. Stop firing the people that got you where you are and ignore those reviewers. They were rushing their way through a masterpiece.

http://www.bungie.net/en/Profile/254/52925