I like this critique of Destiny quite a bit (Destiny)

by electricpirate , Friday, July 31, 2015, 17:31 (3502 days ago)

So, one of my favorite youtubers is Errant Signal. He does a kind of "Approachable Games Criticism" that I think is worthwhile, and is approachable even if you haven't really looked at any Games studies material. He often goes deep into the content of games, but he also does some smart mechanical critiques. He's probably best known for his critique of Spec ops his video about violence.

I generally watch him every week, but For some reason I missed the fact that He did a Destiny video this year. It's much more positive than I expected, and I think he hits some important truth about the comparison of Destiny to Animal Crossing. His breakdown of why destiny's shooting feels so good is also pertinent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7VYd93oEbA

He did a follow up to that on the idea of treadmills and their value that I also think is solid and useful when discussing something like itemization/grinding in destiny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmkDLZePGPE

All that said, I think there are some downsides to the view. For example, I think sometimes you just want to play for a while, and if you do that, by say running strikes, that whole conceit falls down. Similarly when you want to do something like upgrade a weapon, you may have to end up doing lots of boring bounties as part of that "small bite" setup, even though you really just want to go and play in the crucible. Overall though, I really relish jumping on and having fun in a weekly or a daily and I really want Bungie to provide more of that content and more variety in that content.