So this review’s a little late. Okay, that’s an understatement. It’s really bloody late to the point of being almost completely redundant. If you haven’t heard of Destiny, already read one of millions of other reviews, impressions and the usual rantings and ravings in comments sections (or even played the game) then you’ve probably been living in the woods, growing a ridiculous beard, and working on your manifesto for the last couple of years.
So I’m going to take a slightly different tact on this one. I’m not going to bang on so much about features or frame rates. I’m simply going to say this:
The best way to decide whether you like Destiny is to sit down for a couple of hours and play it. It really is that divisive. It’s basically Digital Marmite. You will either love it or loathe it, and the reasons for doing so will be mostly instinctual, based upon exactly what you want from your average shooter or MMO.
As far as the shooting side is concerned, Destiny at its most basic level is a very well-constructed FPS. The controls are responsive and intuitive, the action is fast-paced, the guns responsive (if occasionally overpowered) and each class of firearm feels varied and unique. This is to be expected from the studio that brought us Halo, and in many ways it feels very much like a continuation of the work laid down in that other famous game Bungie made years ago. I think it was called Oni.
The simple pleasure of shooting aliens in the face is possibly Destiny’s greatest strength, and addicting in a similar manner to how Borderlands made gunning down herds of maniacs, midgets and mutants so compelling. However, that’s where the comparisons end, I’m afraid. Whilst it’s true that Borderlands missions are just as much a series of fetch quests, assassinations or culls of the local populace and wildlife in much the same way Destiny is, It’s wrapped in a silky-smooth layer of exploration, humour and a cohesive narrative that is never at odds with the gameplay. Sadly, Destiny never manages this simple feat.
Instead, it is a jumbled box of pieces to several different puzzles that have been slammed together by an uncaring toddler to create a patchwork quilt of ideas and systems that never form a cohesive whole. The production values are top notch and the core moment-to-moment gameplay is satisfying and mostly fun, at least for the first few hours. However, after your eyes adjust to the beautiful sky boxes and the splendour of your surroundings just becomes another day at the kill factory, the tufts of grass and dandelions amongst the rotting devastation of earth and the strange lushness of alien worlds lose their lustre. They’re just more weeds to trample down and oddly-shaped rocks to hide behind in your quest to twat generic alien number 1,034 with your crazy psychic punching powers. Even the dulcet tones of Peter Dinklage can’t save Destiny from the inevitable grind. Less Robo-Tyrion and more Data’s stoned cousin, he may no longer be talking about the Wizards on the Moon. Most of the exposition from your handy AI cube makes little sense and does nothing to pull you in at all.
For all Bungie’s attempts at world building, it’s hard to take any of it seriously when every faction and alien race sounds like a defunct 00’s indie band. After humanity finds a benevolent death star known as The Traveller whilst poking around on Mars, (not to be confused with classic rock act, Traveller, who they are not approached by), a golden age of expansion begins and man makes its way across the stars, turns blue and eventually gets attacked by a malevolent force (that doesn’t believe in a thing called love) known as the Darkness, and its many interchangeable humanoid agents of destruction such as the Hive(s), the Fallen and The Cabal.
Enter stage left: The Guardians, a group of warriors chosen by the traveller and his little AI agents to defend humanity from skinny jeans, songs about a girl called Susan and three chord progression.
Despite the stupid naming conventions, the whole thing seems a little too familiar. You – the special guardian are destined to save humanity from the coven- sorry, The Darkness, you know this because Terrance Stamp (That’s right, the one true Zod: Mention Man of Steel and I swear to god I’ll break your neck) aka the listener tells you so. And then he tells the next Sparta- sorry, Guardian hovering in the door behind you.
Fuck it. I’ll just come on out and say it. Dress it up any way you like, but Destiny is the Halo MMO nobody asked for. The Fallen are the elites, the hive are the flood and the Cabal are those annoying monkey bastard things I always forget the name of. Just, you know, stripped of their character and intrigue.
The biggest problem with the story though, as I said earlier, is that it plays completely at odds with the gameplay. How can I be Humanity’s last hope when Mindfuxxx37 keeps popping up in my game to nick all of my kills and dance on the corpses of the few enemies that litter the vast, pretty but surprisingly vacant, maps.
If the Guardians are few and far between and very much needed to stop the onslaught of overwhelming aggressors who threaten to wipe out all life in the known universe, then why is the Crucible even a thing?
I can just see the scene now. Stamp’s sending you out on some mission to go and kill a bunch of aliens and your Guardian responds with “I’m sorry I can’t stop the destruction of all life in the universe today. I’m too busy killing my fellow guardians in the space coliseum.” Then again, maybe it’s all just some weird intergalactic team-building exercise. In short, as a part of the world it makes no sodding sense and is obviously just there to shoe-horn in a little PVP time.
Despite its somewhat curious existence, the crucible is a fun aside from the main campaign and provides a much better means of levelling up than patrols. It features the kind of fast paced, balanced, and oddly addictive multiplayer that Bungie do so well.
What is rather odious however is how its all been ring-fenced off for anyone who doesn’t have a Live or PsPlus subscription on every platform except a PS3. Stil,l this is a problem with the general ecosystem of next gen machines and not specific to Destiny.
What does piss me off royally though is the fact that Destiny is always online. That’s right, even if you’re an anti-social bastard like me that considers every other player trotting around my game world as an unwelcome interloper, you can’t simply pull the Ethernet cable out the back of your PS4 and tell the whole world to fuck off because you’re off to Mars.
Instead, much like an overbearing mother, Activision force you to go on play dates with the other children whether you like it or not, and just have to put up with the slack-jawed paste-eater, taking all the best sweets, breaking all your toys and messing up your room because she desperately wants to get into the pants of their doting single father.
“Oh, but it’s always online because it’s an MMO!” Pah, I say. Yes, it’s true that Destiny has some MMORPG elements – There’s a levelling system. There are three classes of character (that are basically the same). You collect loot and there’s a hub to do all of your trading for new weapons and turning in missions. Occasionall,y something big and nasty will turn up on the map to fuck you up if you go too far off the beaten path, but these are elements that are squarely in the RPG camp. The only MMO part is the fact we’re all forced to play together during story missions, and the inability to play it offline.
The worst of MMORPG elements have found their way into Destiny. The endless grinding, boring fetch quests and ‘twat this’ missions make up, well, most of the entire sodding game. What’s more, at some point you’ll find that your character simply isn’t strong enough to complete a story mission and then you’ll need to spend some time either replaying earlier story missions on higher difficulty levels, wandering around the map doing tedious busy work in the patrol missions or spending the afternoon in the Crucible (so long as you have a live/PSplus account that is).This destroys all sense of pace and makes it really hard to become invested in the game’s narrative, which (since they’re already eyeing up the inevitable sequel) has very little pay off. That’s if you still give a damn by that point, anyway.
As you may have guessed, I’m not a fan Destiny’s particular brand of strange, sticky brown slurry that’s usually best served on toast or stirred into bolognese. Despite this, I can’t help but give Bungie points for a least trying to push the FPS into a direction that isn’t another thinly veiled Call of Duty clone. It’s just a pity that it never quite comes together. Destiny, if nothing else, shows a lot of promise and come the (inevitable new-gen-only) sequel,if they can figure out how to arrange the game’s mostly disparate elements into a more cohesive whole, it may finally fulfill its Destin… I’m sorry. So sorry.
I’ll get my coat.
