How Destiny Keeps Me Hanging On

There’s been a crap-ton of press and online opinions published about Bungie’s highly-anticipated MMO/RPG/FPS mash-up in the month since it’s been released and almost all of it has been negative. Yet it’s a month later and a ton of gamers still appear to be thoroughly wrapped up in it in spite of the complaints about lack of content, a weak story, recurring server problems kicking players (fuck this one in particular), resemblances to their previous franchise Halo, and a seemingly poorly-thought-out loot system at the core of the gameplay.

Usually, when a big game launches and everybody hates it, it quickly fades into the oblivion of bad memory and cautionary tale while we move on to bigger and better things. But with Destiny we’re still playing and still bitching. Why? Why are we playing a game that’s supposedly nothing but a disappointing cluster of unwarranted hype and fatal flaws? Because as much as some of us hate to admit it and contrary to all of our online training about what supposedly makes a game good or bad, we are having a really good time and a lot of the main complaints translate to “we want more”.

In spite of some of Bungie’s rookie MMO mistakes, Destiny is a brilliantly put together game that may very well represent a new standard in the way shooters integrate multiplayer into their gameplay the way Halo redefined the basic mechanics of the FPS back in the day. And contrary to a lot of players’ perception, there is a ton of ground to cover in-game and plenty to do, provided you are not the kind of gamer who rushes through the story and then moves on or is content to sit in one spot for hours on end farming just to raise meaningless numbers rather than really experience the game. You get out of Destiny what you put in. And I’ve put a lot in.

Going in, my plan was this: I was going to recreate my female Awoken Warlock from the beta because she was cooler than my first character, a male Exo Hunter (who was still pretty cool). I was going to play through every story mission and Strike en route to the level 20 cap, kick some ass in the Crucible, and then create a new character, repeat, and move on to something else; that copy of Uncharted 3 sitting right next to my PS3 that’s been staring me in the face every day for months, perhaps. Level 20 comes up on you real quick, but it turned out that that was only the beginning of Destiny’s scheme. It’s been over a month and I’m still building my first character.

Why? All I’m doing is the same missions, the same matches, the same strikes, and the occasional patrol to farm materials and kills. Am I such a zombie to be satisfied doing the same crap over and over again? What’s the point, man? The point is that I’m getting constant rewards for my efforts, which lead ever upwards and into more rewards. The questionable logic of level 2 enemies dropping loot as good as the big bosses aside, Destiny’s exchange and upgrade system is so layered and brilliant in some ways it’s almost impossible not to admire once you comprehend it.

A lot of players whine (or is it whinge now? People type “whinge” a lot online but I’ve never actually heard that word come out of a human mouth) about all of the useless drops and the rarity of actual quality items. But the useless drops can be broken down into components that are used to upgrade your favorite stuff. And your favorite stuff doesn’t necessarily have to be the result of some random drop. There are a ton of factions offering up a variety of handsome legendary gear to suit both your playing style and your style style. Why marry yourself to a powerful shotgun that was assigned to you by chance when you’d rather be sniping? Sign up with a faction after you reach level 20, or stick with your default friends in the Vanguard and Crucible, rock their bounties, and earn those Marks and reputation to buy the loadout of your dreams.

And when you get bored of mere legendary gear, keep an eye out for exotic weapon bounties (be prepared to work once you get them, though) and the black market weekend warrior, Xur, who offers weekly bargains on some of the coolest gear if you can find him on the Tower. Save up them Strange Coins and keep in mind you can only equip one exotic weapon and one exotic piece of armor. Choose wisely before purchasing.

By the time I got to this point, I was level 27 and had been playing daily for weeks. Now it’s really time to grind. Legendary and exotic gear offer some seriously tasty buffs; the kind you really want in the Crucible. But to get them, you need to level up and upgrade them. This takes materials, some of which are extremely hard to come by.

Ascendant materials are what’s going to hold you back, as the best gear needs a lot of them to max out, but by killing it in the Crucible and hitting the Strike playlist good and hard you earn more Marks. Marks you can use to buy more legendary gear, which you can break down into ascendant materials to upgrade your stuff. Participating in Public Events while out patrolling for bounties, chests, and materials can also pay dividends.

Basically, what I’m spelling out is that while putting in over 80 hours and 17,000 kills over the course of hundreds of games in the past month I have not for a minute felt like I was mindlessly playing just to play. I was always working towards specific goals and there’s always been something demanding my immediate attention. Having maxed out my original Voidwalker subclass, I was leveling up my Sunsinger tree to get sticky grenades, then to gain the ability to resurrect myself for undead retribution on my killers (and an extra life edge when soloing hard missions), then to gain a second grenade, then to upgrade my carefully chosen gear to minimize cooldown and make me a beast.

The result: a freakin’ nightmare for high-level enemies and PvP opponents capable of sentencing most anything to death on a whim with a single well-aimed toss. And if you strike me with a full super meter, I shall become more powerful then you can possibly imagine; by which I mean I’ll wait for you to turn your back and then rise up, wreathed in flames like a phoenix with instant cooldown capabilities, and rain incendiary death from above on you and anyone else who incurs my wrath. Feels good, man.

Then there are the special events, in which you have a couple weeks to nab extra snazzy-looking gear by gaining favor with special factions. This really ups the urgency as you rush to complete as many bounties as you can to up your reputation and get that wicked armor shader or shiny accessory to proclaim your accomplishment to all who look upon you going forward. I gotta tell you, after cleaning up in the Queen’s Wrath event (although a tag-team of Lizard Squad and shitty U-verse service held me back from achieving the max level), I was royally purple and golded up with a matching auto rifle and burning sun gauntlets I got from Xur. My Warlock looks fabulous.

And ready to serve any fools at the local corpse-dancing rave.

Compulsory repetition notwithstanding, Bungie has done a great job of making the player want to keep striving for more in the game. This isn’t some Grand Theft Auto nonsense where they expect you to spend twenty hours after the story searching for some hidden collectibles to get a useless achievement (if that). Every activity in Destiny serves a purpose to advance your character and the game is designed to reward flexible gamers by encouraging them to fully explore its features.

You may be a lone wolf who resents other players taking your kills while you endlessly patrol and explore, the social type who feels lonesome without co-op partners, a compulsive achiever only interested in obtaining the highest possible numbers for your avatar, or perhaps you may just want to kill your fellow gamers in the Crucible. But to make the most of Destiny, you are going to have to step outside of that comfort zone. To maximize your rewards you need to put on different hats. For some gamers, this may be a problem, but for someone like me who wants to get the most out of each and every game he plays, it’s a great design. Yet the haters must hate.

Pictured: a cheaper alternative.

Now, I’m not telling anyone how to play or what to like, but I would suggest that if you buy an online-only video game designed around a unique fully-integrated multiplayer interface with a massive world to explore and are content to spend most of your time shooting low-level enemies in a cave on the very first level, I’m not sure the game is the problem so much as the way you are approaching it.

Bungie’s latest has some very real issues -some of which have been pretty promptly patched- but it still represents an exciting new phase in console gaming; one where a shooter isn’t just a game where you rush through a campaign by yourself or with some friends in a few hours and then kill other gamers for a few weeks before getting bored and moving on.

Destiny is something that persistently gives you something cool to work towards and a variety of ways to achieve it and it’s still a work in progress. Will I be getting the DLC expansions? Probably not right away; I think that at about 100 hours I’m going to need a break. Nathan Drake is still waiting on me, after all. But that empty Warlock subclass slot is eating away at me and I have a feeling that at some point in the future I will be back to take in the rest of Bungie’s vision, and by then it will likely be a better and more complete game than it is now. And pointless story/dodgy loot system aside, that’s kind of a scary thought.

Manifesting Destiny: Bungie’s Multiplayer Evolution

If you are reading this instead of playing Destiny right now, my condolences, but I’ll ask you to kindly wait until you finish reading this article and then go out and get with the latest innovation in first person shooters, because if you’re a fan of the genre you aren’t going to want to miss out on Bungie’s latest addition to a career that has been defined by exceptional world-building and constantly-evolving multiplayer functionality in the Halo franchise. Let’s take a trip down memory lane for some perspective before we come back around to look at their newest addition to a legacy of awesome gaming.

Every Halo super-fan knows it was originally conceived as a real time strategy game, which would have been a tragedy that robbed gamers of one of the greatest shooter franchises of all time and Microsoft of the foothold they needed to get their Xbox brand off the ground. Halo: Combat Evolved impressed mainly with an amazing story, extraordinary enemy AI, and some of the smoothest gameplay ever seen in a console shooter. But what a lot of people still remember to this day is the flawlessness of the multiplayer.

Playing Combat Evolved split-screen for the first time was an experience as magical as the first time you fired up Goldeneye on the N64. It was a literal game changer. When you hopped into a Warthog with a friend in cooperative play and drove around the map running over and gunning down any living thing you could find together, the feeling was unlike anything else at the time. And adding that vehicle combat to competitive play? Yes, please.

In competitive play the mixture of sprawling maps and intimate little arenas lent itself to any type of game you wanted to play, as did the wealth of options available to players to customize matches. If you and your buds wanted to play a deadly little game of hide-and-sneak, have a balls-to-the-wall shootout, a demolition derby, or a sniping contest, you were covered. The weaponry was well-balanced and the original Halo might still be the only shooter where most players are perfectly content to go into PvP combat with just their sidearm. The deadly scoped pistol was the perfect tool for almost any occasion that involved shooting someone in the head.

As much as everybody loved the first game’s multiplayer, it was locals only. A lack of online functionality was the closest thing Combat Evolved had to a flaw. Halo 2 could have –and some might say should have- simply taken the exact same mechanics, added online play, and had an even bigger hit with minimum effort. But instead, Bungie decided to expand upon it, implementing an intriguing dual-wielding mechanic in which some guns were single-handed and could be doubled up on or paired with any other one-handed weapon and fired independently.

This added a massive layer of complexity to the multiplayer dynamic. A lot of people missed the consistency of the original pistol, but I couldn’t get enough of mixing and matching different combinations of weapons. For instance, Covenant plasma weapons are great for taking down shields while good old-fashioned human lead-chuckers eat up health like nobody’s business. So with a plasma rifle in one hand and a SMG in the other, you could trash an opponent with auto-fire in seconds if you lit them up with the rifle first and then finished the job with a sub-machine spray. More conservative competitors could go with a charged plasma pistol to take down an enemy’s shield with one go with a single headshot from a standard pistol in the other hand to finish the job. Also, one Needler equaled fresh meat; dual Needlers equaled murder machine.

A lot of gamers (me included) still swear that Halo 2 was the highlight of the entire series, and it remained Xbox Live’s strongest game even after the 360 dropped; until the next game came out, of course. Halo 3 was the first game of the franchise to disappoint me as a single player story, but adding four player campaign co-op helped salve that wound and Bungie once again changed up and rebalanced the entire game to keep the competitive multiplayer as fresh as ever.

Gone was the dual-wielding, and in its place were awe-inspiring new maps (and upgrades on classics), killer new weapons like the vehicle-decimating Spartan laser, and a renewed sense of balance and strategy built around controlling power weapons and mastering the long range burst-fire of the Battle Rifle. At this point a map editor was added along with the ability to review and record your gameplay so you could create and share clips of your exploits online.

Like its predecessors before it on the original Xbox, Halo 3 proved its quality as an indisputable system seller for the Xbox 360 and is a game that people bring up often when they discuss perfection in a multiplayer shooter. For most gamers, this was the peak. You’d think Bungie would be done tinkering with the formula by now, but you’d be wrong.

For some added co-op flavor, the spin-off game Halo: ODST introduced Firefight, in which a team of players could take on waves of enemies together in an attempt to survive as long as they could. No matchmaking was a big bummer, though, and since it was an extension of Halo 3, ODST only included extra maps to add to the content of the main title rather than anything else that was its own in PvP play.

Firefight made a big online splash in the next game with lots of customization and matchmaking. Halo: Reach had a ton of great features on hand for their co-op showcase that extended the life of the game a lot for me while the competitive multiplayer underwent yet another massive shift in basic gameplay mechanics with Armor Abilities and custom loadouts now part of the mix.

With any given player able to choose extra abilities like active camouflage or jetpacks and begin with their weapon of choice in their hands rather than the standardized loadouts of the past, the strategies and tactics players perfected in years of Halo 3 were now caput and even the precision of the beloved Battle Rifle was replaced with the recoiling semi-automatic DMR, one of many new weapons added to the mix. People weren’t pleased, but being a fan of improvisation over glassy-eyed perfunctory tactics, I was, so screw them.

Reach also featured Generator Defense, a multi-tiered objective-based battle where opposing teams took turns as invading Covenant Elites storming a Spartan base defended by the other team. Whoever did a better job protecting their base during their turn on defense won the match. This and Firefight were where I spent most of my time on this final Bungie Halo title.

I was a big fan of the various change-ups Bungie implemented from game to game during their run with the defining multiplayer shooter franchise of the last two console generations. Whereas Call of Duty puts out new games every year with only minor tweaks to gameplay, new Halo was something that only came along every few years and it was always a whole new game. It always felt like Halo, but there was so much changed from game to game that it was kept fresh in a way that made every release special whereas annual franchises are something people seem to buy and play out of habit with most of the installments blending together.

And that, dear readers, brings us to this week, where Bungie’s Destiny awaits us. It’s been four years in the making, and if the beta was any indication it’ll be well worth that wait. The PlayStation faithful will finally get a chance to fully experience what the studio that helped put Microsoft on the console war map can do for them. And what they’ve done is almost entirely remove the barrier between the single-player and multiplayer experiences.

Destiny takes the silky smooth gameplay, believable enemy AI, and sci-fi aesthetics that made Bungie’s last franchise such a massive hit and adds role-playing element like branching class abilities and stats along with a new seamless multiplayer interface. It functions sort of like a MMO on a basic level. While playing through the story, the player will randomly encounter other players and teams that are currently exploring the same area, which is really cool.

The various activities in-game are all linked through space travel, meaning rather than exiting to the main menu to change from single-player to multiplayer, the elements are all integrated through your ship. While orbiting you can choose to go to the Tower where you can gear up, hang out with other players, and trade in loot, or explore the planet and undertake story missions or Strikes (larger scale co-op battles taking the place of Firefight), or go to the Crucible to throw down with other players in a variety of match types. For most competitive modes level stat boosts are wiped to make everything fair, but for the hardcore there’s the Iron Banner tournament, where the strongest can really test their mettle.

So Destiny is basically Halo meets Borderlands meets Defiance with no wrong way to play. Be a loner, be a competitor, be a teammate, be an explorer, be a loot whore, be a dancing machine; it all depends on what you want out of the experience. Me, I’m going to do a little of everything. Bungie appears to have built something really amazing here and I’m excited to get back to playing it. And now that I’ve said my piece, I recommend you go do the same. And you, Bungie; you get back to innovating and changing the face of multiplayer shooters as we know it, ‘kay?

Communication Breakdown: Bungie’s Hardcore Dilemma

Only a couple weeks and we’ll be playing Destiny! Yay! I know, I know; I want a couple of weeks to be now too. Gonna be soooooo awesome. But hey at least until then we can relax knowing that Bungie has locked almost all of us out of their best in-game content.

Riiiiight. Remember that? Being here on Gamemoir (which makes you cooler and smarter than the average gamer), I’m sure you know all about how the uber-hard and mega-long end game raids don’t support matchmaking and will only be accessible to those of us who can organize groups of a half dozen gamers with copies of Destiny for the same console to embark on multi-hour raids to conquer the biggest challenges Bungie can throw at us and leave with the bombest loot.

I’m also sure you’ve read opinion pieces which are screaming about the injustice of it all and how we have jobs and kids and have to eat food and stuff. Bungie reps insist that the company is sticking to its guns, and I think we have to respect that, but that doesn’t make them immune to further analysis of their decision. Let’s try looking at it a little differently, though.

Social experiences may vary somewhat.

One of the great tragedies of the last decade of gaming for me is the breakdown in online communication between players. Back in the glory days of Halo 2 through the early years of the 360, every Xbox Live multiplayer match was an ongoing conversation between gamers, for better or (often) worse. Talking to each other while we battled was just natural. Why wouldn’t you want to talk a little trash, share some jokes, or discuss strategy with your online friends and foes?

Then we started blocking out strangers so we could just party chat with our friends. Then we just stopped using our headsets completely, rendering almost every match a social wasteland of silent struggles punctuated only with virtual gunshots, blows, and the shouts of our avatars. After too many online games spent talking to myself like a loser, I too began simply letting my headset gather dust. I bought a headset for my PS3 specifically to play Grand Theft Auto V Online and was greeted by mostly two things while driving around and flipping other players off so I could speed off when they opened fire: deafening silence and a little of this:

Fooooocuuuussss!!!

When did online gaming get so lonely and why? Is it the little kids calling people the N-word and questioning their sexualities? It’s them isn’t it? Little jerks. Let us blame the Bieber generation, then, if we must blame someone. I returned the PS3 headset to Gamestop after realizing I could not talk to other gamers without it and could, in fact, spend that money buying something of value; let us say, for instance, a video game.

So in a way, I appreciate that Bungie is creating an in-game challenge that requires quality communication between those who undertake it and is going to be unavailable to the antisocial tools who join matchmaking and quit mid-game for no reason.

Even playing the Strike that was available during the Destiny beta, I found this to be a recurring problem. People would join my fire team, play for a few minutes of the lengthy mission, and then just drop out, leaving us one member down against the evil hordes. One dropout leads to another, and now it’s just me alone, outnumbered, outgunned, and so stubborn that I keep throwing myself against the brick wall of alien forces again and again anyways. Fuck you, cowardly randoms.

Sorry, bros. I was only in it for the epic entrance. [quits]

Destiny is only the third multiplayer game I’ve undertaken on the PS3 (the second being Arkham Origins, which was so broken it barely counts) so I haven’t exactly built up a network of online friends. And even if everybody loves my dancing in Destiny and I’m flooded with friend requests, the odds of five of them getting together at my convenience is unlikely. So like most of us, I’m pretty screwed on this whole Raid thing unless someone else arranges one and happens to send me an invite.

I would hope that these Raids only represent something akin to a Final Fantasy VII optional megaboss; only beatable through the kind of optimized max-leveling that borderline psychopaths undertake simply because they MUST. In Destiny’s case, though, it also represents a new level of loot, which players will then be able to take to the Iron Banner Crucible tournaments, making the most hardcore players statistically overpowered in addition to already being better, more experienced players with organized fireteams. They will then be able to use their additional massive advantage to easily chase out other gamers who play for a chance at the loot offered there, making Destiny multiplayer a bonafide oligarchy.

Given that Bungie has always been a friend to the hardcore gaming community, with Halo being a tournament mainstay, it’s no surprise that they’d reach out and create a space where those people can play without having to worry about randoms and noobs messing up their perfect game. And while most gamers are gnashing their collective teeth at the prospect of being locked out of any part of the game we’re paying $60 for, I respect this decision.

This is my respect face.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m annoyed that Bungie isn’t at least giving us the option to have a go at these reputedly near-insurmountable Raids and at least snag some loot before the other players tap out like wusses or we hit a challenge we just can’t beat. It’s one thing to make a level so hard that you need friends and communication to beat it, but it’s another to tell the vast majority of your customers to kindly piss off if they don’t have enough online friends or a flexible enough schedule to make it happen and offer up unprecedented riches and multiplayer advantages to the gamers that need it least.

So while I do understand Bungie’s decision to cater to the hardcore social gamers and give online fans a kick in the teeth by coercing them into them into making friends, communicating, and organizing to fully accomplish everything in Destiny, I’m still personally disappointed.

I have no doubt I’ll get my money’s worth when September 9^th rolls around and the Hive, Fallen, and anything else that gets in my way is going to have a fucking problem when my new Guardian awakens and ventures into the Solar System, but I really hope that at least once I’ll be able to get a chance to get my ass handed to me in an epic Raid attempt.

The consensus seems to be that once Bungie sees that not very many people are playing the carefully-crafted content they’re describing as “unlike anything you’ve really experienced in a shooter before”, they’ll relent and update to let the peanut gallery have a crack. But their spokespeople insist they are dedicated to forcing players to put on their big-boy pants if they want a chance to rock the best gear and shoot the nastiest baddies in the game. Guess we’d better start getting over our online social phobias, huh?

The Five Stages of Destiny Hype

Whenever a major game developer announces a new franchise, you can expect a variety of reactions. In my case, I ran the gamut from indifference to mouth-foaming excitement. By the time the game actually arrives, who knows what the hell I’ll be thinking. Let’s go over my journey through Bungie’s ambitious new multi genre-spanning shooter so far.

Stage 1: Announcement

There was admittedly some disappointment felt when the creators of Halo announced they were seceding from Microsoft and giving up their baby to pursue other projects. But on the other hand, the Xbox’s signature franchise had kind of run its course as the be-all-end-all sci-fi shooter and it was time for something new; in this case that thing was Destiny. Let’s take a look at my reactions in classic Gamemoir style.

Bungie has a brand new franchise?

And it’s another futuristic first person shooter.

Been there and done that, but hey; why the hell not?

Why give up on the greatest sci-fi FPS franchise in gaming to make a different sci-fi FPS franchise? Halo is filled with a nearly Star Wars-ian level of lore and boasts so many strong concepts, epic stories, and memorable characters. Can Bungie really do it all again from scratch?

Hype Level: 5/10

Stage 2: Development

Once it was announced that there was a multiplatform successor to Halo in town, the questions began. Are they going to be able to improve on the formula they created? Do they have some epic vision that Halo was holding them back from, or were they just sick of the fanboys whining every time they changed something?

Concept art was seen and the basic premise were given unto us for consideration. Class-based multiplayer centered around cooperative party play across a desolate universe eh? Sounds interesting if not impressive. How about a trailer?

So it’s basically a more generic-looking Halo with some wannabe Mass Effect features thrown in?

Meh.

Past Bungie efforts have looked universally more impressive and given our attachment to those efforts, is it possible to regain that level of excitement for something that looks the same but not as cool?

Hype Level: 3/10

Stage 3: Beta Announcement/Alpha

Maybe it was the fact that I’d just bought a PS3 and was awash in a new world of exclusives, but at this point, Destiny was barely hanging on at the edge of my radar. Sure, I wanted to see how Bungie’s latest was going to do, but preordering wasn’t really a thought in my head. I was planning to go ahead and let this one float on by. Maybe when it hit the bargain bins in a year or two I’d give it a shot…if I felt like it.

But then they made a really smart move and announced that fans who preordered would be given access to the multiplayer beta a couple months ahead of release. Some of my favorite gaming experiences from recent years have come as a result of betas. I was planning on skipping Gears of War 3 until the beta and past Halo betas have always been a true delight. Think I should drop $5 on a preorder to test drive this one?

Then came last month’s alpha test where PS4 owners who registered got their first real opportunity to take it all in. Being tied to the ancient technology of the third PlayStation like a total pleb, I had to settle for looking at other people’s reactions, which varied from very pleased to somewhat indifferent to (most often) mocking Peter Dinklage’s deadpan delivery of lines about wizards that came from the moon.

I think they were just jealous because no matter how great their lives are, they will never be as cool as Dinklage is. Questionable voice acting aside, I was just starting to get really excited at the prospect of digging into another Bungie beta after so many years.

Hype Level: 7/10

Stage 4: Beta Time!

It took nearly eight hours to download the beta from the PSN servers after an hour in the morning frantically checking and rechecking for my codes on bungie.net and then forgetting about the code entry option in the PSN store, scouring message boards for a location to download the beta from, and then finally checking my email (which came later) and seeing the instructions there. Why must you download so SLOWLY?! I guess I’m waiting until after work to meet my Destiny, then.

Why do you hate me, life?

So in the late waning hours of beta launch day, I was finally able to fire up Destiny for the first time and get my first taste of the savage post-apocalyptic solar system. Pardon my language, but I was fucking impressed. Not by the story, mind you. Running around shooting at things while a voice tells you what to do has been done often and better, even if the voice in question belongs to Tyrion Lannister. The graphics were nice for the opening cutscene, and decent beyond that.

What really impresses with Destiny is the presentation and integration of various genres into a cohesive whole. Such as the way your orbital ship serves as a hub from which you can fly to the planet to fulfill “story” (if that’s what you want to call it) and exploration missions, go to the Tower to dance the night away with other players in the plaza while shopping, accepting bounty challenges, and other MMO-ish things, or head to the Crucible to take your aggro out on your fellow gamers with some PvP.

What’s really cool is that even while out exploring in solo play or with friends, you run across other players traversing the same landscape. You can team up or ignore each other at your own discretion, but this feature really makes the world of Destiny feel alive. Once I got dropped by a hidden enemy while being stupid and another random player came rushing to my aid on her jet bike. She revived me and after we wrecked the baddies together, I turned to offer the good Samaritan a formal salute. She responded with a charming bow. You sure don’t experience spontaneous moments like that in Halo.

Actually, no I haven’t. But I’d like to!

Emotes add a surprising amount of personality to the game. While capturing zones in the Crucible, I’m fond of just sitting my ass down on the ground like I’m too bored for this objective stuff and need something to shoot at to wake me back up. I also managed to distract an opponent through a glass dome by popping and locking before pointing at him. Served! When he started dancing back, a teammate of mine ran up behind him and shotgunned him. Double served! Watch your motion detectors, kiddies.

There’s also a lot of juice in the Crucible’s overall presentation. Seeing your whole team fly together in your individual ships (which will look way more impressive in the full game with all the customization options unlocked) and then teleport to the map as a team sets the perfect tone for the subsequent conflict with an epic feel.

Add all of the Borderlands-like elements, Mass Effect-ish class skills, and enemy factions that fight each other even as you fight against them both and you’ve got classic Halo-style FPS gameplay with a lot more to recommend it. I likey.

Hype Level: 9/10

Stage 5: Post-Beta Reflection/Pre-launch Anticipation

We sure had fun, didn’t we? But the beta’s over. See you next time.

What’ll we do ‘til then?

Why, we could make dumb references that only 90’s kids will get! Seriously, though, I had just gotten my second character, an Awoken Warlock, to the point where I wanted her with skills and weapons and we were rockin’ the Crucible, feasting on some of the last minute noobs that flooded in when Bungie made the beta open to all. Then the server started crashing every fifteen minutes or so, pretty much ruining the whole last day. Not the best way for a killer beta to go out.

I really want to play this game more. A lot more. On one hand, a beta is a great chance for gamers to try out a new game and give feedback to improve the experience before launch. But on the other hand, it seems kind of cruel to give us a bite of something so delicious and then take the plate away. This is doubly true in a game like Destiny, where character advancement and loot drops are a big part of the experience. All that work and now it’s like it never happened.

Finding a competent team to undertake the challenging gauntlet of the Strike mission, exploring the landscapes of Old Russia when a random Fallen ship drops a big bad in your vicinity, leading you to team up with players from across the map to tackle the common enemy, dashing to the Cryptarch to decode your latest cache of loot, dancing on the corpses of your foes; the pleasures of Bungie’s new game are many and I miss them already. A lot.

The only chink in the armour so far is an unimpressive story, but then again if we judged Halo by its first level alone, we wouldn’t have been impressed with that either. There’s definitely a ton of room for the narrative to grow and if nothing else, the music adds plenty of epic drama to the action when it kicks in.

The MMORPG aspects combined with some of the best FPS mechanics in gaming, often unpredictable enemy AI, a deep layer of polish, excellent multiplayer, and a general feeling of ambition add up to make a game I felt indifferent about a few months ago something I’m dying to pay $60 for, even after over a week of playing it for free. Especially after playing it for free.

Hype Level: 10.

Wake me up in September, guys.