The Nerd Reviews: Destiny (Single-ish Player part)

Blogger's Note: I have no financial or personal relationships with Bungie and or Activision, in fact I am 100% certain that they do not care about my review of this game, my blog or why I think Batman would lose to Spider-Man; basically what I'm saying is I am just a guy with free time and wanted to do this review for free.

Since the release of Halo 3, everyone has been wondering just what the heck Bungie was gonna do next. We heard whispers of a new IP they were working on, then we got more information as the months went on until the name of the game had been revealed; Destiny. Bungie did an open beta in order to whet our appetite, but now that's it's here... is it everything it was built up to be?
Story:

The 3 classes of Destiny

In Destiny, you are assigned the role of Guardian and your job is to defeat the Darkness that plagues Earth and the planets beyond. You can choose from 1 of 3 races ( Human, Awoken and Exo) and can customize their appearance, save for their build and for some reason you can't pick their voices. Once you've picked a race, it's time to pick from 1 of  3 classes ( Hunter, Titan and Warlock...Bungie really likes 3 choices don't they?) it's of to the races as you, along with your ghost, go on an adventure spanning from Old Russia all the way to the unknown  Black Garden. Bungie definitely with the familiar route here, there were a lot of
moments that felt very Halo-ish to me; the Fallen remind me of the Elites, The Hive are clearly the flood and your Ghost is a non sexy version of Cortana. They do add some variation to the mix with the addition of the Vex and Cabal, but ultimately I feel like that does more harm than good. I often found myself questioning just who was the actual enemy, was it the Fallen who took over Earth and appear pretty much everywhere? The Hive who threaten all of existence? The Vex? The Cabal? There's really no cohesion to found in the game either, the enemies don't seem to have much to offer in terms of furthering the narrative and it ultimately leads to just one of the enemies posing any real threat to the universe at large; which makes it even more confusing as to why they had so many enemies in the first place. In the end, the lack of cohesion in narrative( mostly the fact that the enemies don't really add anything in terms of story) hurts the game and the ending is so anti-climatic that I, along with my friend online, didn't even realize we had beaten the main story.

Gameplay:

Events like these a really quite enjoyable

Luckily for Destiny it's gameplay makes up for its mediocre story. If you've played a FPS ( First Person Shooter for the uninitiated) in the last 10 years then you'll instinctively know how to aim and shoot and the shooting in this game handles as well as any current FPS out there. The controls are tight and responsive, the abilities for each class are varied enough to warrant trying various combinations and all of the mechanics work well together, which is saying a lot because generally console MMOs ( Massively Multiplayer Online) do not usually handle super great. The biggest triumph of Destiny is the fact that it takes place in a persistent online world.What that means is that at any given moment you could be caught in a skirmish between the Hive and Fallen or suddenly and event takes place and you and a bunch of random players can team up and
take down the target. This is where the game really delivers on it's promise, the fact that you can play completely alone and still get assistance from others without needing to worry about joining a party or having your loot stolen from really adds to the fun, especially since you can just focus on taking out that Devil Walker instead of worrying that someone is going to ks you at the very last moment. Bungie definitely put time into making the game run smoothly and it shows.

Presentation:

Makes me wanna go to moon, even if Wizards are on it

The game looks beautiful, there is just no question about that. There is a ton of variation between each planet ranging from the Mothyards of Old Russia to the Buried City of Mars, each environment is beautifully captured in HD and runs at a smooth 30fps ( yep Destiny doesn't run at 60fps and I still think it looks great), and the character models are pretty detailed. The score in the game perfectly encapsulates the epic theme of the game with it's mixture of orchestrated music and guitar riffs that perfectly reflect the ebb and flow of exploration and battle. I wasn't too impressed with the voice acting even though they had talents such as Peter Dinklage, Nathan Fillion and Gina Torres (mini Firefly reunion whoo) because the characters with the most personality were the ones you heard the least; the default voice for your Guardian is very emotionless and depending on your appearance may not mesh well with what you created.

Overall aka TL;DR:

Destiny is a game that tries to bridge the gap between first person console shooters and mmo pc gaming and for the most part it succeeds; you have the best of both worlds but I feel that came at the cost of the narrative, the story is extremely disjointed and lacks charismatic and compelling elements that make you want to see it all the way to the end...which in itself isn't very rewarding. It isn't all bad however, the gameplay is truly engaging and fun, going through planet exploring caves, getting caught in skirmishes, even getting completely annihilated because you accidentally went into the ogre cave at like 5 brings a sense of enjoyment. I give Destiny a 7.5/10, I enjoy the game very much so but it's lackluster story really does hold it back from being truly epic.

 I'm hoping that they will amend a few of the issues in the DLC that is inevitably coming out. It's difficult reviewing a game like this because there are so many parts to it ( the DLC, the mulitplayer aspect) which is why this review is pretty limited in scope. I may do a review on the multiplayer aspect of it if I ever play all the modes ( I'm including the weekly missions too in addition to the Crucible). As always feel free to comment and or tell me why I'm an idiot for giving it this score.