Ralph Pineda
Destiny has been riding the video game hype train ever since it was announced at E3, a gaming conference held in Los Angeles, California. The game has the pure advantage on name alone – the name of the developing studio, Bungie.
Bungie has gotten its popularity from its making of the Halo franchise. Destiny gets put in the spotlight simply through Bungie’s name, but this also weighs down the game because of unrealistic expectations from gamers.
I wanted to preface this game review with this information because I began playing this game with no expectations. I was not particularly fond of the Halo franchise, and I never really liked first person shooters. But, I purchased the game because I got a taste of it during the Beta in the summer.
Destiny is an massively multiplayer online (MMO) First Person Shooter. The shooter mechanics are smooth and responsive, the art style and graphics are superb and you always feel active in all of your fire fights. These are the only constants that I can say about the game because the rest of it is highly based on whether or not you have friends to play with.
The reason I love playing Destiny is because of the interplay I have with my friends in the gaming world. In specific missions, depending on level and difficulty, it is nearly impossible to beat the game.
Certain missions, known as “Strikes,” can only be played with three-person fire teams, and the game forces matchmaking if you are alone. Further, the game will not let you play the “Raids” with the match-made fire teams of three, but rather a six-person premade team.
I wanted to explain that Destiny is lacking as a single-player experience because you will not make friends online. It’s not because the community is rude, but because there is no community. You can’t speak to other players unless you are already friends online.
There is no way to speak to people even if you join up in a fire team from the world, which is one major flaw in the game. You will feel disconnected from the gaming scene if you have no one to play with. That’s not to mention you will be missing a large portion of the endgame content.
There are two prongs of Destiny, player vs. player (PVP) and player vs. environment (PVE). The Crucible, Destiny’s PVP aspect, is fast-paced and enjoyable. There is one major balancing issue with this mode: vehicles. Certain maps in The Crucible have vehicles that destroy other players.
Once a player gets into those vehicles, they are hard to kill and they will kill you. In addition, The Crucible reward system is completely random. It does not matter if you do well during the game—you might end up not getting any loot at all, which is highly frustrating when you see the worst player on your team getting a rare item and you do not.
The PVE aspect of the game, the story mode and Strikes, are more balanced because players are more aware of the challenges they will face. I enjoyed my time in this world because I loved the rush of overcoming the game’s hurdles with my friends, and celebrating afterwards with playful banter.
PVE in Destiny is difficult. To put this in perspective, the first team to beat the raid took around six hours and ended up dying 1,605 times. Yet this is the type of hurdle my fire team will want to take on, and we’ll cover each other every step of the way. This is what makes Destiny, simply put, fun.
If you have friends to play with online, buy this game. If your friends list is sparse, don’t bother because you will end up uninterested in the lack luster story and trading it into a Game Stop a week later.