You can get by with a little help from your friends.
Bungie’s highly anticipated FPS MMORPG extravaganza is by
all accounts a multiplayer experience. There is of course a single player
narrative to follow and no obligation whatsoever to even interact with players,
however doing so would be depriving yourself of one of the game’s biggest
features and Destiny’s greatest asset.
Entirely online, it is impossible to truly feel alone as
you’ll come across fellow players all across space, excluding mission areas
designed to be traffic-free. Even within the tower, civilisations last cultural
hub/equipment supermarket/dance-off arena, you can’t help but notice the buzz
of players going about their Guardian shenanigans.
For the socialites, all missions can be embarked with a Fireteam
of up to 3 players, cranking up the difficulty and allowing players to revive
one another in darkness zones. That being said, even if you don’t have a
tightknit Fireteam with your own passwords and secret handshakes, multiplayer
is an absolute must to fully experience what destiny has to offer.
If you play without your own band of buddies backing you up,
it’s ok. The Guardians are all working together for the greater good but are by
nature solo adventurers. Each are individuals with their own race, class and
motives, so it’s only natural that when cooperating on strikes some players
back up their fellow guardians and put the team first, whilst others chase
their own individual goals. Participating in strikes independently will pit you
and two other randomly selected guardians through a level of enemies,
culminating in a challenging boss fight with respectable loot to claim upon
completion.
PvP is introduced via the Crucible – an arena style
“training area” – where players choose from 4 classic game types. Players are
levelled to match each other regardless of experience, however there is still
an aspect of unbalance. As players use their own equipment, higher level player
will have significantly better weapons. The Crucible also favours fully
automatic weapons due to the fast paced chaos and less on single fire,
precision weapons such as scout and sniper rifles, so a guardian’s load out is a
large contributor to victory. Where PvP balances out is through the
distribution of heavy weapon ammo, which is scattered in randomly selected ammo
crates, resulting in a frantic scramble to be the first one to reach the
ammunition, as heavy weapons give players a distinct advantage.
Where Destiny falls short however is with its campaign.
Hidden behind the sultry tones of Bill Nighy and Peter Dinklage lies a fairly
short, repetitive storyline revolving around Peter Dinklage going all Aiden
Peerce over security systems while you fight off waves of varying enemies. Set
in a grim future, The Darkness has taken a break from being Jackie Estacado’s
snake tentacles and is battling against Earth’s last vanguard, setting out to
destroy the Earth’s benevolent floating sphere – the Traveller – and everything
good in the galaxy. There are currently four alien races to do battle with from
planet to planet, including the multi-limbed, bug faced Fallen (Tyrannids), the
subterranean Hive (Locust), the Hulking, militarised Cabal (Krogan) and the robotic legions of the
Geth, I mean Vex. Each race has their own motives and can be seen fighting one
another on each world.
What the story lacks is any explanation. Throughout the game
it is unclear as to which race is your true enemy and whether or not the final
boss fight is the Darkness or just a particularly powerful baddie. Players don’t
really need to pay attention to the story and can plough through the game
focussing on their immediate goals, guided by their ghost to undoubtedly scan
some computers and fight off a couple of waves of alien nasties. The upside to
the campaign is that it unlocks some truly breath-taking open world planets for
players to explore, ranging from ancient ruins and crumbling cities to vast
swamps and sandy dunes. Destiny’s visuals are stunning and makes grinding
through enemies a little less mind numbing.
Verdict 8/10
Ups:
Downs:
