(No spoilers.)
I’m not a timely Destiny player, because I wanted to wait until Santa brought our Xbox One before getting it. So this won’t be a full-up review, but just a few thoughts.
I’ve played for six or seven hours. I think it’s a good game, but it’s only just so. I know you can’t invent a huge, influential, and immersive universe like Halo every single time out, but given that this was Bungie, my expectations were a bit elevated. Thoughts, negative first (of course):
- The narrative is mediocre. Halo did a much better job rolling out its story. It didn’t tell it all at once, but it gave its players much more to invest in mentally than has Destiny. I know what the bad guys look like, and I know they’re out to get Earth, and that’s just about it. The game has explained nearly none of its in-world terminology.
- The sprawling spacescapes look great, but functionally they’re mostly just long distances you have to cross on your magically materializing speeder to reach what end up being pretty highly scripted missions.
- There is little apparent rhyme or reason to when the game determines checkpoints during dark periods. Sometimes you’ll die and you’ll respawn past a really minor encounter and won’t have to fight it again. Other times the game will stack four bosses on you, and if you die fighting the fourth, then it’s back to the first one, baby. If this happens enough, you’ll have to restart the level because you’ll run out of ammunition, which stays depleted after you use it in previous attempts.
Positives:
- For the most part, it looks amazing. I’ve been consistently impressed with the visuals.
- I love all of the variability in weapons and armor. The system is complex enough to be interesting, but not so choked by details that you don’t care.
- The movement, battle mechanics and control, and the like are all very much like Halo, which is to say they’re excellent. I also like the tactical dilemmas concerning when to use what weaponry. It’s a different constraint from Halo only allowing you to carry two weapons at a time, but it forces you to think about similar things.
- The game disguises its load times cleverly.
I’m enjoying it. I’ll finish it. I just hoped for more.
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