Destiny‘s opening move to pull you in is its music. The mellow trumpet solo at the title screen invoked a sense of mystery and wonder, and beckoned the player to begin what could be an exciting adventure. And it is exciting, at least for a bit. From the moment you grab a gun, you’ve eradicated hordes of aliens alone or with other players. From the familiar ruins of Earth to the sand-ridden bases of Mars, it’s a recurring process of deploy, destroy, and complete.
The game follows a main story, but after those missions, your character will only get better if you put enough time and effort into improving it through a series of PvP matches, challenges, and special events, all of which become extremely repetitive. Right now, I’m giving less and less time to Destiny because I’m so exhausted of shooting things all day and not doing much of anything else.
A lacking features is its main story. If you were actually paying attention, the story involves a huge orb called the Traveler and its waning protection against the forces of darkness a.k.a. aliens. As a Guardian, your job is to find a way to find out why the Traveler’s protection is weakening. Oh, and there’s a strange figure following you for some unknown reason. But this wasn’t enough to keep me interested. With each mission my attention span diminished. I barely listened to why I visited a certain planet and how it pertained to the overall story. I just knew that I had to reach a location, access a computer, grab an item, or find a mysterious area, and shoot anyone in my way. Again, deploy, destroy, complete. I didn’t get to know or really cared for any of the main characters because I didn’t get to talk to them much unless they called me and demanded something.
In a way, Destiny‘s character conversations reminded me of people and their phones. People are so glued to their phones for everything, and barely need anything else until they need to recharge their phone. The same goes for playing Destiny. You’re so enthralled with shooting people that you don’t really need to interact with most of these characters until you need to return to the Tower, the Guardian base to turn in mission rewards or receive new items. This is all without mentioning the fact that if you did want to know more about the characters and enemies you could download the free Destiny app. But why do that? Why not put all of this information in the game itself? I downloaded the app, and barely used it because if I wasn’t invested in the story in-game, I wouldn’t even bother learning more about it.
As fun as it is, its run-and-gun style of gameplay is also the biggest problem with Destiny. There’s so much of it and not enough of everything else. It’s as if Bungie crammed as much as action as they could first and made everything else tiny and irrelevant. The prime focus seemed to be more shooting, less thinking. There’s a daily boss, or Strike, mission with the chance to get better loot? Which one of the many Strikes that I’ve done multiple times will be slightly more difficult for this special event? Looking for a new challenge or Bounty? Here. Try the one you’ve already accomplished five or six times. We’ll give you the experience anyway. The game seems to offer a wealth of things of to do coupled with tough enemies and rare loot. Play Destiny long enough and you’ll start seeing its repetitive manner, cleverly hidden under a layer or scenery and action.
It’s rather unfortunate that a majority of the game feels this empty. The first few hours felt like the honeymoon phase. Everything was easy, I discovered new worlds and enemies, and almost every loot I had kept getting better and better. But then I reached the end of the line and tried the other gameplay modes that Destiny had to offer and felt disappointed. I really thought I was going to discover something new and instead found the same missions in a coating of tougher difficulty. Sure, there are events planned in the coming months to help spice up the experience, but if I was going to be invested in this game for months, there should have been a lot of fresh content to start with. I finished the campaign in four days, and got a little more out of the game for two additional days. The problem again was the repeated process of deploy, destroy, complete.
Thankfully, the PvP matches in the Crucible are a somewhat good alternative to the formula. Playing with other players instead of the computer provided fast-paced gameplay, which constantly kept me at the edge of my seat. The pace was a strange feeling at first, given the fact that players spent a majority of their time cooperating with other players to take down enemies, but it felt right. It made a majority of the game feel like practice and then I really tested my skills against other players. Unfortunately even that gets repetitive and punishing if your team constantly takes a beating. What’s the alternative? Quit and go back to the mindless shooting against computer-controlled aliens and take on the same mission again? No thanks.
Don’t get me wrong, Destiny is still pretty fun. However, it doesn’t offer the same enjoyment as it did a week ago. When I first started it, I really thought that I could play the game for hours. Now, all I need is an hour or two to get my Destiny fix for the day. The reason is that I already know what to expect to happen each time. Bungie will certainly offer more content through DLC, but after one week of it, I can’t be the only one already tired of playing Destiny.
This game was reviewed with a copy received from the publisher.
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