Destiny (Xbox One) Review

Bungie’s latest FPS epic hits consoles and makes a very big impression.

I expected to hate Destiny, but for some reason that didn’t stop me from pre-ordering the game and its season pass. Developed by Bungee, this has been one of the biggest announcements in the gaming world for nearly (or perhaps a little over) a year. Honestly, if you haven’t heard about it by now, I want to live under that rock with you because you may also not have heard of Justin Bieber or Ebola outbreaks either, and that is a world I want to live in.

I wasn’t a fan of Bungee’s last IP… and by “wasn’t a fan” I mean to this day it’s the only game series that I will gladly proclaim my hatred for. But to be fair, I don’t like most FPS games, like Call of Duty (another series I hate…), that being said the thing I heard most often about Destiny is that, in the beta, it was a cross between Halo and Call of Duty. And that being said, I was, well, let’s say more than a little pleasantly surprised by how much I love Destiny.

The story of Destiny is a little more convoluted than I’m about to say but it goes something like this- One day we find a giant ball in the sky with glowy lights on it, and naturally our first thought was “We should go colonize an area immediately under that thing!” and colonize we did. Skip forward… a thousand(?) years and all of humanity is darn near extinct. Why? Because in our stupid haste to go make friends with a ball the size of Russia in diameter, we didn’t stop to think what exactly it might be, or why it just showed up. From what I could gather, it’s a living (yet again, ‘?’) being; running, or should I say traveling (Hahaha, get it? Because it’s called the Traveler? I’m sorry, I won’t do that again) away from these evil beings known as, now brace yourselves for this, The Darkness… someone give the guy that came up with the names for the things in this game a gold medal.

Anyway, as it turns out, The Traveler is dying because of The Darkness (insert thunder crash sound effects here). How are they killing it? By sucking the light out of it… I guess. So it sends out these robotic beings called Ghosts (voiced by Peter Dinklage, who is a better drunken, sex addicted, smart mouth than he is a voice actor, by the way) who scatter all around Earth, and by earth, I mean Russia, and resurrect various dead people and force them (okay, “persuade” them) to fight against the Darkness.

Keep in mind that was the basic summary of the story. Now, as for the gameplay.

For technically undead minion spawn of Peter Dinklage, all three classes are surprisingly strong and nimble, and all adapt very well to the new wartorn landscape that is the galaxy. As I just said, there are three classes: The Titan, The Hunter, and The Warlock. Now, during my time with the game for this review, I played mainly a Warlock, and a little bit of the Hunter, however I never got around to playing as The Titan, so I will only be covering the Warlock. I am going to talk about the character abilities, and then talk about the weapons.

First off, the Warlock melee attack is one of the most awesome, overpowered looking melee attacks I have ever seen. Other than the visual aesthetic of the skills, from what I can tell, they are mostly the same throughout the classes. Except the double jump, which varies from one class to the next. For instance, the Warlock can jump and fly upward a short bit, and then glide. The Hunter double jumps and… the Titan… does something cool I’m sure.

At level 15, you unlock a second sub-class and this resets all of your skills in your tree, including your ability to use a grenade, as well as your double jump. At level 15 you essentially restart your character (in a sense; you don’t have to choose the subclass if you don’t want to).

Now, as for the guns… or more-so the lack thereof. I’ll admit, I was a little spoiled by Borderlands 2 and it’s 87-bazillion guns. There are four primary weapon types: Auto-rifles, Pulse Rifles (burst fire guns), Scout Rifles (semi-automatic weapons better suited for long range), and my personal favorite, Hand Cannons, which are gloriously powerful revolvers. Then there are three different types of “special” weapons (secondary weapons), this includes, and is limited to: Sniper Rifles, Fusion Rifles (think the Spartan Laser from Halo), and Shotguns (which are by far the best weapon for the close range pvp arenas, but I’ll get to that in a moment). Then there are two different types of Heavy Weapons: Rocket Launchers, and Heavy Machine Guns. Overall there are only 80 different guns from what I counted on the Wiki (again, I know Borderlands spoiled me).

Other than the story mode there is a multitude of other activities in which to take part. First of all, there is “Patrol” which is basically free mode, allowing you to freely explore every available location on a planet, without loading time. Also, there are beacons you can find, which give small sidequests most often in the typical “Kill x amount of y creature”. It’s a very fun mode, and where I spent most of my time.

Next up is the Crucible (PVP) mode, which also took up a large chunk of my time this week. It’s very typical pvp, but gladly, player level plays no part in the killings of the Crucible. It is purely skill based, and loads of fun.

Finally, and this is kind of cheating, but there is a large ball (and even an actual soccer ball if you look hard enough) that you can find in the main hub, The Tower, and kick around. My friend who was guiding me around (as he played the beta), and I played with this ball for a good fifteen minutes, until some jerks ran up and kicked it over the edge of the Tower. It’s okay though, because those very same players managed to find the elusive soccer ball, we managed to get it away from them and… let’s just say we got our revenge.

Final Thoughts

I understand this was a large review, but this was such a great game with so much to cover.

It has a few flaws here and there, but there’s honestly nothing to complain about that I haven’t already mentioned in the review. For all of you who are thinking that Destiny looks like a typical space shooter… it’s really not, just give it a chance, you’ll probably be pleasantly surprised like me. And yes, I think it has a shot at Game of The Year (but only a slight one).