I spent a good chunk of yesterday with Destiny. It’s definitely got some solid RPG hooks. The desire to go back in for one more mission is strong. Someone during my Twitch stream yesterday asked if it lived up to the hype and the honest answer is “no I don’t think so.” but to be fair what game could? I’ve been playing games a long time and I cannot remember a game with this much hype surrounding it. It is not the second coming of Christ. It’s just Halo by way of Phantasy Star Online and that’s pretty cool.
For the last three years or so I have had a policy of avoiding massive previews. It has improved my gaming experiences greatly. Going into games not knowing exactly what to expect has been a real treat. It was hard to avoid Destiny stuff just because it was everywhere but I still managed to not know about the PvP. I thought you could play Destiny single player or Co-Op and that was it. Yesterday while I was playing, I unlocked PvP and was really surprised. I had no idea it had traditional “multiplayer” in that sense. I dove in and ended up having a ton of fun. Taking my custom character with all my skills and gear into a deathmatch sort of environment was a blast. It really is similar to battlegrounds in World of Warcraft in that you are matched with players around your level and then you get to bring your custom shit to the fight. If you’re a console gamer who hasn’t played an MMO my guess is this feels pretty incredible.
Speaking of consoles I chose the PS4 to play Destiny on. I did that for a couple reasons but the biggest one was the Vita. Bungie went out of their way to include a custom control scheme for remote play on the Vita and it works great. I know a lot you are wondering why the hell I’d want to play a game like Destiny on a little tiny screen but as a Dad I have to say this is a killer feature. The fact that I can sit on the couch and play Destiny while my four year old is watching Spongebob or just playing with his cars in the living room is awesome. Normally I’d probably wait until the kids were in bed to go hard on a shooter like Destiny but with the remote play I don’t have to. This was something I loved about playing the old Call of Duty on the WiiU and it still holds true. The custom control scheme is fantastic and doing a mission in bed before I go to sleep is pretty cool.
Overall Destiny is super solid and feels very polished. I’d say The dialog from the Ghost is probably the worst part of the game. I know that’s been beaten to death since the Beta, hell they even made a shirt, but holy shit that is some terrible voice acting. Tycho suggested Peter Dinklage was phoning it in but honestly I think he had someone phone it in for him. I don’t think he could even be bothered to pick up the phone. It is especially bad when compared to Cortana and it is impossible not to be constantly comparing it to Cortana because you are essentially playing Halo. I don’t think it’s a bad thing, I mean these are the folks that created Halo and fine tuned that “feel” over the years. There’s no reason that work shouldn’t be present here. The reality is I bet there are a lot of Playstation fans who have never played a Halo game and those people are in for a fucking treat because I think Destiny is the best Halo yet.
-Gabe out
