As of the day of this review, November 19th 2014, Destiny will have been out for a month and ten days. Hasn’t time flown by? So far I have logged 90+ hours and spent plenty of time playing through each activity Destiny has to offer, excluding the Vault of Glass raid. Unfortunately the few friends I have with an Xbox One either have the same difficulties as me with trying to find time to play or are busying logging [wasted] hours on Minecraft..perhaps it’s time to start adding strangers just so I can give it a go and progress to Level.30. More on that later. If you take a look at my Bungie ID, you’ll see I have a Level.27 Titan and a Level.10 Hunter. Guess which one I prefer. Feel free to have a look at my other statistics to get a more detailed idea of how i’ve spent my time on this game and how poor my K/D ratio can get during desperate times. Drunk and high at 4am never does wonders for Crucible prowess and skill. Before I start, I feel the need to state that this is an OPINION piece. What follows in this review are my own personal thoughts on the game. There are only so many times I can reply ‘haters gon’ hate’ on these forums..so please, try to refrain from the inane comments on why you think something i’ve said is ‘wack’ and/or that i’m a blam-ing idiot for voicing it in the first place. If you’ve read this far then you’re either bored at work, scrawling through these forums late at night like the massive Destiny fan boy you know you’ve become OR you genuinely want to hear what i’ve got to say about Bungie’s latest release. So ease off the hating and try some constructive feedback for a change. That includes you too DeeJ. The review is broken down into the following topics:- Races & Classes Sub-classes Weapons, Armour & Stats Story Patrol, Public Events & Resource Foraging Strikes Raid(s) PvP The Tower & Vendors Conclusion Don’t care about a particular topic? That’s what scrolling was invented for. Agree or disagree with what i’ve said? Sound off (politely) in the comments! Now, within each topic I address what I think are the pros and cons, as well as suggestions that might improve the game. If any of you are in any doubt about the credibility of what follows, rest assured I have 10+ years of gaming experience and have played my fair share of games. All Halo and almost all Call of Duty iterations, the Mass Effect trilogy, Lineage I and Lineage II, World of Warcraft, the Elder Scrolls games and Viva Pinata..to mention a few. In case some of you hadn’t guessed already from that list, all of those games - excluding Viva Piñata (which is a masterpiece in its own right) - relate in some way to Destiny’s fundamental gameplay mechanics. In light of this, I hope you take what I say seriously and appreciate the time it’s taken to write. Ahem.. Races & Classes (& Sub-classes):- Destiny does a good job of adhering to the three ‘typical’ MMO stereotypes - tank, healer/magic and ranged/scout - whilst allowing room for individuality. The character customisation options were detailed enough and after a good half an hour of trying out different looks and colourways I felt as though my badass exo titan had a suitably unique appearance. Obviously not adding a beard option was a colossal error on Bungie’s part..but im sure ill get over it. In all seriousness though, it’s a shame Bungie didn’t take a leaf out of the Elder Scrolls franchise in this instance, whereby different races had their own unique attributes. I feel this would have helped create better fireteam dynamics and allowed groups of players and individuals to lean toward specific play styles and tactics. Off the top of my head:- - Exo characters would have more resilience to particular damage types or faster regeneration. - Awoken players would have improved experience acquisition or better casting speeds. - Humans would receive better deals from vendors or scavenge more ammo from the field. I’m not saying that these are the definitive attributes that should have made it into the game, but you can see my point..I hope! I’m sure Bungie had their reasons for focussing only on character cosmetics and I appreciate the need for delicate balancing in a game this size, its just a shame to have missed out on an extra level of character depth. It would have also been nice to have a small description next to each race (similar to Mass Effect), detailing their place within the Destiny universe. More on how races fit into the Destiny universe later (see: Story). Destiny’s class system, similarly to it’s races, fit very well into the central ethos of MMO character play styles. Fancy being at the front line, dealing all the damage and punching your way to victory? Choose a Titan. More inclined to hang back, take pot-shots and stay out of sight? Choose a Hunter. Like hovering in the air and other cool s**t? Warlock is the class for you! The class-specific abilities further define this adherence to the seemingly rigid set of three styles, to an extent. I say to an extent because I feel Bungie could have done more to differentiate between the classes, as does everyone else it seems. From what i’ve read and heard from players online, class differentiation is a bit of a sore spot for most people and I completely agree. Grenades, jumping, melee and supers are not enough to satisfy each players take on a combat situation or make them feel unique amongst the other two classes, let alone other players within their own class. Games such as World of Warcraft, Mass Effect and Lineage allowed players to follow their own tailored path through a much broader and diverse set of skills and abilities and it’s a shame this is missing in Destiny. Again, I appreciate the need for balancing, but a few more diversifying traits wouldn’t have gone amiss. Different weapon/armour unlocks, crafting abilities and actual play style changing skills are just a few that come to mind. Perhaps this will be rectified in future content..who knows! In light of this, I do feel that Bungie nailed sub-classes, which provide a refreshing change-up in play style. I wasn’t sure about the Defender sub-class at first but I have enjoyed switching from being a Striker and the impact it had on how I play the game and the tactics I use, both in PvP and in PvE. Nothing better than deploying Ward of Dawn on a control point and whipping out a shotgun! I look forward to the mysterious ‘third subclass’ that should inevitably head our way sooner or later. What Bungie do with this and how they incorporate it into the game mechanics and differentiate between the other subclasses will be crucial. Let’s hope they get it right. Linking back to my point on race-specific attributes, utilising the potential to mix and match race and class attributes would have been a great addition and helped to solve the inherent lack of player diversity. An exo titan might have played slightly differently or had slightly different skills to unlock to an awoken titan for example. Variety is the spice of life, and that is true for Destiny too. Weapons, Armour & Stats:- If Bungie do anything right, it’s weapon balancing. Never at any point during these near 40 days have I felt the weapons I used were under or over-powered in any scenario. All weapons handle brilliantly and sound awesome, in particular those of the exotic variety. For those of you yelling at your laptop screens ’..but they nerfed the Vex Mythloclast and Thorn!’, I hear you. Patches come and go, weapons are tweaked and un-tweaked, but fundamentally they work pretty damn well. Weapon perks are varied and keep gun customisation fresh too. My only gripe here is the lack of weapon design variety - noticing a theme here? I was disappointed to pick up a new scout rifle early on in the game only to see that it looked exactly the same just with a different set of colours. As far as I know there are only two scout rifle variants and equally similar design styles for each other weapon type. It would have been nice to see a tad more individuality here. In spite of this however, it does mean that exotic weaponry really does stand out. No gun has ever looked more badass than Red Death. Feel free to argue with me on that one! Perhaps this was intentional and Bungie wanted the other, non-exotic weapons to appear standard-issue and to pale in comparison. Either way, it worked. I look forward to the up and coming DLC which will go some way in fixing this issue with more weapon design diversity. Armour and class-specific items don’t seem to have this problem. I feel each armour set is suitably different from the rest and scales accordingly to the level of your character. With the help of shaders (which are a great addition) to add a touch of colour and exotics to help you stand-out, there isn’t much I would change about the way armour is handled in the game. Again, future DLC will only serve to improve what is already a decent amount of available armour choices. Armour with stat attributes is a step in the right direction but I don’t feel it lends itself to intentional player choices, instead it feels random and limiting. It would be nice to tailor build your armour set to suit the way you play, where each stat bonus has a noticeable affect on when your grenades, super or melee recharge.