First Impressions of Destiny?

Was wondering if anybody has had a chance to play yet. What are your thoughts, and what system are you playing it on?

I was very bummed to hear it is console only. I was hoping it would be Bungie's return to their roots (Marathon).

Chris Guillory said:

Was wondering if anybody has had a chance to play yet. What are your thoughts, and what system are you playing it on?

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PS4. Played eight or nine hours today, about half of them with a friend, and it's been great fun! I can't think of many games where I'll repeat missions, or stay and grind in one small area for over an hour.

Gameplay is nothing special - run and jump around, shooting things. The equipment system (three weapon slots and five armour slots) isn't groundbreaking, but there's a huge variety of weapons and armour. And the RPG elements seem fairly minimal (levelling up unlocks things like new grenades, higher jumps, and a more powerful special move, but there's no sense that it's a system you'll get the best out of with tactical levelling)... but it's a very enjoyable game.

In my eight hours, I've done four hours of missions (six in total, four of them twice), and four hours of free play, to reach level 10. The missions are fairly linear, and take you through sections of a larger map, whilst the free play lets you explore the map in its entirety. There are miniature missions dotted about (kill twenty enemies, reach this point, collect so many of these, sort of things), and every now and then you might stumble across a public event where everyone in the vicinity teams up to complete an objective (e.g. destroy a massive tank). You can also pick up "bounties", which set you a challenge, such as kill 100 enemies without dying.

If you played the beta, that's not really anything new. The only change I've noticed is that everything seems harder, which feels like a good thing (unless you don't like grinding).

Thanks Lenny, that's good info. I haven't played the Beta, so this will all be new to me. Just picked it up for the Xbox One, but will likely wait until the weekend to get into it.

Impressions after nearly a week: the PvE is great fun, still. I've hit the exp level cap, and now I'm working towards getting the hard-to-get things - weeks of grinding ahead of me, and I'm actually looking forward to it.

Finished the story on the normal difficulties (though I have one Strike left to do), and I'm planning on replaying with the harder difficulties.

I also had a go at PvP tonight, in the Crucible. Now, I'm a player who hates the idea of playing online with people I don't know... yet after playing through Strike missions with randomers on the team, and the continued random meetings in the field**, I figured I'd have nothing to lose by doing PvP with eleven people I don't know. I've never had so much fun playing the same handful of maps over and over! At times, it can be massively frustrating when that guy in the rafters with the rocket launcher is waiting for you, and at others, when you power up your super and take out the entire opposing team in six swift moves, it can be hugely rewarding.

What's nice is seeing the same names in the eleven you're playing with. There's no communication unless actively sought out by joining fireteams (which a lot of people, myself included, leave defaulted to private), so you start formulating one-sided friendships and rivalries in your head. There's one player who never fails to kill me a few teams in each game, one person I've struck up a decent capture partnership with (I've been playing capture the flag matches), and a third who, every time we meet, melee kills me at the same time I melee kill them.

There are also bounties for the Crucible, which are fun to work on (I've just completed one that asked for twenty melee kills), and medals to aspire to (such as five kill streak, or capturing the most flags in a match). Looking forward to duking it out in the Crucible over the coming week.


**People share instances and come across each other. You can help out or run past - I've taken to waving before running past (and people stop what they're doing and wave back! ), or, if they look like they're having difficulty, I help out. Then dance with them and continue on my way.

I like it as well. I'm only level 4 as of now, but it so far proves to be a solid FPS.

I must admit I've been turned off by the reviews. I was under the impression it had a solid single player campaign with a good story etc, however the reviews are saying story is virtually non existent.

This is true, Ralph. I wouldn't say the story is one of the strong points of this game. So far, the campaign mode is pretty good though. The levels are fun to play, and the co-op option is fun.

I somehow get the impression this is going to be one of those games which you will find in the supermarket for a tenner in a month. I'm happy to wait until then.

So we're in the, what, seventh week since launch, and Destiny still appears to be going strong!

Whilst I'm not putting in six+ hours a day any more, I am playing daily (maybe two to three hours in the evening to complete all the bounties and do a few missions, sometimes a bit of Crucible, with a friend).

Over the weekend I found out that a few people I knew in school also play on PS4, and that they've been looking to put together teams for the Raid - I didn't think I'd ever do the Raid, and had resigned myself to staying at level 29... but all of a sudden I've found myself as part of a Raid team, and we've completed the Raid twice (first time last night, after a weekend of battling through, and then tonight, from fresh, in a single run)!

It's been a long time since I last got so much out of a single game purchase.

I'm not a multiplayer sort of chap, so this was never something I'd go for, but I wonder how much of the success you attribute to the game being well made, and how much to the massive PR hype?

I'm not using the second as a kind of cop-out or unfair advantage, incidentally. For a game mostly about multiplayer it's crucial to have a certain playerbase so that multiplayer is at least possible and preferably easy to organise, which means hitting the ground running, and many immediate players ready to leap off the hype train, copies in hand.

It's far from a well-made game. Some things are done really well, but the single fact that rewards are entirely based on a Random Number Generator make the vast majority of activities immensely frustrating (oh, you had more kills than the rest of your team and didn't die once? That's cool and all, but that guy who joined at the last second and didn't shoot anything is going to walk away with two exotic weapons, whilst you don't get anything. Try again, though, you never know what you'll get!), and when players find ways to get rewards through grinding (Google the "loot cave"), Bungie are incredibly quick to patch it.

Yet, for some reason, Bungie's stats show that 3.2 million people come back daily to keep playing. The gameplay is exceptionally strong (I've never played a shooter that feels so solid), and playing socially is a different experience to playing alone. I guess the RNG also works in the favour of replayability - activities aren't hard to keep repeating, and although you won't get anything decent nine times out of ten, that tenth repetition, when you finally get something awesome, kind of makes up for it.

In my opinion, the success is attributed first to the crazy amount of PR hype up to launch, which gets people playing, and then the fact that, non-existent story and rewards system aside, it's actually a fun game to play.

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I was like you, Thad, never much of a multiplayer person, but I've totally embraced it in Destiny, and I'm happy I did.

Oh yeah, I remember hearing about the loot cave.

The only game I can recall in recent times where any kind of multiplayer or player interaction ever seemed worthwhile was Dragon's Dogma's pawn system. Must be said I don't play tons of games (I tend to buy few and play them to death).

Cheers for the answer.

Dragon's Dogma! Man, I hope we haven't seen the last of that series.

Heard a few times they're working on the sequel. There were some flaws (one save file is just ridiculous) but the combat was bloody outstanding.

Yeah - The combat allowed the player to overlook the "story". I think it was about something, invading some kingdom. And it was really really bad.

Chris Guillory said:

Yeah - The combat allowed the player to overlook the "story". I think it was about something, invading some kingdom. And it was really really bad.

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pretty sure it was about a dragon... lol.
oh the number of hours i logged on Dragon's Dogma. I love that game. The pawn system... The incredible character creation system (best i have ever encountered - and i LOVED that build/height influenced carry weight allowance and speed. a brilliant design concept). Oh and the combat system. Perhaps the best i've encountered in an action rpg. fluid, responsive, and frenetic. Crippling monsters as i essentially hacked off parts of it, was the most fun i've had in a game in years.