Destiny (Vanilla) PS4 Review: "Fantastic gunplay, let down by a short, unsatisfying and cold Campaign"

Destiny (Vanilla) PS4 Review

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Patch Version: 1.31 --

Having chosen between three class types (Titan / Warlock / Hunter) and designed the facial look of your character, your Destiny begins with a rather high quality albeit short intro cutscene that details the discovery of a massive floating orb that arrived on Mars.  The humans of that era calling this entity: The Traveller.

Luckily for humanity, this Traveller had not come to destroy, quite the opposite in fact. Humans, as a result, attaining new heights in technical advancements as well as accelerating their own evolution.  The combination of which seeing them colonising the solar system and transforming it into a place where life could thrive.
However, the Traveller had an enemy; a darkness.  It took hundreds of years to catch up, but when it did, this golden era of human-kind ended…



The game for you starts several more hundred years after this.  Your corpse resurrected by something called a ghost; a tiny floating robot that will become your companion as you shoot your way to your destiny.  As to how it reanimates your body I do not know, but time to ponder this you have little as you're in 'Fallen' territory and must escape.  The ‘Fallen’ in this case a race that serves this darkness.

Within moments do you have a gun and are in a firefight with these creatures. The gun handling and the combat feeling really good, satisfying even; especially when you land a headshot.  The music score should also be commended.  It, ramping up the tension tenfold when the combat is about to take a turn.

At this stage you're not given much time to explore the environment or your character, nor any features you may have unlocked during this initial mission either.  The goal as previously stated to get the hell out of dodge!

Upon which you are then transported to the last human occupied city on earth.  The camera pulling out to a third person perspective opposed to a first. This giving you your first real in game look at your character.

The first thing I note in this last human city is that the area isn't significantly large, its main purpose serving as base of operations. There's an NPC that handles your mail. One that handles engrams, which appear to be blueprints you can buy/loot and trade for better gear. A bounty hunter offering missions, which are more like tasks really:  kill X amount of X in X way.  Access to your vault.  Weapon and equipment vendors, and several NPC relating to factions.  And lastly but most importantly, the NPCs that you will collect your first set of story missions from.

The first problem at this point is the lack of information detailing which missions are story related.  It's not until I leave for orbit and set my destination to earth do I see a map with a starred icon on it, which, when hovering over it, confirms that it is story related.

There is also the option to set the difficulty level of each mission.  However, the option is not available to me at this point. The level requirement suggesting it’s for max level players to try their hand at already completed content at a much harder difficulty.

The next three story missions are interesting.  Interesting in the sense that I feel a little cheated; cheated because they are so short.  About 10-15mins long and then they are done, and each being nothing special.  They are just get from point A to point B and kill whatever gets in your way with no interesting mechanics or puzzles to slow you down/solve.

To make it worse, upon completion of each you have to then return to the safety of the last human city to collect the next mission.  This all disjointed by being loaded in and loaded out. This would be fine, but there's no cutscenes for the mission givers.  It's just click, text, accept, and though each mission starts with a brief introduction by your ghost, it does this during the same loading screen, which sees your ship flying in high orbit.  Furthermore, I've learned nothing about my character, as to who he was and why he was resurrected.  It's all a rather cold experience so far and I find that immensely disappointing.

However, after completing the 5th mission, and, yet again being returned to the human city, you then receive your first in game story cutscene where you meet the Speaker. Who, aptly, speaks for the Traveller who lays dormant in the distance as you stand looking out at it from the safety of the city.  You learn a little at this point about what happened to humanity, the danger and your mission: your mission at this point being nothing more than beating back the darkness that seems to occupy the world more than that of the light.  (Well... now that's cleared up! – Sarcasm level 10)

Annoyingly after which it then returns you to high orbit once again.  So yes, you’ve guessed it, you have to then re-dock and collect your next mission before getting back to the action.

It's at this point where another planet opens up; the moon.  However, the story mission on it suggests that it's part 7, whereas on earth I still have part 6 to complete?  I'm confused. Mainly because it appears I'm free to start 7 before 6, which leads me to think the story is a collection of fragments rather than a linear story.  This I am fine with, but right now as a new user with little to no information about what is going on, a little coherency and direction before everything splinters off down multiple paths would be perhaps more appropriate.

Regardless, it's the 2 hour mark so it's time to pause before I continue in my enigma that is my Destiny....

Initial Impressions

I have mixed feelings about the game right now.  On the one hand the graphics are impressive, but more importantly the gunplay has been done exceptionally well.  But from a story perspective it's extremely weak.  I know very little, have little to no connection with my character and have no investment in the story so far.

Feature wise, a lot seems to be locked up in the skills trees, which in Destiny are called Subclasses. Of which there is two to choose from per character.  Interestingly you can swap between both at will, but can only use and score XP for the one currently assigned.  This suggests you can eventually max out both, a feature that I like as it gives you two styles of play.  This also means that in total there is six skill trees; two per character.  As to if the characters play differently I cannot say just yet.  But the skill trees do look quite in depth and diverse.

On top of this, it's not long before I unlock what I would call your foundation moves. It took four levels to unlock a futuristic grenade, a melee attack and a special ability unique to my class, which I have to admit was very badass and made me feel extremely powerful!  Not to mention a variant on jumping; my character being able to double jump, the skill tree suggesting that later I can increase that to three.

Weapon wise, you have three slots.  A primary, a secondary and a heavy. (Swapping between them is swift and on a single button press for primary and secondary.  Holding down the same button swaps to your heavy.)  There also seems to be plenty of different kinds of weapons too, each one very diverse in design and function.  The weapons are grouped into five different categories for primary, four for secondary, and two for heavy. How ever you like to play there's going to be a weapon you like, that's for sure.  All the ammo for your weapons dropping from the enemies you kill.

Destiny also utilises a very tried and tested RPG colouring system to let you know how good the weapon is.  All the weapons having varying stats that alter everything from fire rate to handling, and if that was not enough they can be modified.  The weapons unlocking more modifications as you earn XP and level them up.

You can also equip your character with different gear that is likewise graded and upgradable: head, chest, gloves and boots, plus two other slots for items I don’t currently have yet. The stats of each increasing what the game calls your light level.  It's this light level that dictates how powerful you are, which affects your damage and defence attributes.  Your gear also has stats that increase your intelligence, strength and discipline.  These affecting how quickly your grenade, melee and special ability recharge.

Enemy wise I've encountered one race so far, but there has been numerous archetypes.  Each type acting differently; their A.I simple, yet what they do they do it well.  I've also not seen any glitches, except for sometimes when they spot you their reaction speed could be a little faster.

I'm very aware that the game is not a single player experience, so I will be trying out some of the dungeons, Destiny calling them Strikes, but only if they are story related, but as yet cannot comment on their content or design.

With regards to the playable environments, admittedly, having only experienced earth, regardless I am impressed.  It is both graphically pleasing and the scale seems adequate, and though each mission is within a self-contained instance, before you reach said point, you are free to move around in any direction to kill and to explore.  There also has not been any hitching in the frame rate or slowdowns.

You also eventually unlock a flying vehicle to hasten your navigation.  It handles well and does feel rather cool as you race about the planet like you’re in a pod race on Tatooine.  Sadly it has no fire functionality.  You can only use it to navigate the world.

My only gripe so far during gameplay is the lack of a map.  It's fine when you have a mission, as you are directed to your destination at all times with a little arrow on your radar, but still, the lack of any kind of map feels very alien, more so considering this is semi - open world before you enter the self-contained sections.

Side mission wise it seems to have a mixture.  There are bounty type missions.  Basically go out and kill a certain amount with or in a certain way.  And then there are none story related missions.  I've not tried any of them yet, but they appear on paper at least to be of equal quality to the story ones.  (Short and forcing you to load in and out before moving on to the next.)

All the negatives aside though, the fact remains that I am enjoying myself, primarily because the combat side of things is very polished, extremely so in fact.  However, with the exception of the opening cutscene and the in game cutscene I mentioned earlier, nothing so far about the story has sucked me in and made me feel invested.

It will be interesting to see how the rest of the story experience plays out...

Pros

• First person combat is smooth and tense.
• Graphically it looks very good and is stable
• Has a well implemented RPG weapon and gear system.
• Has three distinct class types to choose from.  Each class having two subclass skill trees, both of which you can independently level up as you earn XP

Cons

• Disjointed and lacklustre story so far
• A lot of loading in and out before and after missions
• Fragmented story design
• Tougher type enemies are bullets sponges instead of relying on some intelligent mechanic to avoid your damage

Initial Score after 2hrs of play

Full Playthrough Score after 5hrs

Overall Verdict

Destiny is an interesting game; interesting for all the wrong reasons when it comes to its story.  On paper, Destiny sounds amazing, and to be fair it looks amazing, not to mention that the gunplay is extremely polished, and at times so intense your heart will be pounding! However, from a campaign story perspective it fails immensely.

The first problem is that the story goes from a confusingly sluggish pace to light speed in a blink, and before you know it you've completed the campaign and are feeling anything but satisfied.  In fact I felt a little annoyed because so much was still left unanswered:  Who am I? Why did the ghost choose to resurrect me? What makes me so special? What is inside that huge floating orb?  What is the darkness really?  Does the speaker look like Bill Nighy under his mask?

But even if you put those questions aside, the story further frustrates because the only interesting aspects about it are not built upon in any way.   The ‘benevolent’ queen of the Rift for example who appears as if bored by life, and who looks down at you like you are little more than a thing for her amusement.  Then in stark comparison there is her indignant brother who seems to be fuelled by nothing but hate; their relationship seemingly on a knife’s edge. His loyalty to her on one hand absolute, yet the way he acts, the way he looks and the way he curbs his temper in her presence giving the impression that he would turn on her in a second if the moment was favourable.

Then there's the mysterious stranger you meet, which ends before it begins and gives you no answers either except for telling you there's far worse to come.  

The only relationship of any note on your journey is between you and your ghost, who acts as your guide and narrator for the most part, but even that walks a fine line between meaningful and throwaway.

The second problem is that Destiny doesn’t know what it wants to be; this clearly obvious since the developers never really established what genre the game actually fitted into.  And the reason for this is that they couldn’t, because it doesn’t fit into one.  This in itself is fine and something I don’t have a problem with.  What I do have a problem with though is the fragmented way the game and its features interact with one another.    Let’s us explain…

You begin on earth.  Have 6 story missions on said world before being tasked with moving to the moon.  Where upon you do a few more story missions, and then unlock Venus. However, before you know what-is-what you are done on Venus and unlock Mars, and having barely blinked, that's it... the end of the campaign.

That seems fine, you say?  Well, imagine that there’s a loading screen between planets. Now imagine that there’s a loading screen before and after each mission, oh, and... after each mission you need to return to either earth’s Tower or the Rift to get the next mission step.  Did I mention that the average mission length is only 10 to 15 minutes long? Well they are.  You see the problem now?

Surely there’s side missions you can do on the planets you unlock to extend the experience? Well yes, yes there are side missions, and in their defence they seem to be on par, quality and content wise to the main campaign missions, but you cannot do them while you are already on a mission.  This is because each mission is a self-contained instance where you choose a mission and land at that particular part of the world on a particular planet.  There is no deviation part way through a mission that allows you to select and do another.  The only way to swap is to return to orbit or another world and land again at that mission’s location, but this of course will end and wipe your progress on the last mission unless you have reached a checkpoint; the game not really doing a good job either of letting you know when you have actually hit one.

There are also strike missions: Destiny’s take on the MMO type mini dungeons, where you and two other guardians fight it out cooperatively to a penultimate boss battle.  Some of the end bosses being easier to kill than the content you had to fight your way through to reach it.  Admittedly though the strikes are decent and challenging encounters, which are also very fun to participate in.  They also seem to take 30 minutes on average to complete, where more effort it seems went into them than that of the campaign.

However, none of the strikes are main campaign related.  Each being bolt on self-contained short story type missions that unlock as you progress through the main campaign itself.    At the start of each strike though you are given a brief introduction as to why you are here, what you have to do, and the stakes if you fail; all of this taking place while in the loading orbital phase and being told by one of the games narrators, who will also speak to you in key moments during the missions too.  (If you've seen Firefly, Fringe and The Mummy, then you may just recognise some of the voice actors.) After completing the mission, you are then treated to an even shorter verbal outro while you wait for the countdown timer to elapse before being returned to orbit.

There must be more?  Well yes, there are also patrol missions, which are a collection of mission types that you can pick up on a world that tasks you with completing a particular chore, such as killing a specific type of enemy to collect items from, or finding a particular elite spawn and killing it. There are five different types of these missions in total.  However, like everything else in Destiny, if you wish to do these styles of missions you must land at the only designated part of the world to do them on; one per planet.  Not to mention that you can only initiate one at a time, if you want to swap you must discard your current one.  The point to these missions solely it seems to garner reputation with your chosen faction to allow you to buy better gear from them.

Occasionally while doing patrol missions, a world event may occur, OR, even rarer, when on a story mission before having entered the locked-instance phased of the mission you are on, which basically phases you from the world so only you and your party are present.  These world events though are like mini world bosses or challenges that you can choose to take part in alongside nearby guardians if any choose to roll up and assist.  Success is not guaranteed, but they can offer a brief but burst of action that will distract you from whatever it was you were doing at the time.  They also offer a significant challenge with decent rewards and rep.

The only cross-over feature that works in conjunction with the main campaign, the strikes and the patrol missions are bounties. Bounties being kill X with X in X way style of missions. Nothing special, but they are a good source of XP and reputation and upon completion can be handed in automatically, regardless of where you are.

There’s also the raid called the Vault of Glass, which is like a strike only much harder and far more complex.  Again suggesting more effort went into it than that of the campaign itself. The raid designed for 6 guardians to complete opposed to the 3 it takes to complete the strikes.  However, like the strikes are not campaign related, so their factoring into the review score I cannot do. 

So how has this review scored it a 7.2, especially since you consider the campaign such a let down?

Well… if you gather Destiny’s fragments up and look at each one taking into account the content that’s in them, however short the campaign experience is, playing Destiny is still a fun and rewarding experience, just not from a story perspective.

For one, the gunplay is very polished and extremely satisfying, and the replay factor is extremely high, a factor sold more because there is always that chance of getting a better gun, or some better gear that will push your character above the level cap; the level cap being 20 in the original Destiny.  And it is here that we hit Destiny’s genius.  You see the level cap is not the end, your light score is where it is at.  In the original destiny you were able to increase your light score to 120, which equated to being the equivalent of a level 30.  It’s this light score that dictates how powerful you are, a score that can only be improved through the attainment of better gear and weapons, not experience, and it’s not easy to max this light score out either; this the mechanic that keeps people coming back and re-running the content they have already done over and over.

Further to this it has four distinct races for you to fight against (Fallen, Hive, Vex and the Cabal), each race having their own archetypes, of which there is around 5-6 per race, in some cases more.  Each archetype different and having their own unique way of causing you bother.  This all keeping combat fresh and diverse and at any moment changing the way you have to play the game.  The A.I. for each, though basic, is more than adequate at making them do what they do in a challenging way regardless of the race you face.  My only negative opinion about them is that some of the more difficulty archetypes are nothing but bullet sponges, but even that I’m not particularly offended by because shooting my guns feels amazing, so-much-so that burning the harder enemies down often feels more of a delight than a chore as you run, slide or jump out of danger.

I also did not encounter a single bug during my time with Destiny, albeit the time it took to complete was short, but still, if you consider all the moving parts, it is still an impressive feat. The frame rate was also stable and not once did I get disconnected or did the game crash.

Weapon and gear wise there is a plethora; the weapons themselves offering a different style of play that is sure to cater to every single first person shooter fan out there.  Not to mention that each gun not only looks different, handles differently, fires differently and sounds different, but also can be upgraded as you gain experience, which further unlocks features of your weapons and gear that adds to Destiny’s addictive draw.

There is also a card collection system with hundreds to unlock.  Each card detailing aspects about the enemies, their factions, the content you encounter and a lot more.  The cards also track your progress too and unlocking bonuses in game.  However, in keeping with Destiny’s fragmented style, these cards cannot be accessed in game.  You must view them via a third party medium.  Either online via their website or the Destiny phone app.  Why this cool and interesting feature was not incorporated directly in to the game I can only surmise was down to a lack of time to implement it.  A shame, but considering the complexities of game development cycles, I can understand.  Still it would have been much better if it had been blended in to the game better.

However, Destiny’s most surprising success is the way it disguises the fact that the three playable character types are practical the same, yet when playing them you never really notice.  The illusion that they are different maintained. This ultimately is down to the subclasses of each character and the inherent skills within them. Match that with the ability to swap between subclasses and also swap between skills within those subclasses at any point at no cost as long as you have unlocked it, is a feature that really allows players distinct choices in how they choose to play, further making the characters and the experience feel more diverse.  Again, building on that replay factor and allowing players to switch up their tactics to cater to the obstacles they encounter.  The selling point of each subclass is its main special ability, each one both graphically amazing as much as it is devastatingly powerful, not to mention how much fun they are to use.

It’s a shame really that Destiny’s campaign is so short, unsatisfying and cold, because had there been more to it, and if all the pieces had slotted together more coherently instead of being independent entities functioning apart, it could and would have scored a lot higher.

In short, for those who play games that enjoy rich stories and memorable campaigns that take them places in a smooth, unjointed experience where they can pick and choose what they wish to do without any interruption, then the original Destiny will only disappoint. However, for those who like a World-of-Warcraft like grind, are not too fussed about meaningful in-depth stories, and prefer a polished and solid end game experiences where the focus is teaming up to complete difficult and complex content over and over till you have mastered it, oh and not forgetting the attainment of the best loot possible, then Destiny will be the game you are looking for that’s for sure.

NOTE:

Not that any of the following factored into this review, but Destiny has undergone three expansions since its original release, with several content patches in between that adds more campaign story related missions among new strikes and raids. There is even a new enemy type called the taken: a rehash of all the other races put together that now look like ghosts having been corrupted.  However, none of this can I comment on in this review as I have not reviewed them, but with an increased level cap from 20 to 40, and the light score cap increased from 120 to a staggering 400, one can only assume that there is plenty to do on that extended road.

There is also a Destiny 2 rumoured for release later this year, however, according to a blog post by Bungie, Destiny 2 will be a new adventure where players from Destiny 1 will be able to carry the look & history of their character(s) across, but nothing else, not gear or level.  They also allude that Destiny 1 will still completely function, but I have to wonder… if a large majority of the player base moves over to Destiny 2, it will surely cut out large chunks of the more engaging content from being more readily available in Destiny 1.  Time will tell on that front I guess. Either way, this reviewer will be keeping an eye on Destiny 2.  I just hope that the campaign is equally as developed as the end game content this time around, and that the features work together not apart.

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Destiny: PS4 Gameplay

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