Destiny 2 BETA PS4 Review: "An impressive and explosive experience, leaving me excited for the full campaign.”

Destiny 2 BETA PS4 Review

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Patch Version: 1.02

Having selected which of the three classes from the original Destiny I wanted to play as, Destiny 2's Beta begins with a cutscene set on earth in the Tower amid a rumbling thunderstorm in the backdrop.  Something is not quite right.  You can feel it.  All your favourite characters are here.  Cayde, Ikora and the ‘firefly’ chemistry they always bring to the mix.  Oh, and Zavala of course, but before you can blink, all hell breaks loose.  It’s an invasion!

This explosive and impactful cutscene then switches to a relatively calm sequence.   It is now that we see our character for the first time, along with your ghost.  You’ve been out on patrol, and having lost contact with the Tower, make an expedited journey home to discover the horrific reason behind the loss of communication.

It is here where we enter actual gameplay for the first time.  Having landed, you’ll be instantly taken aback by the environment around that is ablaze and in ruin.  Quickly you are thrown into the affray and forced to battle your way through the burning and destroyed mess that once was a bustling harbour of life.  Everything is hauntingly familiar.   Passageways you will have travelled down in the original Destiny are destroyed shells of their former selves.   What was once a safe place for all, has become a battleground filled with death!

Initial Impressions

For those who follow my reviews, you might remember that earlier this year I reviewed the original Destiny, (CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW).  Some of the issues I raised about the original story and the campaign then, was that the pacing goes from a sluggish pace to light speed in a blink.  What’s more, ends before you know what is what, leaving too many unanswered questions.  Further to this, it completely failed to build up or touch upon any of the more interesting aspects of the story, leaving me completely detached from my character or anyone else that I briefly encountered.  My title for the review said it all really: “Fantastic gunplay, let down by a short, unsatisfying and cold Campaign.”

Enter Destiny 2’s Beta…

Colour me impressed!  Having played through the first story mission, (which on my first playthrough took around 20-25 minutes, a massive improvement in itself considering the average mission length for Vanilla Destiny was around 10-15 minutes) I can honestly say that I am exceptionally excited to experience the full campaign.  If every mission is held to the same standard as what I witnessed in the beta, well, we are in for a real treat with Destiny 2, that’s for sure!

Destiny always looked good, but Destiny 2 looks better.  Adding weight to this, in part, stems from the atmospheric effects.  Let it be lighting, rain, wind, fog, explosions or fire, it all looks amazing and sets and sells each moment.  Nothing is used frivolously or without reason.  Everything is placed with care and consideration to help sell what you are seeing and inherently feeling.  –I’m only five minutes in before I find myself among a bunch of refugees, all of them, huddled in a corridor fearing for their lives.

I hardly felt anything like this when playing through the vanilla Destiny, so I was further surprised, having picked up an Exotic from Zavala’s armoury, to be fighting it out alongside Zavala himself in the social area of what is left of the Tower.  The enemy, pounding down on our position with missiles before landing ground troops to engage us.  The sense of loss, in truth, heightened because I’m familiar with this area of course, but still, Bungie, this time around, have clearly made efforts to set up moments that are purposely nostalgic and meaningful.

So, what’s changed?  Considering the beta covers so little of the campaign experience, and the open world nature of the game isn't touched in any way shape or form, it's hard to full access at this point the changes, but, there are some.  Some big, some small, but before I get into all that, let talks about how it all begins in the beta.

Regardless of your level in the original Destiny, or whatever version of the DLC you last played, your character in Destiny 2’s beta is level 20 with a light level of 200.  You have a full assortment of legendaries equipped, both weapons and armour, and your skills and abilities relating to your subclasses are maxed out with the exception of some extra abilities that are locked from use, these requiring some item not available in the beta it seemed.

(A breakdown on all new abilities will be shown further on in this review.)

For those who played the original beta for Vanilla Destiny, you might remember starting at zero and levelling up to a set point, but it also required you to earn XP to unlock your skills and abilities as you did.  Destiny 2’s Beta is completely the opposite, opting to give you an exhilarating experience right out of the gate.

Bungie has already announced that your character(s) will carry over from the Original Destiny game cosmetically, everything else will be removed: Gear, level, skill etc… So don’t expect the actual experience of Destiny 2’s beta to be precisely what you experience when you get the main game.  Personally, I can see Destiny 2 starting out precisely like the beta does in every way, except that is, instead of the default ones present in the beta, your characters (cosmetically) from Destiny 1 will take their place.

One thing that jumped out at me straight away though was the subclasses available in Destiny 2’s Beta.  As stated, you have two.  One original and a new one, but even the original is slightly modified with subtle changes.  However, in Destiny’s Taken King DLC you unlocked a third subclass, so whether you will have access to four subclasses in total in Destiny 2 when it goes live, I do not know.  But if you don't, this seems like a little bit of a downgrade in that regard.

The second thing that’s changed is the subclass menu.  It’s had a totally new overhaul, as shown in the above screenshot.

This interface is easier to understand compared to the one used in Destiny 1 for a start, as well as looking a lot sleeker and cleaner.  The same functionality is there, so you can still pick and choose which type of skills you want to be assigned in a given tree for certain abilities, but there are also new class abilities thrown into the mix.  These abilities are shared, regardless of which subclass you choose, and have an alike-cooldown in keeping with the grenade and melee ability.

As well as this, both the original and the new subclasses for all the three character types have new passive and activated abilities.  Having played each of the new subclasses for each character class, these new abilities really do add something extra to combat engagements.  The Titan’s seems the most powerful, the hunter’s the most fun, and the warlock’s more situationally.  The below three screenshots show the new abilities for each of the new subclasses.

NOTE:  The grenade and the jump abilities are not shown in the images.

My only gripes at this point are very minor, and that’s in relation to the Warlock's class ability and their dodge.  It was really hard to see the healing well when placed if you were forced out of it.  It needs to be made more visible.  It fails to stand out as much as the Titans shield for example.  The other issue was that warlocks tend to spec less agility, opting for more resilience and recovery in my experience for PVE at least.  This meant that the air dodge barely moved in comparison to the ground dodge of a hunter with high agility.  But I imagine this same problem would be present on the hunter if you spec similarly.  As I said, minor issues that could be easily tweaked and fixed.

In regards to the gunplay, they really did not have to alter this.  It’s always felt really fun and solid in my opinion.  Saying this though, they have made a couple of tweaks.  For one, the interface is slightly different.

You can still modify your weapons of course, but you can also mod the damage type it does, meaning, you can add solar damage or void for example to a weapon if it has a mod slot available.  There were no mods in the beta available to swap out and try, so I do not know if you lose the one you have equipped, or if it’s a straight swap with no penalty.

The biggest change though is that there is now a variant of all the weapon types for all three of your weapon slots.  Want an auto rifle in your primary and an auto rifle in your secondary?  Well, now you can!  There was also a few new weapon types that I spotted. Namely:  Submachine guns & grenade launchers

Gear is practically the same from what I can tell, the interface has slightly changed of course as you can see in the above screenshot, and they seem to have removed the defence stat from the character menu.

But let’s get down to the nitty gritty, the first mission and the story.  Well, let me start by saying the pacing was bang on.  It led me through a varying mission path, which was not just a series of go here, click that either.  It was refreshing.  The mission itself was divided into segments.  Each segment connected with a cutscene.  The loading screens were not overly long.  Always a bonus.

What I enjoyed the most though was the level design and mission setup.  For one, the missions utilised the environments around you to great-degree, taking you to many different and varied locations.  It also made full use of verticality.   At one point, I even had the distinct impression that I was fighting it out in a scene that reminded me of blade runner, the mix of old and new, blending in perfectly.

Secondly, there was moving elements and hazards to avoid in certain stages, which made the experience feel even more diverse, and when combined with the atmospherics, which I already mentioned, I know, it all looked stunning!

Making the experience even better was the new enemy archetypes I faced.  There were even mini bosses along the way that really upped the difficulty and the tension.   These new enemies are by far a tough force to deal with.  The designers going out of their way to even throw in a few surprise moments too. The A.I., popping up when you least expected them.

This new enemy faction is called the Red Legion and are led by someone called Ghaul, you’ll face several different types that I noted.  Some were slightly modified Cabal types of course from Destiny 1.   For example, the type that holds shields, but used energy shields opposed to metal versions, and the really heavily armoured cannon fodder types, that oddly have no 'head' armour.  (Amusing)

However, four enemies that I encountered were completely new.  One, that is some sort of mad, cleaver wielding sort that would rush and hack you to bits if you didn’t dispatch it, and another, some gas canister carrying type that would spray fire at you!  I even witnessed some beast-like creatures, pets of the red legion I guess, these, acting like attack dogs.   The most dangerous were the mini bosses though.  These were much larger variants of the red legion that could erect a force field around themselves, but also wielded huge energy type weapons that really hurt if they hit you!

I also noticed a change in their A.I.  They actually appeared more intelligent.  For example, when on low health or having taken a severe amount of damage, they would actually flee and take cover.   I was impressed by this.  It actually made them feel more lifelike, opposed to dummy bots standing in the open for you to kill them.  Don’t get me wrong, the A.I. in the original Destiny wasn’t terrible, and though they did use cover, they’d use it unnaturally, choosing to use it in a more scripted sense, rather than when the moment called for it most.

The cutscene segments were also impressive.  Not dull or overly long, and really did carry the flow and the story forward.

After completing the single story mission in the beta, you then get access to a single strike, along with two PVP modes.   Though I played through the strike, I’m not going to review it as I have no idea if it’s story/campaign related.  I will say that I thoroughly enjoyed it.  It also has some very new and exciting elements I’ve not seen in any strike or raid thus far.  I can't comment on the PVP side to the game either.  I only review the campaign aspect, remember. (wink)

All in all, the whole experience felt really polished.  I won't mention the bugs that I spotted as this was a beta, but they were only minor bugs in any case. 

In regards to the campaign length, I have no idea as to how many missions or planets they’ll be in Destiny 2, since there was no map alluding or giving any hint as to this, but, what I can say is this:  If the first mission is anything to go by, then Destiny 2’s campaign should prove to be a gratifying experience through and through.  I can only measure it by what I’ve seen, but, if they have learned from their mistakes, and can carry on the flow from the beta throughout the rest of the campaign, then it truly should be something epic for Destiny fans and newcomers alike to enjoy.

The overall score for the Destiny 2's Beta:

Destiny 2 is available for pre-order now and is scheduled for release on all consoles on September 18th, 2017.  It will also be released on PC this time round, on October, 24th 2017, and is available to pre-order through battle.net.

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Destiny 2 Beta: PS4 Gameplay

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