Destiny

Destiny isn’t a perfect game, but it’s a perfect gaming experience. The girth of the planets, the endless exploration, a fun co-op element and a strong PvP structure has this series on the right track. I can’t wait to see what else the future expansions have in store for the overall body of work.

This game has its hooks in me fiercely. And that’s why my review’s score is a 9.5. However, I very much could see a player being turned off by having to repeat missions, by overly-long boss fights and the very specific storytelling techniques or the fact that everything feels ripped out of a pulpy sci-fi novel that thinks it’s important.

Destiny on the PS4 is a true piece of art that not only plays well but looks amazing!

Vast, beautiful, and endlessly satisfying, Destiny is like a gradually-opening puzzle box of ever-more involving FPS depth. What's already there can be explored for tens of hours. What's to come is an incredibly exciting prospect.

The most ambitious game on PS4 and an MMO shooter that rises above story problems by letting you create your own epic narrative with friends every second of play. With continued updates, Destiny will only get better. [Oct 2014, p.82]

Destiny is by no means a flawless game, but it’s able to overshadow its faults by offering superb gameplay while blending everything into a singular, truly fun experience.

Bungie has done a great job with Destiny, even though its project isn't complete as of yet. Its co-op proposal with some MMO details manages to entertain the user, even though it's not the revolution promised. It's audio-visual beauty has made it one of the standards in the gaming industry.

It’s because Bungie knows the areas they need to play it safe, and because Bungie knows the areas they want to attempt to explore and make better that I am glad this is the game I have waited for all year long, and why I feel this is another example of why the next-gen console cycle is ready to take off into new, exciting, and interesting ways.

Destiny is a flawed but still extremely fun first person shooter. While the Destiny universe itself seems intriguing, the storyline is told in such an incoherent manner that it's hard not to be turned off by all the technobabble. Fortunately the co-op shooter mechanics are absolutely perfect. The loot system can be maddening, but in a way it adds to the game's addictiveness. [Oct 2014]

At its core, Destiny is a loot grind shooter whose story hints at greater things to come.

Even with its stumbles, the initial release of Destiny is a colossal achievement in interactive design, integrating a number of differing genre elements into a smart and unified whole. Bungie’s latest futuristic opus is one of the first true event games of this new generation, and while it still has room to grow, it’s worth your attention right out of the gate.

If Destiny is judged on the game itself without falling victim to the unreachable expectations placed on it then it stands out as an amazing new IP. Never before has a game managed to merge separate genres quite so successfully and despite some of its flaws it does a lot of things right.

Destiny is an epic trip to the moon... and beyond! Bungie has successfully brought the MMO formula into the FPS genre. But there are still some problems and the PvP balance is debatable.

Destiny takes Halo's mechanics and injects them into an MMO world which is a little bit short on content, but which is as addictive as a Bungie Pvp can be.

It could have had a better story or had a wider variety of missions, but still, Destiny is one of the best first person shooters we've seen in the last few years.

The basics are superb, visuals gorgeous and potential enormous - while there wasn't a huge amount of content at launch, we've already seen the world improve, and that's just going to keep on happening. [Issue#249, p.52]

Destiny is an excellent FPS that falls short of expectations for a variety of reasons.

Destiny seldom blows you away with unexpected narrative gameplay and delivers less content than expected. There’s no point in lingering on those shortcomings though. It’s likely you won’t play a better shooter this year. The action is of such high quality and the cooperative and competitive play is interwoven seamlessly. This is still the game by Bungie we’ve been wanting to play.

Destiny is a great prologue, but it is still just a prologue. It’s like telling somebody all about Middle Earth; the races, the lands, the set up for the story, but not telling them of Bilbo’s adventures in The Hobbit or the fellowship’s journey in The Lord of the Rings.

Destiny is an amazing start for Bungie. It has this impressive gameplay, confined in an MMO structure. Don't look for an epic story, because you won't find it. You will find a great amount of content and a vast and beautiful universe, an addicting multiplayer and some room for future improvements.

Although Destiny is a great game, we expected it to be a bit bigger. Nonetheless, it plays amazingly, has some beautiful planets and we look forward to the raids in the future.

Destiny suffers from a serious case of rough edges. A number of elements, from the repetitive mission design to a weak early game, are a lot rougher than expected from an otherwise polished game. There isn't one glaring problem that detracts from the experience, but a number of minor issues hurt the game. Beneath those flaws lies an extremely enjoyable MMO-styled shooter that plays excellently, looks great, is extremely addictive, and has a strong and varied endgame.

The hype and the expectations associated with it have been a double-edged sword for Destiny, with disappointment as a result. This game doesn't offer the single player-experience we hoped for – despite the unbelievable audio-visual splendor - due to a short, repetitive Story Mode. But if you play Destiny competitively and/or cooperatively, then it's almost impossible not to have fun, thanks to constant rewards and delicious gameplay. And it still has the potential to become the game we wished it had been.

So yes, Destiny falls short of second-coming status, but it’s still worth checking out.

What is most amazing of all is that despite its litany of weird little problems, Destiny is fantastic, its combat up there with the very best, the thrilling rhythm of its battles still not fading the 30th time through, and it has no single systemic problem that is not fixable. [Dec 2014, p.106]

Nothing like it has been done on console before, and we have to respect Bungie – and Activision – for that.

In summation, although it makes no artistic statement and conveys little in terms of story, Destiny is still one of the most fun and addictive games I’ve played this year, and I would recommending it to anyone sitting on the fence about it.

Destiny has been hyped to an extent that it cannot live up to that hype. It is not a great living world for the solo player, and it is bound to disappoint some players, but it is insanely fun for the social player. While PvE might be thin on story, it keeps getting more content. PvP though is great fun and easily among the best FPS experiences. The future looks bright for Bungie's Destiny.

Based on my time with the game so far, I would certainly recommend making a date with Destiny.

Destiny is not revolutionary, but it mixes properly and updates many ideas to create an experience that's solid as a rock. As an online game it has stuff to improve, but right now it's a great action game that can be unforgettable when played with friends.

Great fun, beautiful design but somewhat shallow.

Bungie has managed to craft plenty of great mechanics for the new game, as well as allow for player expression through the RPG skills and customization system...However, don't expect a touching story and be prepared to endure plenty of repetition in the story missions. The co-op strikes and the random operations break this tedious feel, but you should still expect some lengthy loading screens and a fair amount of unbalanced missions or strikes.

Destiny is an engaging and immersive experience, albeit one that requires some serious legwork on the players half to get the most out of it. While I love it personally, I can’t ignore the lack of direction given to players which robs them of all the game has to offer. At the same time, I fully recognize that this is something that is going to grow and evolve exponentially over its lifetime.

As it stands now, it feels like a strong foundation coupled with a thin story and some baffling missteps on the MMO aspects of the formula.

It's a systematically refined game, with superlative combat and intriguing progression that plays the long game. It's beautiful. It's a slow burner, perhaps dangerously so for the skittish console audience, although the prevailing winds in gaming - where social, persistent metagaming is king - are on its side.

If you just want to shoot things with friends, you'll enjoy your time with Destiny, even when you're mocking the lame story. If, on the other hand, you love the loop – town, dungeon, loot – you'll be more likely to stick around after the story's over.

Far from the exceptional stuff we've been promised, Destiny is "only" a good game, with a huge potential which will be fulfilled with some good old DLC's. Nothing to be ashamed of from a visual point a view, but Bungie's new baby has some troubles with its content (sluggish progression, repetitive missions, sometimes really dumb AI). Destiny has been limited on purpose, to serve 10 years of good service with DLC's. But the frustration mixes with enjoyment thanks to an attractive universe, a beautiful soundtrack and an accessible gameplay.

It's a well-made game, especially in co-op, but repetitive gameplay and a story that fails to intrigue keeps it from becoming something truly great. As of now, Destiny unfortunately hasn't reached its full potential yet.

Give Destiny a try if you like the idea of cooperation blended evenly with competition. The truth remains in its satisfyingly responsive mechanics, relatively forgiving checkpoint systems, competitive multiplayer, and the opportunity to blast away a million and one guys if that's what your story really needs to framed around.

Destiny is not perfect, but it is a refreshing, thoughtful and accomplished combination of one the most popular genres today, the FPS, and MMOs, which never quite gained traction in the realm of consoles.

Is it the best game to release on the new generation of consoles? Most likely. But does it live up to the hype of its many, many ‘Best of E3’ awards? Close, but not quite.

Destiny’s connected world is a polished and beautiful playground, but its story is weak and it lacks in depth in many aspects.

For the time being we’re prepared to brave the beautiful wastelands of our solar system over and over because the freestyle combat across huge maps can have surprising variations between different play sessions. We’ve had enough wow moments to justify the time and effort to unlock them, and the possibilities of what Bungie could do next in this newly minted galaxy is intriguing based on what we’ve played so far. Destiny has not achieved greatness, yet. It is however, extremely fun to play.

Bungie's new IP isn't a revolution but is able to create a genre of its own. It has a solid and accessible RPG system, fast and addictive gunplay, and its overall presentation is outstanding. It's not perfect, though, and we hope Bungie will be able to solve some issues in the coming months.

Some excellent gameplay let down slightly by poor story and characters.

Destiny's budget was out of this world, and it's there for all to see in the finished product. Bungie's smash hit isn't the gameplay revolution that some wanted, but its accessible RPG systems, sublime gunplay, and incredible presentation over all aspects of the release elevate it beyond some of the very best shooters on the market.

Destiny, isn’t just set in space, it an allegory of space. It is beautiful and fascinating, but oh so cold and immense, and the past engulfs everything.

The visuals, interface, framerate and online matchmaking, combined with one of the best original soundtracks ever to grace a video game, make for impeccable production values. This is an experience that could have benefited from being open world, however, as well as having more varied combat and map design.

Destiny isn't a bad game, but... There is no original idea in the game. We were expecting a true nex-gen MMO, but Destiny lacks the requirements for accomplishing that goal.

It’s a complex production that boils down simply to this: Destiny is a mechanically excellent, visually evocative FPS housed within an under-developed RPG framework. The endgame might hook you for the long haul once you fully understand it, but Destiny is ultimately unable to be all the different games it’s trying so hard to be.

With Bungie, Destiny continues their excellent Halo formula. Shooting feels great as ever and the environments are as fascinating as they are mysterious. The added RPG-like system is extremely addictive. Other elements, like the Tower as a hub and the supposed living world are not as well-executed. The story also falls flat. While Destiny is far from perfect, its addictive nature will still keep you playing for hours, looking past the lack of cooperative content.

The quality of the combat keeps you playing, but the shared world is curiously hollow. [Dec 2014, p.56]

Bungie's new IP is a noble effort to escape from the ghosts of the past, an opportunity to succeed and leave its old franchises behind. Destiny offers a solid combat experience, challenging boss fights and a never ending progression system; however the world is not engaging and the story and lore bits are forgettable or absent, which is a shame given the magnitude of the project.

Destiny is a good game. I know that ‘good’ is not exactly what we expected from Bungie (especially after so much hype) but that’s the word that comes to mind. [Nov 2014, p.44]

Even at first glance, it is clear that it is an expensive and very ambitious project from a team of highly skilled professionals. But the lack of an exciting plot and thoughtful combination of RPG and FPS can’t be compensated for by just a huge budget. [Oct 2014, p.76]

Destiny’s faux-MMO approach to shooters is a shallow, dull experience that even hardcore fans may find difficult to stick with except to gaze at its worlds or engage in the entertaining competitive multiplayer.

Destiny is not a revolution, not a masterpiece and it is not even a complete product. It's a set of foundations, pretty solid and full of potential in truth, on which Bungie in the coming months could build wonders. But we must evaluate the product for what it is at present, and now Destiny is a repetitive game, with a disappointing PvP, and able to entertain only thanks to the ascertained efficacy of the shooting and RPG elements that compose it.

If you just accept that it was always going to be about multiplayer shooting, and the rest might be underdeveloped gravy; you’ll probably have tons of fun. And if you look to the future and see what Bungie has created – a very solid foundation – you should be excited by what the team will deliver in the coming months and years.

It’s a confused game that doesn’t quite know what it wants to be; is it an MMO, a pure shooter, or a sprawling space epic? It tries to be all of them and misses the mark on most. As much fun as it can be - especially when played with friends - Destiny ultimately crumbles under its own ambition.

Destiny is a new direction for Bungie in many ways, yet familiar ground in others. The similar storytelling is only accented by the phenomenal gunplay. The boring mission structure is forgivable due to the cooperative nature of the game. It seems for everything the game does wrong, it makes up for it with something else.

Right now, it’s a rock-solid shooter with no underlying purpose … or soul. Destiny is a ship floating in space without a place to go.

Although Destiny isn't the brilliant start to a franchise that many had hoped for, it's a great game for those who can push through its flaws and enjoy the ride.

If you go into it knowing what you have today and that in the future something might - or might not change - then you’ll be left with an enjoyable and long-lasting experience. If you expect the future that might be now - if you have bought into Bungie and Activision’s chatter as being the day one solution, well, with that your joy will be muted.

The game does nail the mechanics of a shooter and it's certainly beautiful to look at, but everything else hasn't quite gelled into a cohesive whole. Since Destiny is obviously designed to be an evolving game played for the long haul, though, it will certainly be interesting to see how it progresses and grows over time.

If your friends are getting it and you like multiplayer, it's worth playing.

Once you distill it all down I did have fun in Destiny. I just wish the ride would have lasted longer. The endgame grind is not what I was hoping for and has turned me off completely. Bungie has stated repeatedly that the game really starts at 20. If that is true then this game will have a very short shelf life. The grind just is not fun. Hopefully these special events will keep the game fresh and new for most players to drop in and out of and get more value for their dollar.

Destiny is far from a perfect game, with flaws quite clearly apparent in the storytelling and the repetitive formula, but it’s also a game that can quite easily keep you coming back for more time and again, especially if you play with friends.

It has strengths. It has weaknesses. And whether or not it burrows its way into your own psyche depends on your tolerance for familiarity, that breeder of contempt, that warm blanket of comfort.

You won't find better gunplay and online features out there, but at the same time you wont find much to do in this huge project that seems to need tons of new and better content, improved writing and some of the "magic" Bungie failed to include in the initial package.

And yet, despite these glaring, obvious faults, Destiny is utterly capable of draining the hours away, via its excellent combat and its PvP. Flawed, yes. Fun? Certainly. A total failure? Not really.

Destiny feels like it wasn't ready, but it was shipped anyway. It tantalizes with glimpses of brilliance, but then confounds with clunky design decisions and baffling oversights.

As it is, Destiny is an ambitious project that isn't quite meeting its potential yet. All of the pieces are in place for a great dungeon-crawling playground, and I've enjoyed my time with it, but I'd like to see it come into its own as a more cohesive experience.

As someone who genuinely, deeply cares about games as works of art, to see a game as limited as Destiny become the game that is on the front pages of mainstream news is like a slap in the face. I can't deny that the game is entertaining, beautiful, or content-rich, but for all that Destiny is not even close to a masterpiece.

Destiny is a worthwhile distraction, a visually classy playground that regularly manages to entertain for a few hours. But a true calling, it is not.

Playing around in Bungie's galaxy for its own sake is still just so undeniable and compulsive a draw that the disappointingly threadbare "why" starts fading into the background.

Destiny is not really the revolutionary FPS we were waiting for, but it is still a good one. The gameplay, art direction, graphics and musics are fantastic, but right now the game lacks content at a high level and you can get bored easily from its repetitiveness.

It’s not short of spectacle but in terms of innovation and variety this is nowhere near as forward-thinking as Bungie would like to pretend.

Destiny isn’t a bad game, by any means. If you like sci-fi shooters, you’ll get a good 20 hours of enjoyment out of this. But that’s really all it is; a fun, forgettable shooter that plays it safe and sticks to what’s been proven, with nothing to really set it apart from it’s peers.

Today, of course, Destiny is a mess, but I sympathize with it.

The experiment “Shooter-MMO-crossover” has not completely failed. Especially the competitive firefights are quite entertaining. But then again, as a full-fledged shooter it doesn’t have any significant impact while as an MMO it doesn’t have enough content. Welcome to Destigrind.

Bungie has said it has come up with 10 years of content for Destiny, but I was bored at around 10 hours. The game has its moments, but it needs more. It needs adventurous thinking and risky ideas. It needs challenges that go beyond racking up headshots. It needs engagement among players to make them feel useful and important. It needs people and places within it that have more character than just pretty helmets and vistas and lens flare.

The story and setting leave a lot to be desired, but the gunplay is very sound, and the PVP element reminds me of some of my favorite shooters, filled with tons of exciting moments...But even after digging into the nitty-gritty, the endgame structure is rigid and has too many problems at the current moment to warrant a full recommendation.

Destiny has an interesting, original idea for an online shooter that is wrapped in some excellent production value but stands on really weak legs. Bungie's game has a potential to be adored by many, but it depends on their tolerance for repetitiveness. In time, all of this will probably be extended and built upon, but right now this is just a dream. I quite like Destiny, but I won't be spending many more hours with this game.

With a lifeless world, a hazily plotted, repetitive campaign, and an endgame that quickly resorts to a slow grind for marginally better loot, Destiny fails to deliver on the promise of its concept and the enormous potential of its gameplay systems.

Solid shooter focused on co-op gameplay, but it lacks story and variety, while sporting an ordinary RPG skill tree. [Issue#245]

For better and worse, Destiny is open-ended and nearly content-free gunplay for as long as you want it to last.

Destiny is more of a promising future than a truly absorbing game everyone enjoys from the very beginning. Its lack of game content along with its merciless repetition and grinding are spoiling a good impression of well-elaborated action.

A decent multiplayer doesn't make up for all that grudgingly repetitive gameplay and a bloated, clichéd story. The world of Destiny is a shallow and uninspired place that fails to capture the imagination, let alone the will to play on after mowing down the millionth wave of dead-eyed space robots.

Destiny prefers telling the same stories time and time again, hoping to transfix you with its rinse-and-repeat pace and ply you with the possibility of better loot, rather than with gameplay diversity that intimates surprises hovering on the horizon.

When you throw it all together, you're left with a game where the missions are designed to be repeatable, but all the missions are so repetitive that it's hard to get excited to see the same handful of environments again and again and again as you attempt to grind out faction reputation or hunt around for high-end weapons. It's a beautiful game, but a hollow experience.

As just another game, Destiny is a confusing combination of often at-odds elements — it presents itself as ambitious, almost boastful, while seeming strangely safe and reserved. It wants to eat its cake as a shooter, and have the longevity of an MMO — but it lacks the combat sophistication of the former, and the deep well of content native to the latter.

With its banal universe and flavorless style, Destiny is packed with content, but just ... well ... content. There's a great PvP mode, and the leveling system can be rewarding, but nonetheless this is a pretty, rock-solid, ultimately pedestrian product.

Instead of coming up with anything interesting and worthwhile, Destiny takes mechanics from better games and grinds them to a halt in an incredibly repetitive and monotonous experience. The PvP is all right and the presentation may be gorgeous, but the pretty surface only serves to remind us of the emptiness inside.