Destiny - Review Thread

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Thinking about it, the worst crime I about Destiny is the god awful pre-order bonus, which you had to BUY like a weapon store, which becomes obsolete in like 2 hours of gameplay, but takes about an hour to make up the money for it.
 
I really disagree, I find the combat design engaging and exciting, even if most missions amount to your ghost hacking stuff, which I don't think really matters.

I think optics matter. I don't see a practical difference between play level -> defend ghost in setpiece and play level -> have setpiece in room and then watch cutscene where character leaves the level, but it feels repetitious and monotonous. That's on the designers and they should have caught it. Optics do matter.
 
It was and always has been marketed as a co op online fps with rpg and mmo elements, not the citizen kane single player campaign (that honour goes to TLOU). So I am not sure what our argument is, either there is a de-facto level of scrutiny for FPS games with stories or there isnt

Yes, co-op online fps. Co-op games rely on their mission structure and objectives (and story) to not be shit. A competitive arena shooter doesn't. If the core gameplay of an arena shooter is good, and it has quality maps, then it's done its job. Games like Quake 3 Arena, Unreal Tournament, Tribes, and yea Titanfall didn't fuck up the things that they rely on to keep the players entertained.

Destiny isn't one of these. It need more than just the core gameplay system's to be good. It need the missions to be good, and varied, because the AI is your primary opponent rather than the infinitely varied human opposition of competitive play. Halo's gameplay is great, yet Spartan Ops was still shit, because the missions were boring tedious, repetitive scenarios that manage to fuck up the solid foundations they're built on. Destiny is like Spartan Ops. It's a load of sad mission designs broken up by story that's not good enough to act as a strong incentive to complete them.
 
I have a feeling that Destiny is going be just like Diablo 3 an incredibly polished game with fun mechanics that will fall short at launch due to the lack of content and various mistakes and things missing. BUT I think that like Diablo 3 because the formula on paper is awesome and because the company (Bungie like Blizzard) have a big experience and talent they are going to fix the game and with an expansion or a sequel its going to be something to look forward to. Think the launch is disappointing like Diablo 3 but in the future Destiny is going to be a really great game simply because the idea on paper is great what wasn't great is the execution.

The problem I see with this is that the console market is very different. Every year there's THE new FPS to try. If you don't create a loyal community by then, it's gone. The "honeymoon" period will be over fast IMO. The backlash is one of the fastest I've seen in my 25+ years of gaming.
 
I do recall Respawn and the vast majority of the majority of the gaming press (including the most of the ones dishing Destiny a barrage of 6) masturbating over how Titanfall was going to be next big thing, a game changer, a revolution in online MP

2 Months later MS couldn't give those game away.

Advertising and Hype should not be the bases of a review system.

And? Way to change your original point.

You specifically mentioned story, something Respawn never made any huge claims on and Bungie wouldn't stop telling anyone who'd listen about.
 

I'd actually love to know what happened between then and more recently, because it's not just a matter of having the same skybox now as they showed then, only now you can't actually play it like they said we could. I mean, here, look at this. This is from the same area in the game, but the skyboxes are completely different. In fact, the old one look much less like an actual skybox and more like real, playable geometry. Notice the grass and the general density.

iYo4FmhcdaLzp.PNG

iby06OhoFrBbma.PNG


So somewhere along the way the decided they needed to make a hand-painted skybox instead of what they had, and I'd love to know what happened there.
 
So who else played the beta and saw these criticisms coming from a long way off?

I did, though I figured the game would get mostly glowing reviews at first and everyone would love it for a couple weeks. Then there would be a massive backlash after the honeymoon. The beta was fun but seemed like it would get repetitive quick and the story missions were piss-poor. I guess we were all hoping they were holding back on the "good stuff" especially when it comes to the campaign.

I preordered it anyway and will go pick it up this afternoon. I liked the gunplay well enough and I want to see all the environments. If, however, I am forced into repeating levels at any point I will immediately throw it on the trade pile. I don't go for that shit when I have 100s of other games to play.
 
saying the classes are the same is just retarded.

the subclasses pretty much make 6 pretty different classes .. blink vs jump vs flight

bubble shield vs bomb vs rail gun vs co-op booster

invisibility, shield, re-gen

etc
 
saying the classes are the same is just retarded.

He is likely referring to that they feel the same and the class change is more arbitrary rather than fundamentally different.

In Destiny, the player is still shooting the same guns and using similar powers. Where as to compare to something like DOTA, World of Warcraft, or Diablo where changing the class completely affects the way you interact with the game.
 
And? Way to change your original point.

You specifically mentioned story, something Respawn never made any huge claims on and Bungie wouldn't stop telling anyone who'd listen about.

I didn't change my point, I am merely making the comparison between the two promises and the reaction to both

Don't be obtuse
 
saying the classes are the same is just retarded.

the subclasses pretty much make 6 pretty different classes .. blink vs jump vs flight

bubble shield vs bomb vs rail gun vs co-op booster

invisibility, shield, re-gen

etc

Please tell me the lowercase typing is hint of your sarcasm...
 
I have no doubt that Destiny will get a lot better as time goes on and it gets more content and features. The problem is that promises aren't playable.

The question is: will people care enough about what they have right now to stick around until then, specially with stuff like the new Call of Duty and Battlefield on the horizon?
I was waiting on the reviews before I picked up Destiny, but with the general consensus that the game isn't worth $60 right now I'll probably never get it. Especially with Dragon Age, GTAV, COD, BF4DLC, and the deluge of games coming out in 2015.

Destiny will be a forgotten game this generation like Lair.
 
So what is the reason behind the first raid not coming at launch?

Especially if you can reach end game in a dozen hrs or so.
 
It's easier to read things on your phone than on your TV, yes.

The Grimoire cards are more like extra stuff you can read when you can't play the game. For example when you are on your commute or on your lunch time. It's pretty clear they are designed to work that way.

When you are playing the game the idea is that you play it. Go on missions or play multiplayer. Those cards are extra fluff that you can enjoy when you aren't playing the game.

You might not like it and prefer having them in game but it isn't a stupid decision or a lazy one.

Sorry i just think it's ridiculous to have a system in place where you unlock cards that not only benefit gameplay but add story to a sorely lacking narrative and not let players look at them in the game if they want to.

You might not think it's a stupid decision but obviously i disagree. But anyway thats the smallest thing wrong with the game.
 
What I wonder is why don't more games with MMORPG style design get hit with this.

Yeah, the "drivers" on the genre so to speak are not unique in this game. I think they made some obvious design decisions to incorporate those elements that I think hurt the game, particularly compared to their earlier efforts. But I still am surprised by how many people are surprised.
 
I didn't change my point, I am merely making the comparison between the two promises and the reaction to both

Don't be obtuse

Titanfall didn't bomb in sales or critically. Destiny isn't doing as well as hoped critically, but presumably sold a really great amount. The sooner we end this "Titanfall flopped/is dead/etc" talk, the better.
 

I remember doing the same thing during the very first level... except in the corner by the wall... it wasn't a big drop at all.. and I'm this dude who can take how many direct hits from opposing gunfire?

I'm on the fence if something like this is less immerseive than invisible walls. I mean shit.. at least with invisible walls I don't die.

Also, it really bears repeating.. but Dinklage is fucking terrible.
 
I do recall Respawn and the vast majority of the majority of the gaming press (including the most of the ones dishing Destiny a barrage of 6) masturbating over how Titanfall was going to be next big thing, a game changer, a revolution in online MP
.

Titanfall was always hyped for its gameplay. The reveal trailer like the ads were dynamic sequence of wallrunning, Titan shooting etc, the press could play it at E3, many people could play it and told how fun it was. And in the end it delivered on those promises, and thebeta before release didn't cast any doubt on that. It was known from day one there wouldn't be a real campaign, the game took the Counter Strike route of "we'll do one thing and do it right".
Titanfall and Destiny can't be compared, they're almost opposite in both their design and the way their marketing was handled.
 
So who else played the beta and saw these criticisms coming from a long way off?
This guy. I remember playing the beta and thinking to myself, "wow this game is boring and has bad Ai". The missions where poorly designed any the acting was some of the worst I've seen in a aaa game. In fact, the acting in destiny is worse than than the acting in bf4.
 
I don't quite understand people's expectations for this game. From the get-go the game was basically being developed like an MMO.

Right now, Bungie needed to release Destiny in its current state so it can build upon its framework and general foundation. If they wanted to implement everything they were aiming for, the game wouldn't have seen a release for another 3+ years.

Now I understand that people need to review the game as it is, thus informing their audience of how the game currently is. As it stands, Destiny is a good game. A solid 7/10.

However, the framework of Destiny still provides plenty of content to cover until the expansions hit. Destiny is far from complete as a product, just like many MMOs. Its scope and ambition can't be implemented all at once or else we would never be able to play the game.

Anyone who did not see Destiny as a semi-MMO did not do their research. Simple as that. From what I have played, I am excited at Destiny's future and I'm glad to be a part of its community.

While I agree that a game based on future promises seems to be a cop-out response in determining its quality, I think it holds a bit more weight for games that fall under the concept or framework of MMOs.
 
I'd actually love to know what happened between then and more recently, because it's not just a matter of having the same skybox now as they showed then, only now you can't actually play it like they said we could. I mean, here, look at this. This is from the same area in the game, but the skyboxes are completely different. In fact, the old one look much less like an actual skybox and more like real, playable geometry. Notice the grass and the general density.

iYo4FmhcdaLzp.PNG

iby06OhoFrBbma.PNG


So somewhere along the way the decided they needed to make a hand-painted skybox instead of what they had, and I'd love to know what happened there.

The Destiny post mortem is gonna be delicious. I figure they were planning too big and last year Acti told them to get it done or be done and they scrambled putting anything together. The result is Destiny and it has nothing in common with what they were working on for three and a half years. At least I hope that's how it went down.
 
I think optics matter. I don't see a practical difference between play level -> defend ghost in setpiece and play level -> have setpiece in room and then watch cutscene where character leaves the level, but it feels repetitious and monotonous. That's on the designers and they should have caught it. Optics do matter.

When you get right down to it, you could say all of the original Halo trilogy amounts to attacking and defending positions.

The difference is Halo has the tight focus of a FPS instead of half-ass FPS/RPG/MMO/whatever Destiny turned out to be. So it has a more coherent narrative structure to give a motivation to all its attacking and defending, it has stronger encounter design with more varied weapons and vehicles because they can build around one experience and not "uh well people might show up with revolvers or shotguns so lets just make a bunch of enemy waves for 20 hours and let them decide! We can even sell it to the media as 'play how you want to play!", and they don't have 15 minute bullet sponge bosses with one attack because they don't have to accommodate XP and leveling and getting weapons to do bigger numbers and shit.

But then it can't really be a RPG either, cuz they are no interesting NPCs to interact with, and they want the gameplay to be kinda skill based like Halo so all your main weapons are variations of machine guns without stat-based bonuses like critical hit chance or elemental damage/resistance, and we don't want people to feel they can't play our story solo so lets make it so you'll never communicate with the 3-4 people you might see in our Persistent Online Shooter unless you do a complicated button combo of press R3-options-invite to fireteam-invite to party-hope he joins before awwww we hit the darkness zone oops. They figured if they just took all the environments they would use as "story" missions and laid them all out together, they could say it was like a RPG world you can explore, even though you've seen everything if you played the story and there's NOTHING interesting to do.

It doesn't have the strengths of a great RPG or a great FPS. Its just...this thing
 
Yeah, I think they didn't go far enough with the social/RPG aspects if there's really any one issue that's obvious to me. The other stuff is sort of the hallmark of the genre.
 
Titanfall didn't bomb in sales or critically. Destiny isn't doing as well as hoped critically, but presumably sold a really great amount. The sooner we end this "Titanfall flopped/is dead/etc" talk, the better.

That as hyperbole for effect on my part, TF is a fine game expectations or no
 
It's obvious because people got to play the game before the reviewers.

Before fans would backlash at reviewers before playing the game ala Uncharted 3.

This should actually be a more common thing. I know people want reviews to be available day 1 but reviewers having the game with the consumers puts the opinions more in line with each other as opposed to the bias that takes place when reviewers are given special treatment from publishers.
 
I did, though I figured the game would get mostly glowing reviews at first and everyone would love it for a couple weeks. Then there would be a massive backlash after the honeymoon. The beta was fun but seemed like it would get repetitive quick and the story missions were piss-poor. I guess we were all hoping they were holding back on the "good stuff" especially when it comes to the campaign.

I preordered it anyway and will go pick it up this afternoon. I liked the gunplay well enough and I want to see all the environments. If, however, I am forced into repeating levels at any point I will immediately throw it on the trade pile. I don't go for that shit when I have 100s of other games to play.

Yeah, get it and enjoy it for what it is. The gameplay is great and there are indeed some gorgeous environments to check out. But the lack of creativity and variety within the mission structure will eventually start to grate on you.
 
Yeah, I think they didn't go far enough with the social/RPG aspects if there's really any one issue that's obvious to me. The other stuff is sort of the hallmark of the genre.

This is why Bungie's reason for the review embargo was complete bullshit.

"Wait until our game actually has players in it!!".

Why? They can't really do much of anything in terms of social interaction anyway.
 
Titanfall was always hyped for its gameplay. The reveal trailer like the ads were dynamic sequence of wallrunning, Titan shooting etc, the press could play it at E3, many people could play it and told how fun it was. And in the end it delivered on those promises, and thebeta before release didn't cast any doubt on that. It was known from day one there wouldn't be a real campaign, the game took the Counter Strike route of "we'll do one thing and do it right".
Titanfall and Destiny can't be compared, they're almost opposite in both their design and the way their marketing was handled.

Exactly. Which is why I've found it increasingly baffling that some people keep trying to bring TF into these Destiny discussions. Is the butthurt about the scoring? imo TF delivered what Respawn said it would.
 
I think that would be pretty difficult to generalize.

he has a lot of experience getting shit on twitter and in comments for his opinions

I think the key difference this time is that reviews dropped well after all the overhyped players played the game. a lot of shit critics get for reviews happens before people even play the game.
 
I like that though. Gamespot was a notoriously tough reviewer in the early 2000s with Kasavin, Gerstmann, Shoemaker, and crew. They were the best reviews you could read, and it seems they have been going back to being a tough, critical, review site these days, which is more than a welcome sight.

Well they got to do something since activity over there seems to have been very low within the last year and a half.
 
What I wonder is why don't more games with MMORPG style design get hit with this.

Yeah, I'm not sure I entirely get it either. I almost cancelled my pre-order because I knew it was going to suck alone, but didn't when other people said they were going to get it.

I'm not sure I get the class complaints, either. It's a shooter, the only thing it could do more to make the classes have a bit more variety is lock weapon types. However that would create a lot of balancing issues.

While I think Destiny is far from perfect, and certainly lacking in content(Still don't get where the money went...), I don't think it's quite as bad as the backlash seems to suggest. :I
 
Titanfall was always hyped for its gameplay. The reveal trailer like the ads were dynamic sequence of wallrunning, Titan shooting etc, the press could play it at E3, many people could play it and told how fun it was. And in the end it delivered on those promises, and thebeta before release didn't cast any doubt on that. It was known from day one there wouldn't be a real campaign, the game took the Counter Strike route of "we'll do one thing and do it right".
Titanfall and Destiny can't be compared, they're almost opposite in both their design and the way their marketing was handled.

This - I never even looked at Titanfall because I'm mainly a campaign/SP gamer. Respawn were honest about what their focus was and I correctly judged the game to be not for me. Bungie on the other hand repeatedly said that Destiny was all about creating an epic space opera with a strong narrative that lives in a social/MMO overworld. There are an insane number of interviews/dev logs etc that confirm this. I bought it expecting a Mass Effect level campaign with Halo FPS mechanics and co-op. I'm likely not the only person that thought this. If Bungie had openly said that Destiny was a social/co-op loot grinding game with a very barebones "campaign" that wasn't its focus, it likely wouldn't have sold anywhere near as well as it did. They totally deserve to be called out for that.

All games deserve to be judged against the expectations they set for themselves. Titanfall accomplished what it set out to do, Destiny fell flat.
 
What would be hard about reading his review, summing up that a lot of the comments agree with the review and writing that tweet, though?

He's not just talking about his review. How are you going to quantify the number of people "lashing out in anger"?
 

That's how I feel. I Like what's there and will continue enjoying it, but it deserves some of the scores it's gotten. I'm happy that reviewers seem to be giving much more proper scores lately. That there's a 96 on Metacritic for this game is an absolute joke. "Chumps" indeed. I can't even finish reading it after the very first sentence of the review.
 
My problem is not with the score itself (Knack and DR3 are, together with metro Redux, my favotire games this gen till now); but those critics are exactly the same as the 1st impressions I had with the Beta.

Gamespot:
-Repetitive missions containing repetitive encounters
-Abysmal storytelling that makes you unlock and seek out basic plot elements
-Endgame has you grinding the same bullet-sponge bosses over and over again

Im relieved to have waited the reviews and impressions before jumping in, I wasnt believing this hype after my experience with the beta on both PS4 and Xbox One.
 
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