Destiny - Review Thread

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Isn't witch-hunting frowned upon? And while the 7 years is misinformation and completely devoid of context, that doesn't mean someone who hasn't played the game can't question it when seeing reviews/reading impressions.

The line is where someone starts saying something about the quality of the game or about specific elements as if they have played it when they actually haven't.

Otherwise why do we have these threads when generally the reviews are out before any of us touch the shrink-wrap?
I'd say this whole thread is a witch hunt honestly.

No he didn't. He threw a grenade to show that you could go there to see how far you could walk. In saying that there was so much to explore. If they wanted to leave it for updating new areas, why did they remove it completely and give us skyboxes instead?

I don't know why it got changed. Why don't you pm urk? Using common sense I'd say they had a hard time squeezing everything into last gen hardware or had to cut stuff to make a release date. Either way the game area is very large and open just with interconnects. You could easily dice each planet into 6 or more levels in a normal fps game. That's a relatively big game.
 
Are we in full-on Destiny bullying mode? No way does it deserve this type of critical backlash. It isn't going to change games the way Halo did, but is it really a bad game?

It seems people either expected it to be a full-on MMO with vast worlds to explore, or for it to deliver them a scripted narrative experience akin to Bioshock Infinite.

Whilst Bungie is partially at fault for this with the way they sold the game at conferences, they did release an open alpha and beta that painted a pretty clear picture of what to expect.

As others have pointed out, it definitely is not perfect. But at the same time judging it for what it IS, and what it DELIVERS, I find it hard to say it is inherently a bad or broken game, nothing that would be so deserving of this insane backlash and hundreds of posters going out of their way to call Bungie out, as if they somehow got away with something.

With what, our $60?



It seems we are witch hunting Destiny.

I think you're taking this thread too personally...
 
Destiny being a blend of genres may make this worse than normal but reading this thread very very few people are even close to the actual flaws and problems the game has. And those are the people that played it.

The story is weak. The gameplay is great. The Co op is the best an fps has to offer. The loot drops are a bit sparse but not brutally so. People wanted more or expected more content and variation. These are legit criticisms.

The social aspect is janky. The only way you can make friends really is pugging strikes then friending the good players. If you already have friends the game welcomes you with open arms. That's another fair criticism.

No way is the a 7.5 game when it's contemporaries scores are taken into account. This is, imho, an industry backlash after bf4, titanfall, and watch dogs. Where they were criticized on their high scores so now the reviewers are grinding on destiny.

Exactly this. This statement nails it. Just add Infamous second son and MGS Ground zeroes to that list.
 

LOL

This guy...
BBsrGu5.jpg
 
Gotta say, I'm just about as in love with Bungie's environmental artists as that tweet suggests. The game looks absolutely stunning at times, and it just feels good to swoop around it and bunny boost all over it - when the world isn't killing you with misadventures because you passed into some unmarked and counter-intuitive kill volume.
 
Maybe at that point that area *was* playable, but it wasn't in final release.

Anybody saying or accusing Bungie of lying isn't being entirely fair because game development is not a smooth process where developers get everything they want in the game they initially wanted to. Things get cut. Things get redesigned. Things change.

People need to remember this.
It does seem some of this came awfully close to release though. It's not fair to hold those court released documents against them given how much things can change from an initial pitch to the final product (even the console deals were practically inverted there!) but closer to release and not living up to how they're making it sound can be really disappointing.
 
I find it hard to believe that Bungie 'knew' they had a bad or mediocre game on their hands. And that delaying reviews by a week would do anything to avert a media backlash.

I bet Bungie used that time to pack their bags and flee to Mexico? No? Ok.

I find it hard to believe that Bungie, a developer responsible for one of the best franchises in gaming, a very experienced and skilled developer, didn't know that they had a lackluster game in their hands.

Delaying reviews wouldn't avert a media backlash, but it will help them sell $500m in preorders/early purchases. And it did exactly that.
 
I cringed reading that. He doesn't understand the purpose of reviews at all.

Gaming is an expensive hobby. We pay hundreds of dollars for a platform and $60 for a new game. With deceptive marketing tactics such as fake demos, bullshots, and PR speak, how can we know if a game is worth it?

If flaws, especially major ones are there, it is best to point them out. If a game truly isn't worth our hard earned money, then everyone deserves to know. Sure, you can have fun with almost any game but these are not free. And with a disappointing game, you're not just wasting your hard earned money, you're wasting time.

Right. I think he was just reacting emotionally. Which is fine, but reviewers are supposed to be critical. It is their job to evaluate the game's worth so their audience is as informed as possible as to whether or not the game is worth a purchase. Not all of them are very good at it, and since everything is subjective in gaming, you may find yourself in complete disagreement with them often.

I'm not crazy about Destiny. It has a ton of potential that just wasn't realized. Still, I don't think I could give it under a 7.5. A 6.0, particularly in the way Gamespot seems to use the scale, is a surprise to me.

Just being able to jump in and shoot aliens in the face, in gorgeous areas, with awesome mechanics, with two friends makes me smile.

Now, the encounters aren't very interesting but the aliens are fun to fight. They should have made the instanced encounters much more interesting, that's for sure.
 
this is going to be one of those games where it just feels like I'm somehow playing something completely different than the reviewers isn't it?

I don't even like online play or MMOs yet Destiny has completely sucked me in since the beta
 
I find it hard to believe that Bungie 'knew' they had a bad or mediocre game on their hands. And that delaying reviews by a week would do anything to avert a media backlash.

I bet Bungie used that time to pack their bags and flee to Mexico? No? Ok.

Publishers use mock reviews to gauge meta scores. They come in pretty early, so it isn't hard to believe that they held review copies because they knew it wouldn't score very high. That isn't conspiracy, that isn't tinfoil hat wearing, that's literally how AAA games work. It's the reason why games like The Last of Us broke embargo two weeks before release.
 

Destiny has a problem with definite articles. In Bungie’s last franchise, Halo, you were the Master Chief, stoically underdeveloped savior of the universe and perennial badass. In Destiny, you’re a Guardian, one of hundreds (or thousands or millions, it’s never entirely clear) of errand boys and girls on a non-stop rampage around the Solar System. That turns out to be a more important distinction than it might initially sound.

Add that to their problems with proper nouns.
 
Sorry. I'm not at home so I can follow the nerd rage du jour with the same intensity that I usually do... but, does Destiny really cause this much vitriol?

What I'm expecting (when I get my PS4 back and buy Destiny) is a aesthetically pleasing Borderlands game with tight controls and some fun multiplayer? What am I missing? What is it this game isn't? I've played the alpha and beta to death and I've enjoyed every second of it.

How can it create this kind of backlash?
 
Are we in full-on Destiny bullying mode? No way does it deserve this type of critical backlash. It isn't going to change games the way Halo did, but is it really a bad game?

It seems people either expected it to be a full-on MMO with vast worlds to explore, or for it to deliver them a scripted narrative experience akin to Bioshock Infinite.

Whilst Bungie is partially at fault for this with the way they sold the game at conferences, they did release an open alpha and beta that painted a pretty clear picture of what to expect.

As others have pointed out, it definitely is not perfect. But at the same time judging it for what it IS, and what it DELIVERS, I find it hard to say it is inherently a bad or broken game, nothing that would be so deserving of this insane backlash and hundreds of posters going out of their way to call Bungie out, as if they somehow got away with something.

With what, our $60?



It seems we are witch hunting Destiny.

This thread has a lot of people explaining what the have issues with. Try to argue those critiques and maybe this will get somewhere.
 
There's no way you can say that for sure. Maybe it was and maybe Bungie had stuff for the player to do, but it wasn't in the final release. You know, game development.

During the run-up to Halo 3's release, one Bungie said you could walk around to the Forerunenr portal. You can't in the final release, but maybe Bungie's plan was for you to at one point and it got scaled back.

It's not the first time that's happened.

Bungie misrepresenting one of their games? I'm shocked, I say! Shocked!

Surely there has been no precedent with Halo 2 and Halo 3, games in which Bungie was completely honest with their prerelease footage and demos.
 
Maybe at that point that area *was* playable, but it wasn't in final release.

Anybody saying or accusing Bungie of lying isn't being entirely fair because game development is not a smooth process where developers get everything they want in the game they initially wanted to. Things get cut. Things get redesigned. Things change.

People need to remember this.

no we really dont have to remember anything. i dont work at bungie, i dont get paychecks from activision. im the consumer, i pay 60 bucks to get a product that gets falsely advertised.
 
Regarding everyone comparing this with Diablo 3 at launch... that's valid, but Destiny has so much more work to do than Diablo 3 did to get it to where it needs to be. And there's no indication Bungie has any interest in creating awesome setpieces, varied gameplay, fixing all the social shit, putting in an actual story with actually interesting characters, etc.

Diablo 3 had a to build a house, Destiny needs to build a skyscraper.

The game is full of awesome set pieces. I'm building a phot library of then now, the level design is superb.

And the combat is incredibly varied. The different factions are very different to fight against, and there is enough variety in each to allow the designers to script encounters in ways that make them feel slightly different each time.

The core of this game - the level design and the combat - is a master class in game design. It just has a bunch of glaring flaws on top, but luckily the flaws are not inherent to the core and can be fixed if Bungie wanted to.

I'm hoping they want to.
 
Quite a few.

Notable losses include Joe Staten(their lead story guy) and Marty O'Donnell(their composer).
Geez, and it was at the start of the year for their story guy. I wonder how relevant that is to how the story turned out, whether it was losing their way without him around or them being antagonistic to properly developing the story so he goes "screw this, I quit."
 
Maybe at that point that area *was* playable, but it wasn't in final release.

Anybody saying or accusing Bungie of lying isn't being entirely fair because game development is not a smooth process where developers get everything they want in the game they initially wanted to. Things get cut. Things get redesigned. Things change.

People need to remember this.
I never believed any of it was playable. That's not possible for a cross gen game. I understand that game development isn't exactly all rainbows sunshine, I understand that there will have to be compromises and things dropped. What we ended up with is more than that. Yeah, things do get redesigned and changed, for sure! But, Bungie was promising things they couldn't deliver. Some things probably weren't changed or have been redesigned, some things just couldn't have been done. Instead of letting people down outright, they just shushed up about it and let people (and reviewers) find out about it around launch. Bungie was intentionally ambiguous about a lot of things and led people to believe that Bungie was much grander in scale than it possibly could've been. Bungie hyped people to ridiculous levels for something not as great as they hyped it to be. Dax, sometimes companies mislead customers and it benefits them to do so. Whether they did it on purpose or not, they did it and I'm waiting to see a post mortem where they discuss what really happened when developing the game and acknowledge their shortcomings, note this isn't supposed to be malicious but acknowledging failures and trying to fix them are great. Overall, I'm a bit disappointed in the game, but it's fun and I look forward to every opportunity I get to play it. It's a good game with some flaws, no game is ever perfect, but some have deeper ones than others. I'm not creating problems out of thin air, and eventually I'm sure you'll see that.
 
Are we in full-on Destiny bullying mode? No way does it deserve this type of critical backlash. It isn't going to change games the way Halo did, but is it really a bad game?

It seems people either expected it to be a full-on MMO with vast worlds to explore, or for it to deliver them a scripted narrative experience akin to Bioshock Infinite.

Whilst Bungie is partially at fault for this with the way they sold the game at conferences, they did release an open alpha and beta that painted a pretty clear picture of what to expect.

As others have pointed out, it definitely is not perfect. But at the same time judging it for what it IS, and what it DELIVERS, I find it hard to say it is inherently a bad or broken game, nothing that would be so deserving of this insane backlash and hundreds of posters going out of their way to call Bungie out, as if they somehow got away with something.

With what, our $60?



It seems we are witch hunting Destiny.

You're being purposely obtuse because your upset this game that it is getting a less than ideal critical reception to an almost personal degree.

I like the game. Hell, I haven't even been bothered too much by the odd loot drops, despite I wish there was a bit more of a guarantee when it came to strikes. But I'm not going to white wash away the things 'wrong' with the game because of that enjoyment.

And I haven't seen that many actual responses to the review content. What I've seen throughout this thread, some common and some not so much:

  • They fell for hype
  • They are switching their standard (tinfoil)
  • It's trendy to give Destiny poor scores (tinfoil)
  • Things being criticized were in the beta, so they can't be criticized in the review
  • Reviewers are angry about Sony getting marketing and content exclusivity
  • Bungie will likely patch feature, so it can't be factored into the review
  • The game is going to have strong content support post-release, so it can't be reviewed
  • [User] loves the game, so criticism can't be made
  • Enjoyment of the game and criticism of it are mutually exclusive
  • Game isn't an MMO, so [criticism] isn't viable
  • Game is an MMO, so [criticism] isn't viable
  • People who are criticizing the game obviously haven't played it
  • All these games [user] didn't like reviewed higher, so Destiny is being picked on

All of these really don't actually tackle the actual content of the reviews, and most are focused on just looking at the scores.

I can say the same for a lot of people backing the reviews as well, so don't think I'm excusing them. Some of the above, particularly the MMO/not an MMO stuff can be turned around easily.

People are more interested in petty Us vs. Them bullshit than the actual subject of the thread.

Edit: There is a lot of thread shitting and drive bys going on. But it's coming from all over the place.
 
People, and their allegiances to ... things, to the point of harassing someone, makes me sick.

What? Why? It's a fucking game review.
Not only that, but if you bought it and you're enjoying it, who cares what some reviews says, different people different opinions, it doesn't take away from your damn enjoyment.
 

I can see his point of view. This is where destiny is feeling most of its backlash. From the "I need to feel like the lone savior" crowd. The review says the gameplay is wonderful but they don't feel special and aren't provided the why you are fighting really.

However I really have a hard time taking this review seriously when it took him 8 hours to go from lvl 20 to 21. I was online with 6 friends last night. In 4 hours we all leveled up atleast 3 times. And we weren't even going hard. Lots of talking at the tower and looking for ghosts. I'm not even good at fps games and 8 hours is laughable.
 
And the combat is incredibly varied. The different factions are very different to fight against, and there is enough variety in each to allow the designers to script encounters in ways that make them feel slightly different each time.

you gotta be joking
 
Gonna be interesting to see how Bungie responds officially to what is clearly the biggest critical failure of a AAA title in memory.

Hopefully with a blizzard approach and not burying their heads in the sand. It really is pretty close to being solid in the areas they can patch (story is what it is). Nerf the health of strike bosses, drastically expand matchmaking, make loot more interesting / less of a grind, cut back on some of the RNG, etc. Not necessarily quick fixes, but doable.
 
Sorry. I'm not at home so I can follow the nerd rage du jour with the same intensity that I usually do... but, does Destiny really cause this much vitriol?

What I'm expecting (when I get my PS4 back and buy Destiny) is a aesthetically pleasing Borderlands game with tight controls and some fun multiplayer? What am I missing? What is it this game isn't? I've played the alpha and beta to death and I've enjoyed every second of it.

How can it create this kind of backlash?

I can't answer your last question, but I think you're going to get exactly what you happen to be expecting. It has a lot less personality than a Borderlands game, but is a lot like it in many ways.
 
However I really have a hard time taking this review seriously when it took him 8 hours to go from lvl 20 to 21. I was online with 6 friends last night. In 4 hours we all leveled up atleast 3 times. And we weren't even going hard. Lots of talking at the tower and looking for ghosts. I'm not even good at fps games and 8 hours is laughable.

Currently taking that long to get to LV22. This is why loot based levelling sucks.
 
Sorry. I'm not at home so I can follow the nerd rage du jour with the same intensity that I usually do... but, does Destiny really cause this much vitriol?

What I'm expecting (when I get my PS4 back and buy Destiny) is a aesthetically pleasing Borderlands game with tight controls and some fun multiplayer? What am I missing? What is it this game isn't? I've played the alpha and beta to death and I've enjoyed every second of it.

How can it create this kind of backlash?

The hate is a bit extreme. But I think 6-7/10 is an apt score.

It's aesthetically pleasing but it doesn't match Borderlands for content. It feels and plays a lot better in the moment to moment shooting gameplay though. If you've played the beta, you know exactly what the expect for the rest of the game. It's just more of that -- which is pretty good.

Like 75 metacritic rating kind of good.

Some people are gloating a bit too much though and comparing it to disasters like FFXIV, which was a 49 metacritic rating. I think it's just fun for people to see a giant fall. But also Destiny's defenders are (probably not intentionally) goading people.
 
this is going to be one of those games where it just feels like I'm somehow playing something completely different than the reviewers isn't it?

I don't even like online play or MMOs yet Destiny has completely sucked me in since the beta

I feel the reviews were spot on. The game does lack content. Just walking around mars, earth filled with old double wide containers and junk cars is not very artistically inspiring.

Awesome engine, fantastic gun play, great online co-op. --> No one can/is arguing with that

As other gafers pointed out, if this had been a free to play game with content packs for individual planets, it would have easily scored in 9's.
 
Not only that, but if you bought it and you're enjoying it, who cares what some reviews says, different people different opinions, it doesn't take away from your damn enjoyment.

Exactly. I don't agree with all of the lower score reviews in their content, but that doesn't change that I do enjoy the game and that I'm confident Bungie will improve a lot of the shortcomings in the life of it.

Kind of shows that no one is actually interested in objective games coverage. They just want to hear what they already have figured out for themselves.
 
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