Half a billion in the making: Bungie's Destiny reviewed

Mission critical

The next thing you know you’ll be dropping onto Earth, Venus, Mars or the Moon on a mission to exterminate whatever bad guys are lurking on the surface, before facing off against a boss. Here we are at the theme of repetition once again.

In the firing line

You see, pretty much all of Destiny’s missions follow the exact same template. The hostile force you are decimating might change, but such is the similarity between each that your approach barely needs to alter.

The terrain changes from planet to planet, but this is only superficial. And your Ghost – a robotic drone voiced amiably enough by Peter Dinklage – does enough to keep the game’s plot moving forward, if little else.

Ghost in the machine

It might have been a little more involving to have your Ghost spot far away enemies, or tell you that a bad guy is about to plant a knife in your back, for example. But then I guess you can’t have everything.

All-in, the game’s story should take around 15 hours to complete. Yet it's unlikely that you’ll have found every secret there is to find by then. You probably won’t have hit the highest levels either, and you’ll doubtless have a number of levels left to complete on the higher difficulty settings too.

Fallen from grace

Regardless, you might justifiably ask for more, and that’s where the Crucible, Destiny’s online arena, comes into its own.

Variations of six-on-six deathmatch and capture-and-hold is the order of the day. But the fact you’ll carry all of your looted equipment and unlocked special attacks into the online fray adds nicely to the spectacle.

Multiplayer mayhem

Admittedly, I say that after being irritated by the system at first. My first experience in the Crucible was as a level five Titan thrust into a match between level seventeen players. Sure, there’s a balancing system of sorts in there to even the odds a little. But really, pitting my recruit against grizzled veterans has me shouting out for proper matchmaking.

Irked, I backed away from the Crucible for a while and decided to level-up via the campaign. Then, suddenly, having reached level fifteen or so, I jumped back in to find that the PvP had suddenly become interesting.

Gunning for victory

Because your player is yours, down to the armour, guns and setup, the online battlefields feel all the more bespoke. It helps that Bungie has also sprung a few additional game modes in the shape of special events. These are multiplayer modes that will be rotated week-by-week in a bid to keep things fresh.

The Reg Verdict

Destiny is by no means the revolution for the FPS that its hype demanded. That said, it’s no everyday shooter either.

To succeed it needs to maintain the volume of players currently battling upon its servers – something made clear by the death of Titanfall. And, as of right now, it certainly seems to have the required properties, with Bungie’s active support being the most crucial.

You may revisit the same areas and take out hordes of identikit enemies over and again. But, when you get that next awesome weapon, or hit that next level of experience it’ll all seem worth it. ®