Last week Bungie announced that the Destiny Beta was open to the public. I didn’t hesitate one second to start my Xbox 360 and start downloading the beta. Overall, the game is very impressive and I enjoyed every second of playing it. Trying out the beta even made me reconsider to purchase Destiny. Below are some of my views on what I liked and disliked about the game.
In Destiny, you are a Guardian. A Guardian is someone who protects The City (the last city of Earth) with the powers gained from The Traveler. You start the game by choosing the species of your Guardian, which is nothing more than a cosmetic feature. You can be a Human, Exo or Awoken. You then choose the class of your Guardian. The class affects your gameplay. You can be a Hunter, Warlock or Titan. I chose to become a Human Hunter. I didn’t get the chance to try out the other classes so my views are only limited to the Hunter class. The game gave many options of customization (including sex) for your Guardian. Whilst you are playing the game, you will unlock many more customization features such as upgrades, armors, weapons and even spaceships. The list is very long. You can even unlock different strengths of similar weapons. I always enjoy when I can customize the character and gameplay to my liking, and Bungie made sure this was not lacking in Destiny.
The game starts with a simple tutorial mission. After the player finds their spaceship and gets to the Tower, they can choose to upgrade their weapons, engage with other players or customize their player. One thing I did find weird is that in The City you are in third-person view whilst in the rest of the game you are in first-person view. The player cannot change their views either. I think Bungie should have either stuck with one view or allow the player to change views whenever they feel like. I also did not like how you can walk through other players whilst in The City and it did make me lose the immersive of the game. However, I believe they did this to keep the game running smooth whilst online because collision detection is quite CPU heavy. This could be just me but while I was in the City, the game gave me a feeling of Too Human. Not sure if anyone else felt this.
There was around six-seven single player (or co-operative) missions you could play in the beta. This happened on Old Russia. One thing I liked about this is that you would see other Guardians doing their missions at the same time you would be doing your missions. If you were feeling kind, you could assist the other Guardians with their missions. The missions did lack in variety in the beta. There was only two types – go to this area and kill the boss or defend this area from waves of enemies. There was a free roam mission in the game but that mainly involved in collecting certain amount of objects or going to certain areas. I hope that in the final release of the game there will be a much bigger variety of missions.
The player movement felt good. Once you get to a higher level, you will be able to double jump. You can also run and slide. This movement set did feel a bit like Titanfall but more limited. I would have preferred if I had more parkour movements, such as wall running, hanging of ledges and vaulting over walls. For long distance travel, the Guardian can use their Sparrow. The Sparrow felt like a stretched version of the Ghost from Halo but without weapons (maybe you can unlock or buy weapon-versions of the Sparrow in the final release of Destiny). Riding that did not feel satisfying. The turning was not very smooth and it did not feel I had total control over the vehicle.
The enemies in the game had levels above their head that showed how strong they were. Some enemies did have question marks (???) above their head which I am not sure what that indicated. It could mean that that they were too strong for my current Guardian to kill or that they could not be killed in the beta. The enemies could be killed by shooting them, blowing them up (or burning them) with grenades or by knifing. The knifing in the game did feel a little bit of Call of Duty in that, the Guardian is pulled towards the enemy and then knifes them.
Once you get to level 5 in Destiny, you will unlock the Crucible (multiplayer). There was only one mode to play in multiplayer, which was Control. Control is a capture-and-hold bases game mode. It was an enjoyable mode but it was nothing revolutionary. The matchmaking did have a feeling of Halo. During the match, I sometimes struggled to distinguish between allies and enemies but that was to a lack of multiplayer experience I have. It has been a few years since I last played multiplayer properly. One thing I did not enjoy and I hope that they change is detailed stats post-match. Post-match I could only see my kills, assists and kill-to-death ratio. I could not see my deaths (but was easily able to work it out using my kills and kill-to-death ratio) which I did not really like.
The menu system in Destiny feels like it was made for PC. You have cursor that you can move around the whole screen and select different menus. There are rumors that Destiny will be released for PC and I have my fingers crossed that it is true.
Overall, I enjoyed the game very much and it looks very promising. I enjoyed the gameplay, the customization and the immersive gameplay. It had a few things that I did not enjoy but that was mainly due to personal preference. I enjoyed the single player more than I enjoyed the multiplayer but that was because I had no one else to play with. Destiny will be released for PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One on September 9 2014. The (rumored) PC version release date is March 2015 and I will be hoping that it is true.