Destiny Review - World of Chorecraft

Flunk

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Feb 17, 2008
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I hate any shooter that requires you "level up" to do basic things. It's infuriating to have my aim screwed up or be otherwise artificially limited. It ruins the whole thing for me. So now that I know that I'm going to give Destiny a pass, glad I read this review.

If they must have unlocks they should just lock down the weapons so you have less choice and can unlock more choice or slight upgrades.
 

lumenadducere

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May 19, 2008
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My general approach to MMOs is that they're only going to improve with time, and that it's not until the first few updates are out that the devs have really gotten what they wanted into the game. I can only assume that Destiny is going to be the same, especially given that Bungie as a studio hasn't done a MMO before. If they're genuinely looking to get this to be a 10-year franchise then they're going to improve on it with time.
 

ilexuki

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Apr 14, 2012
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the main thing i've learned from this whole destiny thing is, a lot of people not only have never played a mmo, but have no idea what makes a mmo a mmo.

destiny, is not a traditional mmo, so people need to stop comparing it to wow,ff,gw2, etc.

destiny is closest to a lobby mmo, like vindictus, warframe, phantasy star. lobby mmos have different rules and standards than traditional mmos.they handle content differently and add content differently, so i'd advise not relying on expansions to turn the game around if you don't like it.

i think a lot of the problem is when people heard the game was gonna be similar to a mmo, they thought traditional mmo, which if you don't play mmos much or at all would be a fair assumption. bungie didn't bother to correct that assumption, because it generated a lot of hype, so it's somewhat shaky who's to blame for the misconception. gamers came up with a perception of how destiny would be, bungie fueled that perception at worst, didn't bother to correct it at best.

either way, the game being somewhat mmo like doesn't give it a pass for being bad in the areas critics and fans continue to bring up.

also, i've never played, or heard of a mmo that's launched with only 5-10 hours of content,that's pretty much unheard of.
 

Razorback0z

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Feb 10, 2009
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Im almost surprised at how unsurprising that review was.

Seems Bungie took the same attitude I took to my degree, "P's get degrees"

That's another $90 saved.
 

TheSapphireKnight

I hate Dire Wolves...
Dec 4, 2008
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I keep wanting to be excited for Destiny.
*"Oh, Bungie is working on a new series, I want to see what it is!"
*"So its this Destiny thing, tell me more!"
*Que year of pre-release marketing gobblygook, that told me nothing I wanted to know.
*Mix in with some questionable developer decisions, no PC release, 'Parity', etc.
*Okay maybe the Alpha/Beta will show me something to latch on to.....
*Initial impressions and reviews are not helping either.

When its all written down in paper it seems like something Destiny would be right up my ally, but seeing it in action and hearing about it from others I cannot get excited. And if the vs multiplayer is the highlight with no custom games, private lobbies, or any options, I can't see it really having legs.

It's really disappointing that the only next gen 'exclusive' coming out this year that I am interested is Master Chief Collection, sigh.
 

Madame_Lawliet

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Jul 16, 2013
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Eh, didn't really care much about this one anyway, it's whole "It's Halo, BUT ON PLAYSTATION!" angle seemed pretty cut and dry from the get-go and I've determined that I am never going to like or care about MMO's.
Man 2014 has been kind of a wash for AAA games though hasn't it?
Usually by now there's one, maybe two or three stand out "Game of the Year!" type games but this year it's been so... bleh...
Watch_Dogs was met with a resounding meh, Titanfall was pretty popular for about a week before everyone realized how little lastability it held, Ground Zeroes turned out to be a thirty dollar demo for the real MGSV, and Destiny hasn't turned out too sharp either.
That's not to say that every AAA game has been terrible, I mean Dark Souls II came out, it's pretty rad, but there just hasn't been a Bioshock Infinite/Red Dead Redemption/Skyrim level critical explosion yet like there has been in years past.
Granted we've still got Evil Within and The Presequel (as well as AC: Unity and COD: Advanced Warfare if you're into that sort of thing) to look forward to but generally speaking? been a pretty "Meh" year thus far...
 

Texas Joker 52

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Jun 25, 2011
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I can see what Jim's getting at, but I for one am having a pretty good time with Destiny. Granted, no game is without flaws, and it certainly feels like it's the most anti-social social game out there, but I still think it's a solid game. It doesn't innovate radically, it doesn't blow away the competition, but then again, it doesn't really have to. It has it's place, and for those that love it and have fun, it's there for them.

I'd hardly call Destiny mediocre, or groundbreaking, but it's still pretty damn good as far as I'm concerned, and I'm glad Jim is having fun with it. I for one give it a firm thumbs-up. Though, I do wish there seemed to be less of a... Jaded outlook, for lack of a better description, when it comes to shooters.
 

james.sponge

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Mar 4, 2013
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So a bland, boring, shallow product with huge marketing budget, yay for modern game development. I find it annoying that various weapons occupy such a huge portion of the screen, I remember developers use to do that to save console memory but isn't this supposed to be next gen?
 

LaoJim

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Aug 24, 2013
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Fsyco said:
Jim actually outlined the rating system when he became reviews editor.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/editorials/7149-What-Our-Review-Scores-Mean
I like it alot more than the 7-9 scale.
Thanks for posting this, I had seen it, but I'd forgotten about half-stars.

Charcharo said:
7.5 means awesome game to me. 8 Means great. 9 means classic/exemplary work. More then that does not exist.
That is how I calibrated scores in my head.
5 is average. And 6 is good, though flawed in many ways.
7.5 should NOT be the average.
I agree that it 'should not' be the average. However I'm talking about what most publications actually do, which is seriously inflate scores.

For example go to Metacritic -> Xbox 360 -> High Scores -> All Time

There are 19 pages of results, meaning the median score is somewhere about halfway down page 10, and so is either 69 or 70. Or, because I'm geeky, we can look at the mode.

90-100 = 54 games
80-90 = 366 games
70-80 = 484 games
60-70 = 363 games
50-60 = 144 games
40-50 = 147 games
30-40 = 55 games
20-30 = 16 games
10-20 = 3 games

Notice that in total there are 365 games < 60 only about the same size as the 80-90 or 60-70 bands and quite a bit smaller than the 70-80 band.

If a 3 star review represents a statistically average game as Jim says in the criteria, then it should be about a 70 on the Metacritic scale, which, to be fair, is a little lower than the 7-8 I claimed earlier. My point still stands that most publications would tend to have the attitude "This game isn't as fun as it should be, but its clearly had a lot of money/polish, so we'll give it an 8 and because the developers wanted a 9, this will be seen as criticising it"

The problem for magazines I think is that its very difficult for them to lower review scores because people complain viciously if a game which traditionally gets an 8 is suddenly given a 7 (or a 9 given an 8, see Jim's review of Gears of War 3) even if that 7 is defined as being significantly above average.

By using a star system I think the Escapist is trying to control for this score inflation a bit, which I applaud.
 

The White Hunter

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Oct 19, 2011
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Xsjadoblayde said:
Us console owners...when will we have a decent MMO??
FFXIV: ARR is on PS4 now and that's a damn good MMO. Though it is subscription based and that may turn some off.

OT: So pretty much as expected, rather overhyped but still decent, decidedly not worth the £400 investment in a console for it.
 

Haru17

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Mar 1, 2014
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I agree with everything in the review from playing Halo and the Destiny beta.

Halo had good combat, Destiny has great combat when enemies aren't bulletsponges.
Halo had a great single player component with different mission types and objectives, while in Destiny you run around and shoot dudes.
Halo had memorable and distinct enemies, like the often comical grunts, while Destiny seems to have the same humanoid opponent over and over again.
Halo had good pvp that I didn't really dig, and Destiny has great pvp that I love, since they sped it up.
Halo had a realistic world with unique visual locations and interaction, while destiny has barren wastelands that, while bigger than Halo's maps, somehow manage to have less in them.

And last, but certainly not least Halo had an engaging well-told story and I can't find a story in Destiny to save my life.

I'd really love to see the Destiny combat system with some more guns and abilities return in Destiny 2 with an actual plot and singleplayer mode this time.
 

VeneratedWulfen93

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Oct 3, 2011
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LoneWolf83 said:
So it's boring. What did you people expect from the creators of Halo (mediocrity given form) and the creator of COD (shit mechanics justifies by it being realistic, which it;s not, it's just as unrealistic as Doom but in different ways).

FPS's only work if they are heavenly story based (see Bioshock series), horror games (see nothing cause none f them have gotten horror right, that I'm aware of) and fun (see Doom, Quakes, Serious Sam and Painkiller). Halo and COD are non of these and are only populer because of the bro-casuals who ether play only one game or one game and maybe Madden.

If Destony gets into the bro-casual market it will be a huge success and will probably have just as many squeals as COD, if not it will be a failure just as Halo and COD would have been if it wasn't for the bro-casuals.
You obviously have no experience with games on a technical level to dismiss the halo series as "mediocrity given form".

Dismissing a huge chunk of gamers as "bro-casuals" for playing a certain type of game is ignorant to the extreme.
 

Alleged_Alec

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The White Hunter said:
Xsjadoblayde said:
Us console owners...when will we have a decent MMO??
FFXIV: ARR is on PS4 now and that's a damn good MMO. Though it is subscription based and that may turn some off.
Dead Century said:
Xsjadoblayde said:
Us console owners...when will we have a decent MMO??
Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn. You're welcome.
Blegh, it was like every aspect of that game was made particularly to piss me off. The story was insultingly stupid, with your character forced to join up with a group of colossal morons and having to be saved by this white-haired douche all the time, the villains were so laughably evil that once I died because I couldn't stop laughing about the cutscene I just watched. Some gameplay elements are downright stupid (why do mobs not give some decent amount of exp?), dungeons were mostly laughably easy and the entire fucking world was littered with people named "Naruto Kenpachi" or some other horrible animu-composite name. But the worst thing, the thing that drove me slowly insane, was that is was nigh impossible to kick the retards from dungeon crawls. There was a kick system which you could potentially abuse by just saying they were doing something against the game's rules and that could potentially kick them, but then you'd need to convince half of the team to do so as well, and most of them were only slightly less retarded than the wall-paper licker you were trying to kick. And this wasn't helped by the fact that dungeon queueing was cross-realm, so you could be as big of an asshole as possible and suffer no consequences whatsoever, since you'd most likely never see those people again.

I think the day I stopped playing my blood pressure dropped by at least a quarter.



As for Destiny: meh. I may have bought it if they hadn't done the following: not release it on pc. Seriously man? No PC release again? It's like you don't want the money, Bungie. And most importantly: the review embargo. Everyone who does this should go nail their balls to a fucking space hopper. This practice is more toxic to the industry than any transphobic misogynist you can find out there and I think it's a black mark on the journalistic industry that so many people actually adhere to this kind of bullshit.



EDIT:
Oh, totally forgot: and the worst thing about the vote to kick system is that you can't initiate it if you're in battle, so if the mongoloid asshole you're trying to kick keeps pulling, you can't even get rid of him at all.
 

Summerstorm

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Sep 19, 2008
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Funny thing about this game was that apparently it was super-hyped... but it flew totally under my radar. I knew it existed (Didn't know when and how it would came out)- and i didn't care. Totally failed to make an impression on me.

Ah well... So i have been playing Firefall recently, seems to be the same game *g*

Well slightly borked storytelling with a few good ideas wasted, some looting and crafting crap. Shooting billions of enemies. Somehow strangely fun.
 

major_chaos

Ruining videogames
Feb 3, 2011
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MrHide-Patten said:
Prepare ya butt Jim for all the butthurt fanboys looking for revenge for pointing out they've wasted money.
How did they "waste money"? If they are fans of the game they are having fun, and thus didn't waste money. I bought it, I'm enjoying it, Don't see where money is wasted. Also I'm not sure where your sense of bitter vindication is coming from, Jim really wasn't nearly as negative as you. The overall tone was "solid but unimaginative, I'll be playing after this review is done so it must be doing something right" not 'IT'S SHIT JONATHAN HOLMES!!!!". hell he actually says " If you're one of those gamers who care about such things as "content" and "replay value" to the exclusion of all other qualities, then you'll be suitably covered here." which is hardly a big red AVOID stamp.
Also good job inventing imaginary fanboys to feel superior to, that was a nice touch.

OT: I very rarely buy into hype so I had nothing to be disappointed with. Destiny is mostly what I was hoping for, just with a few more flaws than I would have liked so 7/10 sounds about right. That said not every game has to reinvent the wheel to entertain me. My biggest hope is that it sells well enough to fund a Destiny 2 a few years down the line and that Bungie learns from the reviews and puts more effort into using the potential of the world they created story wise and vastly expands on the monster variety.
 

Kungfusam

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Jun 26, 2013
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Jim gave Vanquish a 5 and DmC a 9, add in the fact that Jim is clearly "butthurt" about Activision bypassing game "journalists" and selling Destiny straight to the consumer, and that 6 does make some sense
 

LaoJim

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Jim_Callahan said:
In fairness, this should translate pretty well for people that are thinking in terms of the percentage adaptation of the letter grade system in grade school, e.g.
Yeah, I guess it does. I think one of the problems with it though is that while gamers understand instinctively what 9,8,7 and 6 mean as scores, there's a bigger gray area over 5,4,3,2 and 1. That is to say, when Jim (then working for Destructoid) gave Resident Evil 6 a 3 that seemed unusually harsh, but most other publications were making the mainly same points and giving 5 or 6. Perhaps that doesn't matter as when things are scoring under 6 you're unlikely to want to buy them anyway.

Jim_Callahan said:
Of course, the underlying reason for the grade school system (a buffer on grades mitigating how hard a single bad class could alter your average) doesn't apply here, but there probably is some merit in just rolling with something the vast majority of readers can pick up on.

Albeit, you should detail your own grading system with the score in a footnote or something.
Ultimately it doesn't really matter what scoring system you're using as long as you are clear and consistent about it, but a lot of publications seem to be bullied (either by consumers or publishers) into getting a narrow band of grades 7-9. As you say this does seem to match with the grade school system. (Actually a A,B,C,D,E system might work better than numbers)