Zero Punctuation: Destiny - Always-On Grind

[Haru17]

If you think Halo and Destiny have similar stories you're mad. Sure they both have science fiction planetoids and AI's, but that's like calling Game of Thrones and Warcraft the same for both having swords and frozen zombies.

Halo's story was at least well produced and painfully easy to follow if you just play the numbered installments 1-3 and pay attention. Destiny's story is all so vague and undefined, it literally feels like context and closure will be added upon the purchase of $30 DLC to be released sometime during the next decade.

That and the enemies and weapons feel way less defined and interesting.

 

[Callate]

Gee, I'm rather beginning to get the impression that Destiny might not be the Earth-shattering game-changer that we were all promised.

I'm hearing a lot of reviews that all say very similar things- things that amount to "kind of boring, phoning it in".

Few said as entertainingly as Yahtzee, of course.

 

[Haru17]

You are literally complaining because the environments are too good.

HAHHAHHAHAHAAHA HAHAHAHHAAHAAHAHAHHAAHHAHHAAHHAHHAHAHAAAA HAHAHAHAAHAAAAAA! Dude, seriously, just stop. Play a console Zelda game and have your mind BLOWN by the environmental design.

In other news, you can still play destiny, but in reality it's not amazing. Just an okay shooter with a terrible campaign and stellar multiplayer.

 

[Makabriel]

*sigh*
I hate being a videogame hipster..

But I -like- Destiny!!

 

[JSW]

I feel that this video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yXs0R370LU&list=PLswVJ_e2AEzlrULSPhdAcGm7hoNYFdCeN] may help with understanding the plot.

The beginning of that reminded me of the intro to The Humans [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uy9vqPGBuH8]. I should play that game again. It'd probably be a lot more fun than Destiny.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

It's a good thing I didn't rush out and buy this game then.

 

[Iceklimber]

[/quote]

Seems to me that Destiny would have been way better if it hadn't tried to be an MMO, which would have made it tighter, less drawn out and grindy and more fast-paced.

Anyone can point out flaws but do you have an actual suggestion what else the Developers could have doed to make this Game engaging for ten years?

 

[Kerethos]

First time in a while that I had a good laugh from a ZP review. Lately it's been more of a constant smile through the whole video, but this made me laugh out loud.

My conclusion on Destiny is that if you like to grind for hours on end at the shrine of RNG, and shooting the same alien over and over again, Destiny is your GOTY. If you don't, you should probably stay away.

 

[Draconalis]

Thankfully, I learned of the PS+ paywall in the beta. It gave me just enough time to cancel my pre-order and put my 5 dollars towards resubscribing to the Gamestop magazine. Not because I enjoy READING said magazine (for I haven't really touched one since Transformers: Fall of Cyberton), but because magazine subscriptions help build credit.

 

[ThatDarnCoyote]

*sigh*
I hate being a videogame hipster..

But I -like- Destiny!!

I'm sorry, according to the official Gaming Hipster handbook, you are only permitted to like the following games: Minecraft, Gone Home, Dark Souls, The Walking Dead, FTL, Papers Please, and/or The Stanley Parable.

You may appreciate Spec Ops: The Line as something akin to a challenging homework assignment, but you are not allowed to actually like it.

(I like Destiny too, but many of Yahtzee's criticisms have merit to them.)

 

[Baresark]

I know a lot of people are having fun with some of the aspects of this game, but it really is just mediocre. The PVP needs to be tiered, even with the normalized weapons, low levels can still be one shot by level 20's with exotic guns. There is only about 6-8 hours of actual unique content, and then you grind the same areas hundreds of times to try and get good gear because of their atrocious RNG loot. Forget that it all ends up in a horde mode far too many times throughout the game. The story is non-existent, which is not what they showed for the last two years in videos hyping the shit out of the game.

The general consensus seems to be: The shooting is good, everything else is lacking. PVP in unbalanced, the ares are not that large and you see the same parts a ridiculous number of times, the story is not presented in the game at all and you have to leave the game to go to the website for the context of why you are doing what you are doing.

 

[major_chaos]

I bought Destiny and enjoy it enough that I'm looking forward to the DLC. I didn't pay attention to the hype so I guess I wasn't expecting a revolution. I got what I wanted and expected: A shooter/RPG hybrid where unlike 90% of shooter/RPG hybrids the shooting isn't total garbage and a unique approach to loot.

 

[Dalisclock]

I like ZP and Yahtzee but this was actually a pretty lackluster review. I wanted to hear more about the classes, any mention of what the vehicle sections are like, etc. This episode felt short and padded.

I suspect neither of them are interesting enough to talk about.

"Well, you have the fighter-type, the sneaky-type and the mage-type. Moving on, there are vehicles, you can drive some of them and some of them have guns that go bang."

I'm guessing, but I suspect I'm right considering nobody has accused Destiny of being innovative.

 

[Two-A]

Wouldn't you have to have Live to play multiplayer as well? Could you play this at all on the xbo without it?

You would still be able to connect to the internet, but you will only be able to play singleplayer.

 

[Dalisclock]

But you can do the main story missions etc. as long as they're single player and as long as you have an internet connection.

Which begs the same question Yathzee had. Why should someone need an internet connection to play single player?

And this isn't just a Destiny issue. Assassins Creed/Ubisoft has this problem too, last I checked.

 

[RJ Dalton]

Wow. Yahtzee references Halo as a positive example. The world has turned on its head.
Or Destiny is just extremely shitty. One or the other.

 

[Sanunes]

After reading all the reviews and such about the game, I really wonder if it was EA instead of Activision that published the game what the forums would be like. It does feel a lot like Dragon Age 2 with its reused environments, but at least it felt like they tried with the story in Dragon Age 2.

I think Yahtzee's limerick a the beginning has been the most interesting thing I have seen about Destiny so far.

Edit:

A couple of my friends who own Destiny and I were talking about the game today and the conclusion I drew from the conversation and it made them laugh was that "Destiny = Classic Halo + Classic World of Warcraft + Classic Diablo 3". For the way they do describe their playing experience feels like they took the entry to each of those franchises took bits and pieces of those ideas and made Destiny. Some of the loot issues remind me of how Diablo 3 loot dropped prior to the expansion, the raids remind me a lot of Naxx'40, and the combat sounds a lot like the original Halo. Of course there are some improvements, but it doesn't seem that they learned from the mistakes of those games.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

add another victim to the pile of next-gen hype; I'm really starting to wonder what the point of the new hardware is if this is the best gamemakers can do. Then again, I suppose it's typical of the first two years to spend their time stumbling around, not sure of what they want to do.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

Okay, so most of the review is fair, but there was one criticism that bugged me - and it's a criticism that bugs me in general.

It's when the reviewer complains about the environment in one of several ways:
A) The game brings too much attention to its environments by forcing you to pay attention to their detail.
B) The game brings you on a linear path and it makes the environments feel like a theme park.
C) The game makes you revisit the same place over and over again and it's boring.

Seriously, reviewers, stop this. These are all petty complaints. You are literally complaining because the environments are too good. It makes no sense.

C) has nothing to do with how good the environments are; in fact it can be the opposite. Dragon Age II was distinct in that it offered both shitty environments and very few of them to boot.

Neither is B) an indication that the environment is good: it's an indication that the environment inspires exploration but that opportunity is quashed by the level design.

A) might seem strange to complain about, but in these cases it depends on what type of game you're playing. You wouldn't make this complaint about an exploration game like Myst forcing you to look everywhere, but if a fast-paced action game suddenly starts expecting you to hunt around the environment for clues, it kills the flow.

Obviously, if a huge amount of development goes into the environments, they will tend to be 1) important for gameplay, 2) critical to include, and 3) expensive and time consuming to produce.

There's no question that all environments are important to gameplay on some level, but game designers tend to favour graphical fidelity over breadth and depth, despite the latter being arguably more important to gameplay.

Think about it this way: would you rather play a game of football on an expansive but scruffy and uneven stretch of local park, or on your neighbour's tiny but neatly manicured front lawn? Video games are constantly forcing you to do the latter.

 

[Strelok]

The story will be in a DLC coming next year!

No the story is on the wiki and in books to be published later, have you never played a Bungie borefest before?