Destiny ALPHA Preview

Destiny for those that don’t know is the latest game from Bungie the guys who brought Halo to life and have branched out on there own. For an Alpha test I ran into no bugs and the game was pretty polished. The world looked beautiful and the shooting felt very familiar, here is an account of my first few days with the game.

Destiny is an MMORPG disguised as a shooter much in the same vein as borderlands, which I only played briefly so the comparison is only slightly viable. It has all the ingredients that make games like World of Warcraft so addictive; classes, a leveling system, group-based dungeons, solo missions, PvP, gear collection, exploration and good old fashioned micro management.

You pick from three classes Titan, Hunter and Warlock. The Titan is your usually meathead shooter character or tank in the MMO world that can sustain more damage and deal out devastating melee attacks. He’ll most likely be at the front of you’re strike team. The Warlock seems to be more magic orientated but I never got a chance to play with it as the testing was only a few days long and I just couldn’t fit it all in. I played primarily as a hunter (without any pets), who is mainly aimed towards snipers and stealth nuts like me.

After going through the in depth customization system which includes three races and multiple combinations my human hunter was ready to find out just what was going on down on Earth 700 years ago. Turns out we are screwed, I couldn’t grasp much of the main story from the alpha but the generic voice which my character had proclaimed I had to get to Point A which was covered with the Fallen. The Fallen much like Halo’s covenant are groups of alien life forms hell bent on taking over shooting you for what I assume is a much better reason than because they can and they hang around in groups of three to four grunts and a captain.

A third protagonist was introduced which were a little scarier called the Hive which remind me a lot of Halo’s the flood in they hunt in huge packs and are commanded by a wizard of sorts who once you take him out they become un-enthralled and disappear. This all feels a bit Halo and as a huge fan of the earlier games of that series particularly Halo 3 I gleefully ran through this game like a pubescent teen who had just found his first porno (before the internet of course).

After I finished my opening mission I was able to visit the Stormwind-esque city that was [insert name here] and have a wander at the gear vendors and emblem deglyphers and purchase some shiny new toys. I was then given the option of a three man dungeon which was way above my level or the option to roam the previous area to track down quest givers (beacons) and level up that way. This was all very familiar stuff but far from the huge open worlds of other MMO’s in this game you simply teleport back to your spaceship and choose a level specific area to load up and have it match make a few people in to make it seem like you are not alone.

The areas are pretty balanced and you’ll never run into too much trouble you can’t handle on your own although I did run into an enemy that had no level and one shotted me (an elite so to speak) but I just ran away. There are also battlefields which have the Hive and the Fallen attacking each over for territory which will allow you to either stealth on through or have both turn on you and attempt to bring them all down.

The dungeon itself was a jarring 2-hour experience that probably will need more balancing and inventiveness before the next big test. The usual dungeon routine of run in kill waves of enemies before arriving at a boss was all there but the boss fights themselves lasted way to long and we eventually ran out of ammo and began waiting for grunts to respawn so we could knife them and get back in the game. At one point during the first boss I was waiting for the cooldown on my special attack (which didn’t do half as much damage as it did to grunts) just to have a shot at it. Also there was little in the way of tactics involved instead of the intricate moves to block or the simple don’t step on the fire of other MMO’s the bosses had one big attack to look out for and the rest was just about moving from side to side and defeat the additional grunts who had turned up.

For the dungeon I was assigned with one guy who was my level and another guy who was 2 levels above but clearly had to just keep running this dungeon until the alpha ran out. Either there was no built in communications yet or all three of us decided against headsets which made the universal jump and shoot to where you have to go the only way we communicated. As far as a team aesthetic goes it felt natural to have someone by your side and both members of my group seemed patient and helpful. The higher leveled guy was also very patient and revived me and the other fellow when we went down and seemed happy with carrying us through our first attempt. After we finished the boss we all stood there and Danced.

 I think the team at bungie have took everything I loved about the feel of Halo and put it into an MMO, whether that’s a good or a bad thing is yet to be seen but in the 3 days I had the game I thoroughly enjoyed it and there is only one thing that’s stopping me from pre-ordering it. Split screen gaming is slowly dying but that’s a topic for another day, the best thing about Halo 2 before I got the Internet was the split screen co-op campaign. I hadn’t yet played an online shooter and that was one of the first games where the pass the pad way of playing was no longer needed.  This game feels like naturally it could benefit from a co-op split screen mode and I can see why Bungie doesn’t want to put it in because the game requires the player to upgrade and have there own unique stats across the world but with the next gen consoles requiring each player to have there own log in and the ability to already pre installed on older consoles there should be no reason why this shouldn’t be possible even if only for the levels that require a strike team. Or even they could have the game replicate the first player’s character but lose the stats and gear gained once they leave the game.

It may seem like a little thing but to me a lot of games I buy are ones I can play with my friends when they come round to my flat and it may seem old school but it much better than us all in separate houses with headsets on. It’s a small blip on what’s shaping to be a fantastic game and I’m glad I had the chance to play it early, the world looks beautiful and the game plays fantastic and I’d be there in heartbeat If I could just play it with someone else.