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PANEL 4: DESTINY IS NOT FOR ME by Mr Biffo

16/1/2015

7 Comments

 
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Like a meat cleaver to a melon, few games have divided the gaming audience like Destiny. For proof, it seemed to appear on just as many Most Disappointing Games of 2014 lists as it did Best Of lists. 

On the one hand, you have its detractors – those (like me) who find it hollow, shallow, and just don’t really see what the point of it all is. 

And on the other hand, it feels like more and more people are sticking with it, and talking it up like it's an all-time classic. Heck, there are those who go on about the Vault of Glass raid like it was the defining moment of their lives. 

It's exactly how I felt when everybody started going on about the Red Wedding in Game of Thrones, before I'd seen it. 

And I still haven't seen it. YES, ok! I'm that guy! I'm the guy who hasn't seen Game of Thrones, and doesn't know what the Red Wedding is. I will, I will. Have a go at me another time. I'm busy right now. I'm busy having a Brown Wedding...

Anyway. Point is, I feel like I’m missing out. Worse than that – I feel like it’s a joke I’m not in on. Or even worse still – that I’m stuck at home on New Year's Eve watching everyone tweeting and status updating about how awesome the party is that they never bothered inviting me to. 


Yeah, nice hats and party poppers, you absolute dastards. When you said you were "busy" I assumed it was with a funeral, or a medical examination, or something. May karma lay an egg in your throat. I hate you.

But I digress...

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THE EXPECTATION FACTOR

I'm happy to admit that part of my issue with Destiny was un-met expectations. That might be my fault, admittedly, for building it up too much in my brain. 


At the same time, Bungie and Activision probably need to shoulder some of the blame, for failing to properly convey what I was actually getting.

And yet, coming from the people behind Halo, I at least expected something a bit like Halo, but better. A sort of always online Halo, with an epic, ongoing, storyline that I felt invested in. Instead I got what seemed to me like a token single player game shackled to a pretty but repetitive, atmosphere-lacking, frustration-inducing, innovation-deprived, theme park ride. I don't want to spend my whole life grinding through all that just to get some new gun or cape. 

It's like the gaming equivalent fighting the Black Friday sales crowds to get a new handbag for a quid less than I'd normally pay.

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NO SURPRISE

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised. I mean, Halo is another game that I’ve struggled to appreciate as much as everyone else (and I gladly accept that's probably heresy to say).

I loved the setting of the first game – the Halo itself – but I’ve never really bought into the wider mythology. I’ve never liked the spongy handling of the vehicles. The weapons, for me, lack oomph. I don’t like the openness of the level design. And I’ve always found the Covenant more cuddly than menacing. 

And yet, they’re the sort of games I feel I should like, so I've played all of them at length - online and off. I have the exact same issue with Christopher Nolan movies and the Lord of the Rings franchise. On paper, they tick my boxes, so I always watch them in the hope that they'll finally live up to my hopes. In reality, I find them ponderous, and trying too hard to be epic and portentious; never quite as smart or revolutionary as they’re strutting around pretending to be.

BILLY NO-MATES

With Destiny, though, it seems increasingly that there's a reality I'm going to have to face up to. And that reality is this: it's not a game for me. And the reason it isn't a game for is because it's a social game, that's meant to be played online - with your mates.


And, as you may have ascertained from my whinge about parties, I don't have any mates. Well, I do. Just none that want to spend New Year with me, apparently, or who own Destiny. Or who own Destiny on the same format as me.

Therefore, it appears that I'm never going to get it. I'm never going to enjoy what it is about the game that so many seem to love. I don't want to trudge through the grind of those raids on my own or with strangers, and that's probably why I've thus far failed to love it and stick with it.

There's nothing wrong with creating a game that isn't for everyone - obviously, no game can be universally adored. But the frustration from a personal standpoint is that Destiny looked exactly like it was a game for me. Before I played it, I'd convinced myself that it was everything I wanted in a first-person shooter.
 
Yet the more I've tried, the more I've become alienated from it. And the more others have hailed its achievements, the more stubborn I've become, the more consolidated my resolve. 

Destiny may be a classic for you. It may be your favourite game. But for some of us - those of us who find online gaming a solitary experience - it's a fly-blown, sweating, manure heap, The Emperor's New Game. 

Enjoy your capes.
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7 Comments
TheBigWahoonie
16/1/2015 02:25:40 am

I concur - I just don't get it, vapid and uninteresting to a fault. The emperor's new clothes really is the best analogy. Even the people who are effusive about the game can't tell me why it's any good with any consistency.

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The man who went to work without his trousers on link
16/1/2015 03:27:41 am

Destiny is one of those games that I was genuinely excited for 'cause the last Bungie release was the superb Halo:Reach on 360. The reality was another thing altogether, I felt disappointed too. There was no narrative to speak of, it jumped around more erratically than Catch:22. Also the main campaign just seemed so short. But despite all that, I keep going back to it. I've done Vault of Glass, it's alright. I'm even doing daily tasks, it all feels a bit like WOW. It helps I've found a good group of players who are also a little longer in the tooth. The thing with this game is it can be played casually enough, unlike WOW which never really opened up to me, 'cause even as a single man I had neither the time nor inclination to play it to the detriment of everything else in my life. Destiny isn't all consuming like that. It's not the second coming, nor is it resolutely terrible.
That said, I won't be shelling out for the meagre offering they call an expansion.
I'm playing on Xbox One, so add me up daddio if you like, Gamertag is linked on this post.

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Picston Shottle
16/1/2015 06:30:07 am

Yeah...I've played it. A lot. I couldn't help playing it. The grind gets to you - you're compelled to grind. It's like doing crack, man. You know it's not very good but you just can't help it. And you guys, I'm playing it virtually solo, too, apart from the odd time I'll do a strike. Never done VoG or any of the Daily/Weekly strikes cos I have no mates. And the mates I have are in the UK whilst I'm in California so the time difference messes me up too.

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thekelvingreen link
16/1/2015 09:30:23 am

Don't worry, I never saw the fuss about <i>Halo</i> either. I found it to be a boring version of <i>Doom</i> with vast empty spaces where the levels should have been. As such I found it very difficult to feel any enthusiasm for <i>Destiny</i> and so I haven't played it.

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Superbeast 37
16/1/2015 11:29:09 am

A lot was learned in 10 years of World of Warcraft. Lots of hard and painful lessons.

I can't believe that Activision never passed on any of that knowledge to Bungie.

They ripped the basic gameplay straight out of Halo so it felt really good to run, jump, shoot and melee.

But they made such basic and obvious errors in the "MMO" and "RPG" elements of the game I just couldn't believe it.

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Snrubbers
19/1/2015 01:38:46 pm

That whole 'NO SURPRISE' section literally took the words out of years of my mouths regarding the Halo games, and Nolan/LOTR films.

What I've always found with the Halo franchise is that it's even hard to get that enthusiastic about hating it. I think you either love it or meh it.

I have no doubt I'd feel as meh about Destiny, if I ever tried it. Meh.

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FatDave
3/9/2016 04:25:21 pm

I recently bought it and it feels great to play but the missions were a confused mess that could be played in any order making it a a pain.
It starts getting better from the house of wolves onward and the taken king actually has personality and elements of proper story telling . If I had bought the vanilla game at full price I'd have been upset though.

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