Rab's first impressions of Destiny
http://www.amusementarcade.org/2014/09/ ... y-day-one/Quote:
DESTINY DIARY: Day One
We’re conditioned, these days, to expect certain things from First Person Shooters.
We expect bombastic set-pieces. We expect to see buildings fall, bridges collapse and helicopters spin to a fiery doom. We expect control to be wrenched away from us at key moments, to let some kind of drama play out.
Bungie don’t make games like that.
Halo was built on simple fundamentals – great firefights, often. You would enter a room, spot the enemies, and then you would:
take cover
fire
flank
melee
take cover
fire
fire
And then you’d collect yourself, gather your thoughts, and move on.
My enthusiasm for Destiny, if I’m being honest, had waned over the months. Bungie weren’t at all clear about what kind of thing their new game actually was. I think they were maybe a little bit afraid of being direct with us about what they were delivering. And I understand why. See, here’s what I’m taking from my first day of Destiny – to make a game this elegant, this simple and this solid is incredibly brave.
Yesterday we made a joke about the Destiny User Reviews spilling all over Metacritic. It’s interesting to note that people who were scoring the score low all had similar complaints.
It’s boring.
And yeah, I can see why some might think that. There are no buildings falling. No screams of YEEEE-HA! No incredible scripted set-pieces. But there are small encounters, small firefights, with smart enemies. They are wonderful things to push through, as they always were in Halo.
Last night, in an early mission, I pushed the difficulty up to HARD. I found myself in a basement, being assaulted by hordes of these alien things. They were horrible things. Like fast zombies. If they get close they let you know all about it. And they just kept on coming. I was fighting them with this little handgun with a slow rate of fire but one hell of an impact. I would BLAM! take one down and then BLAM! another and then OH FUCK I MISSED and then back back back BLAM! oh no three more RELOAD RELOAD RELOAD come on come on BLAM!
It was exhilarating. Incredible. I was at the absolute edge of survival for about thirty minutes, trying to push into a room to take out a boss. I’d advance – the hordes would come. I’d clear them, push in, hurrying to finish the job before more enemies arrived. I’d dance, weave, putting bullets into the boss enemy, draining his shield. I’d hear that horde coming. COME ON COME ON.
Destiny_Screenshot_01
In the game, I’m a Hunter. I have a robot face and I use a handgun. I don’t think it’s the best weapon, but it makes me feel like a gunslinger. I pull it out, dance around a corner and BLAM! – if my shot is on point, the enemy is no more. It feels wonderful. There’s a tower, a central hub, where you can buy new kit and take new missions and look at yourself in third person. For me, all the levelling up and the loot is a side-issue. I only ever want to get back down to one of the planets, to have more firefights.
I go on patrol. It’s a giant open area, with flashing beacons scattered around. You activate these beacons to claim missions. Many of them are simply “KILL THE BADDIES”. I think to myself – “Good, that’s all I want to do.” The game then spawns groups of these baddies onto the map. You go and find your dance partners and you do your dance.
I call it a dance. The designers at Bungie have this special touch. It’s all touch and feel. The firefights, all of them, are so satisfying. The enemies are smart. It remains to be seen if they’re as smart as they were in Halo, but they certainly know when to hide and when to hurt you. The game is frighteningly addictive, because the promise of Destiny seems to be “these moments, forever”.
We’re always so underwhelmed these days, aren’t we? Let me step outside of the cynical HEREWORLD and look at this with a child’s eyes.
Imagine there’s this game where you can be this kind of space cowboy guy and you go down on these planets on a spaceship to kill all these baddies and all your pals can come down with you too. You can do it as a team. You can go hunting baddies like bounty hunters in a team. Like a team of bounty hunters! And it’s your actual pals. You can talk to them while you’re playing. And the special effects are amazing like Star Wars. And the skies-
Oh, the skies. The skies.
-are beautiful. Big alien skies. Oh, and you can get new clothes and new gear for your guy. And new guns. And you can sell stuff and make money. And you can go to this planet where you can fight all different people from all over the world. And there are these speeder bike things. And big gun turrets. And when your guy gets powered up he has this magic FIRE GUN and he shoots everybody with it. Oh, and your guy gets stronger and stronger and looks cooler and cooler.
And, hey, forget about all that. What that young boy won’t focus on is what really matters – the brilliance of those firefights.
This is boring, they say.
I don’t want to be that guy. You know – the guy who says “Well, you just don’t get it.” But I do think that people who play games have been conditioned to expect the wrong things from First Person Shooters, and I think they feel hard-done-by if they don’t get them.
First Person Shooters aren’t about witnessing a spectacle. They’re about being the fucking spectacle.
Destiny, only 6 or so hours in, is a Bungie game. Bungie, not of Cutscene Evolved or Killstreak Evolved, but of Combat Evolved.
Combat. Firefights.
These moments, forever? Yes, please.
BLAM!