Buying and playing Destiny is a lot like having a baby. I’ve never actually fathered a (human) baby so I’m more or less guessing what its like so just go with it. Much like pregnancy the excitement and anticipation for Destiny’s release was excessive. Now that its here I’m feeling a mixture of emotions. Happiness, disappointment, frustration, sleepless nights. However deep down I kind of love it and I know that it has the potential to be something great if I’m patient with it. This newborn needs to be nurtured, played with, and eventually beaten. Wait, ignore that last part and read on.

Destiny is the first new game from Halo developer Bungie and to say its been hyped up is an understatement. Legend has it that the game cost $500 million to create and whether or not this is accurate it’s still a massively ambitious project. So was it worth the wait? The answer is yes and no, an opinion that’s backed up by the mixed reviews the game has been getting. To me the critics that gave it a low score were overly harsh but I do see where they’re coming from.

Destiny is ostensibly a first person shooter crossed with an mmo. You run around shooting aliens, finding new weapons and armour, and then shooting more aliens. The gameplay is fantastic which is what you would expect from the people that brought us Halo. Movement and gunplay is a joy whether you’re traversing industrial complexes in Russia or the jungles of Venus (!?). Along with the main adventure there’s also the Crucible which is where players fight each other in arenas and its as addictive as Venusion jungle crack.

You may have noticed I haven’t mentioned the storyline. Well there’s not much to talk about. Destiny has one of the most poorly told stories of any game I’ve played. Snippets of the plot are given to you by other characters played by the likes of Peter Dinklage, Bill Nighy, and Nathan Fillion but not enough to actually pull you in. Strangely the game tells you to visit the Bungie website to read more about the characters and places. This shit should be in the game!

So we have fantastic gameplay, beautiful graphics, an all-star cast, and a god awful story. Where does that leave us? What is Destiny’s um, destiny? The good news is that due to this being an online game Bungie should be able to continually improve it. As long as publisher Activision doesn’t expect us to pay more for this then Destiny has a huge amount of potential. My advice to those players who aren’t fully happy with the finished product is – give the game time to get it’s claws into you and you’ll have more sleepless nights than that hypothetical baby I beat up in the first paragraph.

Please don’t call the authorities, I’m on my second strike!

8/10

Have you played Destiny? I don’t care what you think I just need some volunteers for my fireteam. We have a wizard on The Moon that needs killing.