For now the beta includes the first big zone with the starter missions, low level and limited items, and a PVP mode called "The Crucible" that consists of a Capture game mode. The game is limited and can get repetitive and boring after a while but this is to be expected and is totally acceptable to be in what is in essence a demo. They do disclose that there will be bugs and rough edges here and there as in a beta but honestly I've never experienced one yet, I have experienced lag but that's on my end not the server's. There were honestly no glaring issues or things I majorly hated at all. Anything bad with the game is very minor. But let's get into that.
WARNING: MILD SPOILERS AHEAD
The back story of the universe is never truly revealed as you wake up in the middle of a wasteland by a floating A.I robot (voiced by Peter Dinklage) called a Ghost which can show your objective marker. He leads you to a weapon to then fight of a hostile alien race known as "The Fallen" who have inhabited what is an old, desolate Russia. You fight your way to a space ship and manage to fly off planet to a city somewhere in America. The city is actually located directly under a giant space object called Traveler that helped bring Earth to enlightenment, also called the Golden Age, before a great evil known as the Darkness came to destroy Earth along with several violent alien species. The Traveler also created the Ghosts to revive and help fallen warriors that could be imbued with special abilities, making them Guardians, protectors of the planet after Traveler died. It is revealed that you are one of these individuals and you were chosen to go out and free Earth from the oppressive alien forces threatening mankind. You meet some other characters along the way, including several factions and interesting people. One of these people is The Voice Of The Traveler (voiced by the incredible Bill Nighy) who is your adviser and can sell exotic and rare armor. The game's world is very cool and very thoroughly written with extensive back story and great characters.
Destiny's graphics look beautiful. I played on PS4 and it looks gorgeous. there are amazing lighting effects and high quality textures with pretty smooth animation too, even the environments look amazing. I honestly got too caught up in the game to worry about frame rate but it stays consistent, and even though it is 30fps I'm more okay with it because of the insane looking graphics and the fact that it never dropped even when so many things were on screen helped it's case. The environments are beautiful, with old relics like rusted helicopters and grounded ships littered everywhere. All in all this may be the best looking next gen game for a while.
When thinking of what to start the game play section of my review off with, I had a hard time. There are SO many game play mechanics and abilities and features, yet I never felt overwhelmed and learned all of them very quickly. That was my favourite aspect of the game. It's willingness to tell you all of it's features yet it never crams information down your throat, in fact you discover and learn by yourself a lot of the features.
Well I have to start somewhere so I'll explain mechanics in the same order the game does. The way you start the game is with three races, The boring old humans, a peaceful alien species known as the Awoken who are known to be at one with themselves. Then there's the Exo's, who are advanced robots that were built as war machines that eventually became sentient. You can change their appearance to a pretty advanced degree so that each character looks different yet they all look similar. There are then three classes to choose from. The Titan class is meant to be a basic warrior tank class meant to take heavy damage yet deal the same. There are the Hunters who are stealthy assassins who can execute enemies with a flurry of moves. The final class is the Warlock, which can bend space and time to throw telekinetic grenades and use special power blasts. The classes feel once again different in most abilities yet some are different versions of the same ability, like double jump and grenades yet even the grenades have different effects per class. Also, once you reach level 15 you can upgrade to a superior subclass variant. The variety of game play is very good and I like it. The game itself handles very much like Halo in the movement and weapon feel. The actual open world and health bars make it seem very much like Borderlands without the humour, which it doesn't need but males the game feel generic without its own style. There are a lot of cool features like a Diablo reminiscent decryption system where some items you pick up you don't know what they are until you find a city's Cryptarch who will decrypt it, allowing you to use it. There is a bland mission objective marker mode where you hold up RoboDinklage and he shows you where you have to go and allows you to summon a hover bike that moves fast or you can exit a mission or return to your ship in this mode. When you put DinkleBot away though, you have to rely on your radar, which is a compass on your HUD that will point to your objective and both point out enemies direction relative to you, and show their general distance from you. The radar I did prefer over a mini map and using the touch pad on the PlayStation controller as the Dinklenator button was a nice use of it. Speaking of the PlayStation controller, this game made me really appreciate both the light on the controller and the vibration upgrade. The controller very precisely vibrates to mimic your gun and the light will change from blue to orange to red based on if you are in danger or in open battle, and it will turn bright white when your in game flashlight turns on. The main hub of the game is pretty neat. It turns from a first person perspective to a third person one, allowing you to see your character. There are many shops where you can buy equipment, though you have to "dismantle" the items down into currency and parts instead of selling them. Your equipment set is armor, which is helmet, chestplate, gloves, and boots/leggings. Your weapons are your primary, which is rifles and handguns, Your special is shotguns, sniper rifles, and fusion rifles, which charge up shortly and then fire a burst of bullets. You also have a heavy weapon, which is rocket launchers and LMG's. Each weapon can be upgraded if used to have different sights or more damage and sometimes special features like "If you get a kill on the last bullet in the clip, your reload speed greatly increases for a short time," There is also some other gear like custom hover bikes, special ships to fly around in, and emblems that show in your character profile. There is also the general hierarchy of gear, which is common, uncommon, rare, legendary, and exotic. They all have custom colors to signify rarity too. They also have modifiers like fire damage and such. The gear and loot is very unique, once again reminding me of Borderlands but more limited as they are not randomly generated. The mechanics mixed with cool features and unique loot all make you feel like a bad ass. The levels in the game are all one level right now, but while it's cool that there are areas that have many different missions in them, it gets old very quickly. But that's the beta, it's to be expected. The missions right now are two types of story mission and two types of side quest. The story missions are all either move forward while clearing enemies, then fight a boss, or move forward, clearing enemies then fight off waves of enemies. The side quests are either kill enemies/kill enemies for loot, or scan area while fighting enemies. They are VERY generic but that's only the actual map making it so. You can already see several missions teased for the full game. There are also random events that spawn in like to kill 3 waves of enemies in 3 minutes, or to hold a capture point from an onslaught of enemies. Once you complete them you get special rare loot and some nice gear. Sometimes there are even events in the hub like The Iron Banner, which was a special store open for a limited time for people who completed special timed missions. There are indeed both some very cool and exciting missions, and very boring and generic missions. the full game could go either way on that aspect.
So after this huge gush fest of a review of an incomplete game, I am just going to say buy Destiny. Do it. Go buy it. But don't pre-order it for the beta. All the beta is is a demo that wipes your characters making you grind for levels all over again. But I think I'm in love with what the game could be. And you should too. It's a framework of Borderlands filled in with the story telling and mechanics of Halo.
Also, go watch my video I made, it shows exactly why I like this game.
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