Destiny

As I mentioned in my review of From Dust, I've moved on from the Xbox 360 to the Xbox One, thanks to a pretty sweet deal Keith found and passed along. It came with a free game of my choice and since Halo-creator Bungie's new game, Destiny was recently released, I picked that up too. And so far it feels... not all that different from Halo. The gameplay itself- shooting, melee-ing, general running around, is mostly unchanged from the Halo series we all know and love, but there are a few attempts to try something new. First off, the game comes with a leveling system wherein you gain experience and upgrade weapons and armor the further you progress. This is mostly meaningless in multi-player competitions where your character's level is ignored, but it makes the game play a bit more like an RPG. On certain levels I was getting my ass kicked, so I'd have to replay an old level or two to get more powerful. Speaking of levels, this isn't really a linear game either. You'll play on several different planets, each containing an open area where you and a few other online players can run around looking for levels and side-quests; getting killed in this area will merely result in re-spawning after a few seconds. As you spread further out in the game you'll eventually come upon re-spawn restricted zones where you'll actually lose progress if you die, which for me actually led to some seriously tense firefights. I was playing the game solo the entire time (thanks, Keith!) and as such took on the bosses without the aid of some friends, and I found it pretty challenging, considering my history of FPS campaigns mostly involves breezing through them as quickly as possible on easy mode. The game is always online so I'm sure there was a way to recruit strangers to my party, but I never found it in my brief attempts; it would have been nice if this was more like Borderlands which really made multiplayer co-op easy to jump in and out of. I mostly liked the campaign here more than those in the Halo series (Peter Dinklage's low-quality voice work aside), but found the multi-player competitions to be a step down. Options were few and the levels always felt a little too large and empty. The game also wants you to rely on the weapons you used in single player as well, meaning there's not nearly as many super-powered weapons spread about the level and ready to cause mayhem. What's more, the game seems to ignore a simple K/D spread for its scoring, instead counting stylish plays like vehicle kills and headshots for bonus points that affect whether a team wins or loses. If I'm doing significantly better sitting at a turret and waiting than I am running around, something has gone wrong. Still though it's not as though the game lacks content; there's just a much bigger focus on co-op multiplayer here than playing against each other. I doubt I'll have a reason to jump back into Destiny once The Master Chief Collection comes out in a month, so I'm going to sell it and see what else the Xbox One has to offer.