Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Destiny is a hybrid of an open world first-person shooter and role playing game in an online connected world available from retail stores and for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS4. The new release naturally had a lot of high expectations with it being a partnership between the publisher Activision who own the behemoth first-person shooter franchise Call of Duty and developed by Bungie who was responsible for the success of Halo. However, can Destiny live up to such a high level of anticipation from all of the publicity it has generated over the last year and a half since the big reveal on February 17th 2013 via the video documentary titled Pathways Out of Darkness: A Destiny ViDoc and at the reveal of the PlayStation 4 at PlayStation Meeting on February 20th 2013 which has resulted in it becoming the most pre-ordered new franchise to date in the history of videogames?

A cinematic story unfolds throughout the large, expansive worlds of Destiny, which revolves around the Traveller who saved the remainder of humanity from something dark that attacked civilizations spread across the entire solar system on planets such as Mars and Venus in what used to be a golden age of mankind. There is a mysterious sphere that remains low towards the ground of Earth; where it made its last stand against whatever dark presence that fought to invade as the Traveller kept watch over a city that was built directly underneath the Traveller in the hopes of protection from the fear of the same forces invading again, which is now known simply as The City. At a time where it is a known fact that there are deadly creatures outside of the parameter of The City who are trying to enter by attempting to find weaknesses in the defensive walls of The City; there has never been such danger lurking around every corner. Gamers can play as a Guardian of the City, a soldier who is capable of harnessing some of the Traveller’s unimaginable power; therefore it is up to them to attempt to assist in warding off the darkness that lingers nearby waiting for an opportunity to destroy the final place of all humanity.

There are three classes including: titan, hunter and warlock with each of the three choices having their own unique and impressive sets of characteristics. The titan class provides a thick layer of armour to protect the engine of war that is proficient in strength and strategy, while utilising the Striker subclass to shatter the nearby surrounding environments and dissolve enemies with Arc Light. However, the second subclass is the opposite of Striker as it is called Defender and is unlocked at level 15, allowing players to shape Void Light into an indestructible shield in order to protect yourself and your allies from enemy weaponry.

The hunter class is a master of the frontier that is capable of stalking and killing enemies with ruthless precision, which carries a Gunslinger subclass to summon a flaming pistol to disintegrate enemies with Solar Light and a Bladedancer subclass that is unlocked at level 15, which allows players to charge their blade with Arc Light and consume enemies with lightning.

The warlock class provides the powers required to manipulate energy sources to fire at enemies, which provides a Voidwalker subclass to project an explosive bolt of Void Light to disintegrate any foes who are caught within its blast radius and The Sunsinger subclass is unlocked at level 15, allowing players to absorb Solar Light, which immediately significantly increases the efficiency of all of your abilities.

The XP and levelling up revolves around the amount of enemies destroyed as the number of experience points earned will be displayed next to the adversary you have killed, while bonus XP is rewarded for completing missions for the first time and progressively unlocks more missions to participate in with XP progression being represented by a green circle with a white cross within it. XP is a very important gameplay mechanic not just for unlocking new missions but also for unlocking upgrades, as you earn enough XP to level-up to the next level you will unlock a new improvement, therefore increasing your chances of progressing further into the game by becoming a more skilled warrior.

There are a variety of unlockable upgrades, such as the Pulse Grenade which periodically damages enemies within its blast radius; the Lift ability that allows players to jump followed by jumping while in mid-air to activate Lift in order to hover; the Fist of Havoc ability allows players to smash the ground and dissolve the enemies nearby with Arc of Light; Storm Fist that adds bonus damage to your melee combat; and Headstrong that allows sprinting to increase the leap distance of Fist of Havoc, while there are many dozens more unlockable upgrades. The amount of unlockable upgrades available is astounding and with such variety available; it is a significantly positive design choice as it deepens the scale of character customisation and progression that is made towards ultimately creating a character that has every possible power imaginable to his or her class.

After the class has been chosen, players have the freedom to customise the character as much is required, so it is possible to select between the genders, a race between human, awoken and exo, a facial structure, skin, lip and eye colour; hair style and colour and markings such as tribal tattoos and the colour of those markings. This is an exceptional level of customisation that allows players to make their character look as close to a representation of themselves as possible or a complete opposite if they prefer, although it would have been great to upload your own image into the game via the PlayStation Camera.

The action starts with a tutorial in which players must find a rifle and breach the wall to escape from the Fallen who want to kill pretty much anything that invades their territory, regardless of whether there is peaceful or hostile intent. The tutorial does its job quite well as it is appropriately paced and introduces major gameplay elements to get started quickly and become familiar with the core concepts of the game.

Following on from the tutorial; palyers will be taken to the tower were they will be introduced to allies and rewarded with some of the local currency to purchase some new armour in order to increase players odds whilst in battle. There are some characters that will offer missions, although players will have had to reach a certain level before being able to be officially offered them. Therefore, the first mission beyond the tutorial and exploration of the tower will be at The Divide in Old Russia on Earth in search of a warp drive for the ship to be able to travel to other planets to expand the horizons of the journey.

There are missions available from the map, but the tower will also provide bounty missions when players have reached the appropriate level to unlock them, such as levelling up to level 4 will grant three new sets of bounty missions from the tower, such as the Patrol Cosmodrome for completing six patrol missions in the Cosmodrome, Relic Harvest for collecting 200 Sensor Mites in Cosmodrome and Body Dropper for killing 100 enemies without dying. This is an excellent design choice as it provides more reasons to visit the tower more frequently as additional missions will be offered as you level-up further, whilst players will be handsomely rewarded for completing the assigned missions, such as an increase in Vanguard reputation and an increase in your XP towards levelling up again to the next level.

There are three categories of weapons including: primary, special and heavy with a player having the ability to equip one weapon from each type, while still being able to carry nine more of each type of weaponry within their inventory with ammo being dropped from enemies that have been killed in white, green or purple boxes as each colour represents the type of weaponry. The primary weapons consist of semi-automatic scout rifles with high accuracy, burst-fire pulse rifles with a high amount of recoil during fire, automatic rifles with medium accuracy and revolver style hand cannons with a poor range but a real impact at close range, the special weapons consist of shotguns that are perfect for close range combat as they deal plenty of damage but have just as much recoil resulting in their accuracy only being appropriate for close range anyway, sniper rifles with a long range scope attached capable of high accuracy and damage and fusion rifles with a medium range energy rifle that requires a charge per shot and the heavy weapons consist of machine guns which provide a large clip capacity which is a good job as it also possesses high rates of fire packing a huge amount of damage and rocket launchers which is quite capable of devastating enemies within a wide blast radius. The weaponry is made even more interesting by the fact that there are a vast range of weapons that progressively improve across six attributes including: rate of fire, impact, range, stability, reload and the capacity of the magazine, which players will naturally earn as they progress through the game on route to completing more missions.

The loot chest on the tutorial level provides players with a second weapon to help prepare them for future missions, while loot chests can offer many more items with the most likely reward for finding a loot chest being Spinmetal. Spinmetal is light and strong; therefore it is used for everything from armour to forming the structure of a jumpship, while Spinmetal rounds are lighter in comparison to normal ones resulting in a greater capacity of ammo for the weapons. There are also other ways to collect Spinmetal, such as Spinmetal Leaves that will be found hidden amongst plants throughout Old Russia, while completing missions and killing bosses will also provide the key resource, which is stored in the inventory and fifty Spinmetal can even be sold in exchange for Crucible Marks or Vanguard Marks in the tower.

Glimmer is a programmable matter that was once used as a source of power before the collapse of numerous cities, although Glimmer is now used as the local currency of the last remaining city on Earth, while Vanguard Marks and Crucible Marks are both also forms of currency used to purchase legendary weapons and armour in the tower.

he environment design is rather stunning in the sense of its scale as it spans multiple expansive open worlds to explore with each planet and moon having their own large, wide and vast landscapes that are full of buildings, rocks, vegetation, underground tunnels and much more besides scattered throughout the environments.

The enemy design ranges spans multiple enemy factions including: The Fallen, Darkness, Hive, Vex and Cabal in which players will encounter everything from flying robot hunters called Fallen Shank; robotic walkers called Fallen Walker, purple glowing spheres called Servitor as well as various heavily equipped enemy life forms, such as Dregs, Vandals and Captains, alongside hordes of undead creatures such as Hive Thrall and Cursed Thrall with even knights and wizards to vast races of enemies that come in all shapes, sizes and strengths.

Grimoire cards are awarded for achieving certain accomplishments, such as killing a particular type of enemy, killing a foe in a certain environment or killing a total number of enemies. However, the Grimoire cards are only viewable at Bungie.net’s website, which is the only negative to the feature as surely Grimoire cards would have been much more accessible and therefore better unlockable content if they were available to view in-game. As progression is made through the environments players will also come across dead ghosts that you can revive and in doing so, the player will be rewarded with a small amount of XP, an immediate refill of the player’s Super Ability meter and increasing the Grimoire score.

The game plays out in a first-person perspective with the players gun trained ahead on any enemies or a flailing arm during melee combat whilst exploring the surrounding environments across each of the missions, although upon arrival to the tower the camera switches to a third-person perspective which is a pleasant surprise as is the case when the camera also switches to a third-person perspective when riding a Sparrow vehicle or when the character performs a celebration or greeting anywhere in the game. However, the collision detection with other characters during the third-person perspective on the tower is rather suspect as players randomly walk through a others at any given time, although the positive is that if the collision detection was to be improved; there is certainly potential to enable the third-person perspective across any of the missions. It is important to note that the collision detection during the first-person perspective has no problems at all and the camera gradually pans in from a third-person perspective into the first-person perspective when a player respawns and the third-person vehicular sections are also exceptional, so it would be a great forward step for players to be able to switch between the two perspectives at free will.

Destiny supports the share feature that allows players to upload a video or screen shot to Facebook or Twitter; and broadcast live gameplay footage via Twitch or Ustream as whilst experiencing the game with a simple tap of the share button and selecting the option of choice. The PS4’s hard-drive continuously stores the most recent fifteen minutes of gameplay footage, so players still have the chance to decide if they would like to share something amazing a few minutes after it has taken place. The share feature is a next-gen revolution that has only improved with the further customisation provided by the Share Factory app that allows commentary, music, themes, stickers, effects, text, picture-in-picture video between the game footage and the reaction from the PlayStation Camera and much more besides, which will only continue to prosper and flourish as it matures with additional features and further experimentation in the future.

Destiny also supports the remote play feature that allows players to enjoy almost any PS4 game on the PlayStation Vita via a Wi-Fi internet connection by pairing up the PS4 and Vita via configuring the settings on your PS4 to enable the Vita to connect to it, then entering the code provided from the settings menu on the Vita’s PS4 Link application with the initial setup taking around only two minutes. The game’s performance during remote play is astounding as the graphics, audio and general performance is identical to that of its PS4 counterpart, which is absolutely amazing, especially considering the size and complexities of the game! There has even been a conscious effort made to optimise the control scheme for the Vita due to the lack of R2, R3, L2 and L3, which has moved the shoot button from R2 to R, the aim button from L2 to L and L3 to the left analogue stick while holding down on the d-pad rather than mapping the R2, R3, L2 and L3 buttons to the rear touch pad by default. It has made for some rather creative uses of the touch screen as the centre of the screen is used to access the ghost in regards to viewing objectives and summoning a vehicle, while the left of the touch screen throws a currently equipped grenade and the right side of the touch screen is used for melee attacks, alongside tapping both sides of the touch screen to use your special ability when it has become supercharged. Therefore, the optimisation of the controls during remote play functionality has lifted the experience when playing on the Vita quite significantly, so much so that Destiny becomes the go-to PS4 game to showcase remote play on a Vita as it replicates it perfectly.

The controls are easy to master as they are quite responsive and intuitive with the default control scheme consists of pressing R2 to shoot; pressing R1 to melee attack; pressing L2 to aim down the sights of the gun; pressing L1 to throw a grenade; pressing L1 and R1 to perform your super ability; pressing X to jump; pressing O to crouch; pressing square to reload; holding square to interact with an object or vehicle; pressing triangle to change weapon; pressing up on the d-pad to wave; pressing right on the d-pad to dance; pressing down on the d-pad to sit; pressing left on the d-pad to point; changing the direction of the left analogue stick to move the character; pressing L3 to sprint; changing the direction of the right analogue stick to look around the surrounding environments; pressing R3 to highlight a player; pressing the share button takes players to the share feature menu; and pressing the options button to display the pause menu.

There are also five alternative control schemes including: mirror, green thumb, jumper, cold shoulder and puppeteer with a number of changes made in each, which is an extremely positive design choice as it will certainly allow for players from different first-person shooter games to find the control scheme that is appropriate for their play style, such as the mirror control scheme that switches the actions of L1, L2 and L3 for R1, R2 and R3 in comparison to the default control scheme.

It must be said that no matter which control scheme the player chooses, the handling of the vehicles always has the feeling as though they possess the accuracy of a dedicated driving game, which is a huge positive as nowhere near enough first-person shooters have drivable vehicles, let alone ones with the appropriate cornering or handling capabilities that players would expect from the vehicle they were using in that moment, therefore Destiny has certainly re-written the rule book for the quality of the visuals, audio and handling of vehicles in first-person shooters.

The touch pad implementation is used to view objectives with a tap of the touch pad with the possibilities of also summoning a vehicle or deciding to leave the planet or moon to go into orbit, while the light bar implementation usually displays a darker shade of white, but increases in brightness when your ghost activates its in-built torch to emphasise the change from darkness to light, although the light bar also changes to yellow to show you when your character has become supercharged allowing you to use a new ability that you will earn at level 4 and the light bar flashes red when your character is near death. The DualShock 4 controller produces a large vibration when you have been hit by an enemy to stress the impact or during an explosion to highlight the force of the blast and a smaller vibration when shooting enemies to underline the recoil of the weapon you are using.

Destiny is graphically stunning with dazzling particle effects, lighting and shadows, explosions, weapons and powers being fired, and even a day and night cycle with cloud formations and cloud movement, which collectively makes for a realistic looking world in which everything has its own light source and appropriately cast shadows with foliage and buildings that show signs of age and rust. The enemies look great across a wide range of species showing real diversity between how enemies look and behave and the same can certainly be said for the vehicles, while the animations are very smooth in first-person and third-person perspectives; therefore Destiny looks every bit the game you would anticipate from a $500 million production.

The presentation of the game is solid with a great user interface that is navigated by the face buttons with support for the left analogue stick and face buttons across various menus such as the main, set destination maps, options and gameplay menus, although there is no support for navigation via the directional pad, right analogue stick and touch pad, while it would have been a great to navigate the on screen cursor with gentle motions on the touch pad and to switch between the four categories of the options menu by swiping across the touch pad. The background of the destination menu is stunning as players get to see the ship in orbit above Earth as the Sun shines brightly over Earth, while there are indications of storms over certain areas of Earth as they light up as though lightning strikes are occurring with stars further on the horizon.

The audio consists of sound effects, voice-overs and music with the sound effects providing an incredibly atmospheric tone as players will hear the sounds some might anticipate from a first-person shooter, such as weapons being fired, explosions, jumping, running and walking but then there is another layer of detail, such as when players are walking or running on a metal surface or water, then it will have a different sound to it,
although it certainly does not end there as it will be possible to hear the screams of the Fallen to signify they are always around and players could encounter a threat of serious danger at any given moment, which is only
enhanced further by the rather ominous sound of incoming drop ships full of enemies to replenish the numbers of the Fallen that you have just killed. No expense has been spared on the quality of the voice acting as the voice-over artists all produce exceptional performances in a cast list that plays out as a whose who of Hollywood with Billy Nighy voicing The Speaker, Nathan Fillion from Firefly, Serenity, Buffy and Castle fame voicing Cayde-6 Hunter Vanguard, Lauren Cohan of The Walking Dead, The Vampire Diaries and Supernatural voicing the role of the EXO Stranger. Gina Torres of Firefly, Serenity and Suits voicing Ikora Rey Warlock Vanguard, Claudia Black of Farscape, Stargate SG-1, Pitch Black and various popular videogames such as Uncharted 2 and 3, Crysis, Mass Effect 2 and 3 and Diablo III, amongst others, Peter Dinklage of Game of Thrones and Pixels as Ghost; amongst many more actors and actresses that will most probably be familiar with from a film, television series or voice-overs. Even Destiny’s theme, score and entire soundtrack has had a lot of attention with the main theme being written and recorded by Paul McCartney, which was recorded at the iconic Abbey Road Studios with a 120 piece orchestra and plays during the end credits, although the entire soundtrack throughout the game has the feel to a Hollywood blockbuster score that has had plenty of time and consideration placed into producing the appropriate feeling from all of the music.

There is no DualShock 4 speaker implementation, which is certainly a missed opportunity when players take into consideration how much emphasis has been placed on audio design as part of setting the appropriate tone for the game. The DualShock 4 speaker implementation could have been utilised in a number of ways perhaps even with an optional output to cover different elements of the audio, such as the voice of the ghost companion during gameplay or the dialogue during cutscenes, the screams of The Fallen, audio logs and perhaps even gunfire, explosions and the powers of your character and your enemies.

Destiny has its own PlayStation 2.0 headset audio mix, which is downloadable from the Headset Companion App and once downloaded is automatically stored on the second slot of the headset. The dedicated audio mix calibrates the sound to make the sound even more atmospheric than what it already is by bringing through the screams of The Fallen, gunfire, explosions and the soundtrack, alongside many subtle details to levels that are more accurate in comparison to the standard audio mix that really accentuates every layer of the audio mix.

The trophy list includes 42 trophies with 26 bronze, 13 silver, two gold and one platinum trophy. There are some that will be naturally earned as players progress through the game, such as the Ship Rite bronze trophy for rebuilding a Jumpship which can be earned simply by completing the tutorial; the Dragon Slayer bronze trophy for killing a champion of the Dark that players battle at the end of the second level and the Change of Heart bronze trophy to reverse a decision on the selection of an upgrade which is possible from levelling up to around level 7 where players have earned multiple upgrades for the same category of the upgrade grid. There are also many online multiplayer trophies, such as the player vs. player trophies including the Giant Slayer bronze trophy for killing 100 Titans in PvP; the Ask Questions Later bronze trophy for earning a first strike kill in PvP by getting the first kill of the match, the Excessive Force bronze trophy for registering 25 kills in PvP with heavy weapons, and the A Friend Indeed bronze trophy for reviving five fallen players, amongst others.

There are some really hard trophies, such as the Ghost Hunter bronze trophy for discovering fifty dead ghosts which are scattered throughout the many environments in the game; the Triple Play silver trophy for killing a Hunter, Titan and Warlock without dying in a PvP match; and the Flawless Raider gold trophy for completing a Raid without anyone in your fireteam dying. It is estimated that depending upon skill, a good trophy guide to provide some helpful tips and some friends to join your fireteam clan or to participate in Player vs. Player matches that it would take most likely over one hundred hours to platinum the trophy list.

There are various difficulty levels such as normal and hard that is pre-set for each mission with a is rather interesting difficulty curve as it is progressively changing as players level up in order to deal more damage to their enemies and to receive less damage from them, which results in the game becoming easier against foes that were previously of a higher level, although there are still many enemies that will be of a higher level than you, so certain missions will become easier as players gradually increase their level while others will remain harder until that point

The insistence upon having an internet connection to even play in single player could be portrayed as a negative particularly for people who live in rural areas with an inferior and intermittent internet signal; however if players are looking for an online multiplayer community, then Destiny’s online offering certainly provides a wealth of content to extend the game beyond its initial story.

The game modes include: Crucible, Patrol, Raid and Strike with Raids becoming available after completion of the story missions and taking place within a six man fireteam squad, which will take a few hours to complete. Although you have up to a week to complete it providing the fireteam squad leader is present before the weekly reset which occurs every Tuesday, while Strike missions allow fireteams to assemble and take on large scale boss battles which again requires an extreme amount of team work and strategy to utilise the weaponry, powers and skills to the best of their abilities.

Patrol missions allow players access to the entire environment with some areas that may not have been previously available to explore and act as side missions that can be accepted by approaching a flashing beacon. The Crucible prepares players for the Darkness with a range of its own game modes, such as Clash, Control, Rumble, Skirmish and the Iron Banner with Clash being the Team Deathmatch style game mode in a maximum of two teams of six players each as both teams attempt to be the first team to reach the score limit, while Control is based upon capturing zones in a maximum of two teams of six players per team which forms a worthy combination of two first-person shooter staples being Team Deathmatch and Domination.

Rumble is a free for all as six players each compete to attain the score limit of 5,000 points; Skirmish is a variation of Clash but the twists are that it is two teams of three players with the added ability to revive players and an emphasis placed firmly on teamwork due to the smaller teams; alongside the Iron Banner which is quite different to the other four game modes provided by the Crucible as this game mode does not level the playing field by restricting abilities and instead providing the hardest Player vs. Player game mode available by testing players of all levels, regardless of how low or high the player’s level is or how many upgrades have been implemented to improve the weaponry and powers in what is a blood and guts fight to the finish that is not for the faint hearted or for those that have not levelled up too much.

The only negative to Destiny’s experience is the lack of any split-screen multiplayer, which is surprising as Bungie is renowned for quality split-screen multiplayer experiences in Halo and its omission is the only criticism that can be levelled at Destiny as the game performs supremely well in Player vs. Player and fireteam based scenarios during online multiplayer. The split-screen multiplayer would have strengthened the multiplayer community and could have offered the ability to play all of the missions in offline split-screen multiplayer with up to four players or online split-screen multiplayer with between two to four players locally and a further eight to ten players online to fill the maximum quota of twelve players.

The replayability of Destiny stems from a wide variety of areas, such as extensive character customisation, a cinematic unfolding story, limited time events and the ability to help other players during online multiplayer to provide a reason to return even beyond finishing the game and levelling up the character by gathering XP from completing missions and killing enemies which in turn allows an upgrade for the character to learn new skills and abilities after each occasion of levelling up, therefore making anyone the potential to be more of a valuable asset within a group of players in a fireteam. Then there is arguably the biggest factor of replayability yet as it has been categorically stated that Destiny has a ten year plan of post-release support, resulting in endless possibilities of new planets, moons, missions, weapons, classes and much more besides to be available in the form of future downloadable content as well as the potential of the game being updated with new features being patched in.

Overall, Destiny possesses the graphical excellence, atmospheric audio and performance superiority of what many would anticipate from a $500 million Hollywood blockbuster film production and then plants the player in the centre of it all to explore. If you are a fan of first-person shooters or sci-fi games, then Destiny is an absolute must purchase, which must be appreciated for its sheer size, scale and ambition, while the ten year post-release support will easily provide you with exceptional value for your money’s worth.

Jason Bonnar

Analysis

• Title: Destiny
• Developer: Bungie
• Publisher: Activision
• System: PS4
• Format: Retail/PSN Download
• Cross-Buy: No
• Cross-Play: No
• Players: 1-12 (Online Multiplayer/Online Leaderboards)
• Hard Drive Space Required: 21GB (Version 1.03)