Then thoughts of what Bungie had envisioned for Guided Games began cropping up in my head. When Bungie announced Guided Games, it seemed exciting. Here was a feature that would ease the stress of finding a group and knowing that group could be handpicked by the seeker. It meant not having to sift through toxicity, feeling a bit closer to strangers and maybe making a friend or two along the way. Guided Games has a long way to go and needs some serious refinement. I was not about to spend another hour waiting for the next group, for fear of having the same thing happen all over again. Destiny 2’s Leviathan was proving to be more of a monster than first imagined.
There are a total of eight maps (nine if you’re playing on PS4), and five game modes. Supremacy, Clash, and Control are part of the Quickplay option, and new modes Countdown and Survival are part of Competitive. Unfortunately, there is no option to select the game mode you want once you select Quickplay or Competitive. If you really want to play Control, you have to hope that the game’s matchmaking doesn’t randomly throw you into Supremacy or Clash.
While not able to pull a fireteam together that initial first day, something I’ve managed to do with all other raids in the past, I was content to watch others attempt this beast of a raid. It was exciting to see the first fireteam complete it in just six hours and reassuring. Then talks began to crop up and not the good kind. Here were the best of the best saying that it would take everything in a fireteam’s power to pull off this raid. And why? Apparently because it was the most demanding raid out of all Destiny raids. They aren’t wrong.
Speaking of enemies, Destiny 2 doesn’t add anything new to the mix. Each of the factions from the original game returns with a few new units, but they don’t change the fact that these are the same enemies we’ve been shooting for the past three years. Considering we’re exploring new, exotic worlds, it would have been nice to get some new enemy species thrown in.
Destiny 2 looks substantially better than the original game. Models and textures are more detailed, the worlds are bigger and more varied and the cinematics are top notch CG. It’s shaping up to be a stunning package on PS4 and PC. While the PS4 build we played was running on PS4 Pro, it wasn’t easy to discern any upgrades due to the size of the screen we played on. PC players, on the other hand, are in for a real treat. On PC, we did notice that pop-in was far less severe and it was nice finally getting to play Destiny at 60 frames-per-second. Unfortunately, the console version still runs at 30 frames-per-second.
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There’s no real choices and trade-offs to be made anymore. The same goes for the rest of the game. The in-depth and often rewarding dialogue trees are gone, replaced with options that boil down to whether or not the player character is going to be either nice or sarcastic nice. There are no karma checks, no skill checks, no special checks, nor even long and interesting conversations to be had. Dialogue might as well just be there because previous Fallout games had it. The list could go on, but is perhaps better saved for another time. As it stands,Fallout 4 has gained massive mainstream success. It just had to become a different game in order to get it; a game that’s much more a shooter with RPG elements than it is an RPG with shooter elements. It became a game one that fans of the old Fallout games have grown to hate and possibly a series that RPG fans in may no longer care about in the future. Taken on it’s own It’s a decent game, but one that has nonetheless been compromised for the sake of short-term sales. The same is true of Dead Space 3.
I’ve played a lot of Destiny, whether that be in Destiny or Destiny 2 form. This of course means I’ve also done everything Destiny has to throw at me. Being someone who likes Destiny means you’ll probably end up grinding toward the be all end all raid content for whatever iteration the series is on. Destiny 2 has a serious problem, though, and it’s its raid Leviathan and what it exactly it wants to be.
Destiny 2 is what Destiny should have been, but it’s not what a sequel should have been. That isn’t to say it isn’t fun; in fact, the world of Destiny has never been more entertaining. Destiny 2 successfully adds plenty of quality of life improvements that make the game less of a grind. An in-game map, Faction Leaders and Public Event tracking make the game more rewarding. An actual campaign, a good amount of Strikes, the Crucible and a plethora of side activities ensure that Destiny 2 will remain in your console’s disc-drive for a long time. In other aspects, however, Destiny 2 feels more of an expansion than it does a sequel. The lack of new player Experience enemies is extremely disappointing, which means another few years of fighting enemies we’ve already fought for the past three. While the new worlds offer more spectacle and detail than anything in the Destiny 1 era, they still feel empty without NPCs or an increase in the player count. Then, of course, there are the microtransactions, which gate the franchise’s best customization option behind either a paywall or, if you don’t want to pay, excessive grinding for Bright Engrams. Still, Destiny 2 is fun. It may not be the huge sequel that initial leaks made it out to be, but it’s still more Destiny, and this time it’s far more refined and rewarding.
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