| Platform | OVERALL |
|---|---|
| 3DO | 8.90 |
| Overall | 8.90 |
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Destiny is easily one of the most interesting games of this new gen with its 10 year plan and mix of MMO with FPS mechanics. Plain destiny had great gameplay but loads of structural issues, main one being that the story was basically nonexistent. The first two expansions didn't do much to fix the issues with story, loot and content. Enter The Taken King, the first major expansion for Destiny which attempts to bring major changes to the destiny formula while enhancing the tight gameplay. I won't spend any time on describing the core gunplay in this review, I did that with the original review. It still has some of the best FPS mechanics I have ever played; every action is a joy to perform and simply shooting stuff is a blast. What Taken King excels at is giving the player better direction to fulfill new activities. The addition of quests (which is absurd that this wasn't at launch) organize and track specific story quests that have unique prizes making it much easier to organize what you want to do next. Do you want to do the next mission in a new exotic weapon quest line? Do you want to gain perks in a vanguard quest line? Nearly every faction has some long quest line which makes sure there is always something to work toward. Daily and weekly missions and bounties remain the same meaning the work like schedule of playing every day returns. I wish more thought was put into these, the bounties remained mostly the same for instance. A huge change comes in the form of legendary marks, the new reward for all daily and weekly quests. No longer is weapon upgrading tied to rare materials that you slowly earned, now weapons are upgrading by infusing them with higher level weapons. The marks is basically a new form of currency that allows you to buy all legendary items in stores. This system kind of becomes pointless once you get weapons over 280 as you can't buy weapons over 280 in damage. So marks are easy to get and nice for a week or so but quickly becomes irrelevant. Light levels got a major change as well doing away with the few extra light levels you could earn by equipping loads of raid items. Now light levels are on a much larger scale and all equipment contributes to it. This means there is a more constant progression in leveling up which keeps players from hitting such a hard wall where they can't level up. Still leveling up to the highest level is all tied to raid items so in the end not much has changed, it just makes the journey to that final push easier to deal with. So the loot and leveling systems got minor improvements but it didn't really fix the issues with destiny, but what about the actual missions and levels themselves. This is where the Taken King shines as the dreadnaught and the new missions incorporate a lot of the elements from the raid. Missions have varied objectives, they are more story driven and bosses have been designed to be more traditional pattern bosses than stupid bullet sponges. No longer do teams have to spend an entire nightfall strike hiding in a corner trying not to die, the new missions are designed for good team tactics. Add new skills for every class, a bunch of cool new guns and Destiny has never been more fun to play. The story missions follow one cohesive plot that involves Nathan Fillion's character so immediately the story is better. It still pales in comparison to any story driven FPS but at least this time the story is easy to follow and has characters. The new enemy group introduced in the taken king are the taken which in lazy Bungie fashion is just dark shadowy versions of the other alien races. But they tactics are new; some can deploy bubbles or generate shields. They teleport, some can reproduce, overall they are fun to battle. The best aspect of the taken is how in certain daily and weekly missions they can randomly take over an old level, now some levels don't play out the same way. The bosses are the real star as they are a significant improvement, the best being a battle against two cabal of very different attack types which felt like a battle out of dark souls. If there is one way for a game to reach my heart is to have interesting puzzles and the Taken King has embraced puzzles and hidden secrets. The Dreadnaught is the new expansion location, taking place in a giant alien ship that is filled with all kinds of locked chests and strange mysterious events. Wandering the halls you may encounter a strange glowing symbol over an entryway, inside Hive are chanting in some sort of ritual. Kill the hive and taken enemies pour out, kill them and a mysterious orb shows up, grab it and a counter begins for one minute with no real explanation on where to go. With some exploring you will find the hidden chest surrounded by darkness which the orb protects the player from. Other areas of the map have invisible platforms which can be revealed using the ghost, more hidden chests create puzzle opportunities. I once received a secret transition that lead me to do riddle bounties. All of a sudden the dreadnaught became this playground of exploration, I had to find all of its secrets. Certain daily missions hold secret missions that lead to exotic weapons. This was first discovered by accident by a fireteam and their exploits caused a fire across the destiny community. Now everyone was searching for secrets and hidden clues. It almost become a sort of outside metagame for the community to uncover what was being hidden. Eventually we learned that most of the secrets were locked behind a dev timer, every week or so they would release a new mission that gave us access to a new exotic quest. It is a great way to keep the community engaged but it artificially made players wait. That said some of these quests had ridiculous requirements that forced players into boring grinds doing the most mundane tasks. For instance one quest made players find rare versions of materials on the moon which meant hours of simply looting materials over and over. This is not good gameplay, it is just busy work for busy works sake. Contrast that to a few new single player missions which gave players a timer and a platforming challenge to complete, that's fun, why was that so short, why couldn't there be more of that? The main course of the expansion is the new Kings Fall raid and it does not disappoint. Once again the raid is the most incredible multiplayer FPS experience in all of gaming. No level or mode requires so much teamwork or has as much variety. This raid includes some crazy invisible platforming puzzle sections. Some great synchronized teamwork where teams must split up and players rotate roles. The boss battles are elaborate and introduce new mechanics like the runner which basically has to do some platforming while the rest of the team battle hordes of enemies. There is nothing quite like it in gaming, I stress this again, this should be the whole game. But it is not, in fact the previous raids were not updated which means they are very low level and don't give any modern rewards. So instead of updated versions of all three raids to enjoy we only get one raid that matters. Finding a group is still a royal pain in the ass with no matchmaking. I get it, randoms would be a bad idea but why is there not an in game message board system or meetup area where people can look for and join a team. Taken King is a step in the right direction for Destiny but it is still held back by too much crap busy work and random walls to keep players playing for long periods of time. When it's all about working together to complete a mission or raid it is magical. When it is just about grinding it is infuriating. I didn't even mention the crucible pvp mode, it's basically the same as before but all the new maps are smaller and well made. Those terrible large vehicle maps are now gone. Destiny remains one of the most interesting games of this gen, this crazy ten year experiment which has captivated and angered so many players. I have to say this expansion is worth it if you enjoyed destiny at any point, it offers loads of content and many hours of great play. Just be warned it will also frustrate you to no end. |
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Posted by Dvader Fri, 30 Oct 2015 19:51:24
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*crickets*
BTW your review titles says Knig?
Racist.