Destiny 2

Platform:Playstation
Age Rating:16+
Year of Release:2017
Review:

In 22 Jump Street – possibly apart from Aliens and T2 the best ever sequel – Ice Cube greets the returning cops in his new office. Did they like it? It’s got a huge glass cube and loads of hot staff drinking espressos. Didn’t they know this is the sequel? Bigger budget baby.

Destiny’s budget was pretty big to begin with. Bungie – legendary developer of Halo – spent the GDP of a medium-size nation on bringing together the FPS and MMO. I think the verdict was pretty much that the MMO was pretty lame, while the FPS was the gaming equivalent of cocaine. Bits everyone liked included rock-hard team raids that took hours, as well as the usual multi-player options like capture the flag where you could be owned by a 12-year old from Bulgaria. It looked georgeous, but couldn’t escape a somewhat convuluted and tokenistic plot that didn’t really work hard enough to set up the bad guys as people you didn’t like, and the good guys as people you rooted for.

Now a mere six months after Destiny 2’s launch your erstwhile correspondent, AKA middle-aged gamer man, is about half-way through the campaign. Throughout this there’s the feel of more espressos and glass offices. The plot? Well see the traveller, the mysterious entity that came to earth in the first one, has been attacked by these really bad dudes called the Red Legion, as their leader wants the light, the power used to resurrect dead warriors to protect the earth against the fallen….oh what am I saying it’s still utterly rubbish. (See The Last of Us for how to do a non-rubbish gaming plot). LIke any good sequel you are out in the wilderness at the start, and have to make it back to prove you’ve still got it. There is an actual villain in the super sized Ghaul, and you have some buddies to rescue and team up with who like all NPC’s are insanely annoying. Top annoying buddy is a broken AI on Nessus that has some would-be quirky Red Dwarf style lines. The baddies are the same (Hive, Vex and Fallen), many of the environments look very similar and the whole thing has the feel of a continuation of the original game rather than anything startlingly new. But why break something that very definitely was not broken in the first place. And that’s the FPS bit.

Zapping bad guys. In this Bungie demonstrates how to create something as easy, deceptively simple and perfectly balanced as a Mozart symphony. Yes, their melee dynamics and super moves are that good. Though not as adrenalin-pumping as the Doom reboot perhaps , it is so utterly addictive that daughter Moles has vowed to abstain until after her GCSE’s. If you were annoyed in the first game’s complete excuse for a plot, there is a bit more here to chew on. Otherwise its a retool: longer campaign, bigger environments, more dynamic bad guys. Play this, and COD looks like a relic from another age. I had the misfortune to play the last-but-one (Infinite Warfare) and it varied from lacklustre to awful from start to finish. Destiny, like Doom, doesn’t throw in any driving or on-rails sections. There is a bit of platforming, but really D2 is laser focused on laser guns. When it comes to sending futuristic baddies into the void D2 remains the gold standard.

Might suit people who like:

Zapping bad guys. In a fantasy setting without any blood or stuff that makes you feel a bit wierd, unless they’re Nazis.

Time Thief Rating:Time? Not so much a relative concept as a black hole

1