Destiny: Who Knew The Moon Could Be So Fun?
Company: Activision
Unless you’ve been under a rock, or just don’t care, you probably know that the beta for Bungie’s upcoming game Destiny finished recently. If you didn’t know, well, I don’t know what to tell you. You missed out on a fun, albeit short, experience. No, really, I thought for sure the beta would be a bit longer, but oh well. We have the full game to look forward to and the beta offered a nice little glimpse into Destiny, so you can’t be too sour about that. Unfortunately, I did not spend as much time on the beta as I would have liked because I spent so much time playing the alpha and I don't want to be burned out on the game before it even comes out. Anyway, enough of the boring stuff. Let's talk about Destiny!
Bungie seems to have the formula for Destiny down as the beta performed smoothly. The world was beautiful and the gameplay was still a ton of fun, but the beta was very similar to the alpha. The only real differences were the amount of story-related missions and unlockable items available. The beta started from a different point and I feel this really helped players get a good feel for the direction Destiny will go in terms of storytelling. Bungie also offered some pretty sweet time-sensitive content as well. The first was the Iron Banner mode which served as an alternative to the regular Crucible game type. The mode was only available at certain periods of time on Friday and Saturday and removed the limit on player equipment, allowing players to use any level equipment they acquired through playing. I thought of it more as a reward for the players who leveled up to the cap of eight and wanted to test out their gear against actual people instead of bots. A cheap reward but still something to do, right?
The second piece of time-sensitive content was the moon mission offered on Saturday for only two hours. Players who participated in the alpha probably noticed that the moon was now on the map of available locations to visit and if you were like me, you were already itching to check it out before doing anything else. Those dreams were probably quickly crushed once you realized you couldn’t do anything there, but fortunately Bungie allowed access to the moon mission for a certain time. Personally, I thought the moon mission was pretty sweet. It was a nice opportunity to see a different landscape, which makes me believe there may be other planets we’ll be able to visit in the full game. The mission itself fleshed out the story a bit more as well and players received a special weapon for participating in the mission. In addition, Bungie promised a long-term reward for those who participated in the mission. I was a bit disappointed that gameplay was the same as on Earth. I was hoping for some gravity differences or something between the two, but it wasn’t that big of an issue. Overall, I found the mission to be a fun little change up from the usual missions in the beta and hopefully we’ll be able to see some other areas in the full game.
Hopefully you didn't miss out on the time-sensitive stuff, but no problem if you did. Destiny releases September 9th, which isn't too far off and that time will fly by before you know it, so pre-order your copy now! In the meantime, check out our Alpha preview if you haven't already and make sure your ghost companion is up to date. See you starside, Guardians!
-SS-54, GameVortex Communications AKA Ren Plummer
Related Links: Game Vortex's Coverage of the Destiny Alpha The Official Destiny Website Pre-order Destiny on Amazon
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