Destiny 2

Destiny 2 has now been out for about a week and I have managed to get some play time in.  Now I have never played Destiny 1 and from what I understand you don't really have to in order to jump into this game.  So far I have found that to be true with the story line however the game play is another story.

The Bad:

1) It feels very slow.  The movement of the character is slow and the jump mechanics seem a bit wonky.  Even for the faster moving characters the movement is lacking.

2) To easy?  I have heard reports that the campaign is to easy and that you can literally run through areas of the game ignoring the bad guys and not be killed,  or even just stand there and the AI won't attack or stand in front of you waiting to be attacked.  I found this to be both true and false.  I have died plenty of times so far just playing the game.  There is no easy/med/hard modes either, which is why I feel like some of the complaints are valid.  For some this could be way to easy for others it could be perfect.  For me its just about right, specially since number 3 is coming.

3) Game.  I don't know how to play it.  I don't understand am I online in the campaign and are all the names running around with me other players? I'm picking things up a little at a time but I don't know what engrams are or how to use them.  The leveling system is easy enough to figure out and the weapons cache is fairly straight forward but whats the forge for, the vault, raids, clans, etc.  I know nothing regarding the multiplayer and the game doesn't help you figure it out.

4) Predictable spawning of bad guys.  You need to hold this area while the beacon does something.  Ok awesome I like horde modes.  However the bad guys spawn in the same numbers, in the same places, and run the same route.  One at top of the stairs, 2 from the right, and 5 from the left. SMH.

5) Slow loads for specials.  Exploding throwing knife, awesome, using it once every 3-5 minutes, frustrating.  Grenades, melee, and dodging specials take to long to load.  The characters main special seems to be fine as far as gaining points to use however everything else is too slow.

The Good:

1) One of the main criticisms of Destiny 2 that I have seen so far is that its to cosmetic.  Too much was spent on making it look pretty and making the people playing feel like they can really customize their character.  Hey!  I like this the game is frickin beautiful it's part of the reason I'm still playing it.  The levels are beautifully crafted and putting my characters together was fun.  I made one for each class and I go back and play levels with different classes as I enjoy the differences between the 3.  If more games looked this nice with their play-ability psh bye bye paycheck. I think Respawn could learn a lot from Bungie regarding map and level design.

2) The story.  It actually has a decent one.  I don't know the back story but I don't really need to.  Bad guy attacks, I'm a guardian ( I do what guardians are expected), I loose my powers and have to find retribution.  The big bad has depth and interest and the world/universe is expansive.  I know eventually I'll probably start bitching about pay to play or play to win aspects but really at this point I'm going to play the campaign through at least three times.  One for each guardian type.

3)The weapon and armor customization.  I feel like this is another aspect that Respawn could learn a thing or two from Bungie. The ability to change the way your character looks and acts in game is fun and it morphs to the players strengths.  Here probably in the next post I plan to show my 3 character designs.  How many did I get with TF2 inside my campaign again? 

4) I kind of like how the campaign adds other players that are online.  I can be running around and seeing other players on the same planets completing there own trials and even jump in with them.  The public events are so far pretty cool and easy enough to jump in on.  The only thing I know I won't like about this is having to put together a group to go on raids after I finish the campaign.  I don't socialize well. Bungie could take a page from ReSpawn here pull a TF1 type spawning system for raids but I doubt that'd go well either.

5) Elemental weapons.  I really like this concept.  It has been done before in various other games, the one that comes to mind is Borderlands.  Where certain weapons will do more damage to different characters based on that characters elemental status.  Orange = fire, White = Kinetic, Purple = whatever that was, etc.  It adds a bit more depth and forces you to use weapons you may not have previously kept.

I will end with overall I am enjoying playing this game.  Too easy? Maybe but you know I don't really want to die as much as I want to shoot swarms of aliens and monsters and use cool abilities. I will say I have not made it out of the campaign yet, and I have played maybe 10-15 hours.  A lot may change once I beat the campaign and can start messing with the crucible and other multiplayer modes.  Again I'm not usually a fan of multiplayer modes so I don't foresee that going overly well.