Destiny: 11 Reasons It Doesn't Live Up To The Hype

We're officially on Day 3 of Bungie's massively-anticipated, $500 million gaming juggernaut, Destiny, being out in the wild, and it's been quite the ride to say the least. While the gaming press has steered clear of posting any full reviews yet due to the online-only nature of the game, one needn't look far online to see a sizable chorus of disappointed fans who, while enjoying Destiny, are also finding it all a bit lacking given the hype train we've been riding ever since the first reveal all that time ago. We've sunk almost 20 hours into the game so far, having reached the soft level cap and beaten the story mode, and our conclusion is that while it looks lovely and the PvP in particular is ridiculously fun, the campaign element is seriously underwhelming, as is the social aspect Bungie promised from the outset (further ironic given that this was the primary reason they halted the early reviews). Given the impressive lack of connectivity issues over the course of the launch so far (take note, Rockstar), the developer doesn't really have an excuse: it appears that we're dealing with another Watch Dogs situation here, a fun, enjoyable game that falls way short of the classic mark, and as such doesn't live up to the hype. What do you make of Destiny so far? Do you agree or disagree with our points? Let us know in the comments!

11. It's Not Easy To Play With Strangers

The entire appeal of Destiny is that it basically combines the gameplay mechanics of an MMO (large-scale, sociable gaming) with the gunplay of the Halo series. While the fact that fireteams are restricted to 3 players is itself rather disappointing, at least we knew about that ahead of launch: what's more frustrating is that Bungie are seemingly taking measures to deliberately make socialising with other random players more trouble than it's worth. Though it's easy enough to join a fireteam with a buddy and start a mission, we're not always going to be playing with our friends, so we need to just cherry-pick someone from our environment, right? Well, for starters, the game's default setting is "Friends Only", something the game doesn't bother to explain to players, so only after scouring message boards did many realise that this can be changed in the game's menu, allowing other players to join you. Further annoying, though, is the fact that this setting resets every time you restart the game: it doesn't bind, even though it should clearly be the default option. In addition to this, if you're on a mission and you come across somebody else in your vicinity who you'd like to team with, you have to (on the PS4 version) press R3, press options, select "Join Fireteam", and then use the PS4's own invite system to send them a play request. It's incredibly counter-intuitive and unwieldy, because by the time you've actually sent the request, the other player has probably already run away, or they might not even realise it was you who sent them the request. Given that playing the game with others is supposedly the entire foundation of Destiny (and playing solo is a relatively sober experience), this is an unfathomable oversight and one which needs to be fixed ASAP. When we land on Mars for a mission, we expect to see at least 2 other players running around within seconds. It's not really asking much.