Destiny was an awkward idea from the day it was announced. An attempt at hybridising the FPS and MMORPG genres, Bungie's new-gen breakout wanted to make history. In many ways, it did; but its name has been engraved on all the wrong trophies. "Most Infuriating Loot System" probably wasn't a planned achievement; "Most Limited Endgame" is none too appealing either. For all its promise, due to a nasty mix of poor management and general underdevelopment, Destiny has fallen flat at nearly every opportunity. And the game's raft of reactionary patches, while undeniably necessary, have done little to patch up the faults at its core. With all that said, at its best Destiny is what all games should strive to be: just plain fun. If you come into it with the right mindset - or better yet with friends - its universe becomes a playground packing hundreds of hours of fun. Visceral shooting and detailed landscapes lift the game above the squalor of its overly 'grindy' and sparse challenges, and hearken back to the adrenaline-fuelled days of Halo by which Destiny was so clearly inspired. Sadly, its troughs far outnumber its peaks, and as it stands Destiny is a mediocre experience on the whole. However, although the gap between the possible and the realised is dangerously wide, Destiny has at least succeeded at the most basic goal of series progenitors: laying the framework for something great. It all comes down to whether Destiny 2 can make the right changes.
A freelance games writer, you say? Typically battling his current RPG addiction and ceaseless perfectionism? A fan of horror but too big a sissy to play for more than a couple of hours? Spends far too much time on JRPGs and gets way too angry with card games?
Well that doesn't sound anything like me.
