Destiny review: Final verdict on most expensive video game ever made is a disappointing lack of ambition

Destiny is a disappointment. There are plenty of ways to sugar coat that fact, the most obvious by pointing out that it is still a good game in its own right, but despite its many positives Destiny is not some great step forward in video game design or technology. What it does it does well, but it’s discouraging just how obvious its lack of ambition and variety becomes.

The first impressions of Destiny are very good, as anyone that played the alpha and beta will tell you. And certainly after our first day with the game we were very impressed, despite the litany of obvious problems that we listed in our initial report. But as time has gone on, and our progress into the game has deepened, those problems have inevitably become more damaging, and the initial thrill a more distant memory.

 Tradition dictates that at this point we should give a quick overview of what exactly Destiny is, for those that have missed the memo (and by memo we mean multi-million dollar marketing campaign). Destiny is a first person shooter from Bungie, the creators of Halo. And although they’re adamant about not calling it a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) it does borrow several elements from that genre, most obviously the fact that there are other people wandering around in the game world at the same time as you.

You could never say that Destiny is short of content, but all of it is based around just four hub worlds – one for each planet. These are huge and superbly designed, but each of the story missions (five per planet) and co-op strikes (one or two per planet) use a smaller sub-section of that hub. You can also just play in the hub on its own, picking up simplistic sub quests from two-way radios. The visuals are superb though, with a series of stunning landscapes that are just as much an artistic triumph as they are a technical one. Even though some low res textures and object pop-in betray the fact that the game is not next gen-only the superb lighting and excellently-detailed backdrops create a perfect illusion of solidity and physicality. From the beautifully alien colour schemes of Venus to the stark underground of the Moon this has the best planetary landscapes of any game so far, even if they do all curiously have the same gravity as Earth.

Again there’s a problem though, in that as gorgeously detailed as these worlds are there’s nothing in them. Not any non-player characters, very few vehicles, and nothing to do or search for except for a few loot crates and some dead Ghosts. With no destructible scenery the entire game feels static and empty, almost like someone designed the amazing looking worlds for another more complex game but in the end just used them for a simple first person shooter.