It is your Destiny.

By CaulynDarr

Bet you though this would be an X-Wing post.

I picked up Destiny for the 360 last night, then spent 7 straight hours playing it.  The most succinct way to describe it would be a MMO version of Halo.    Which you may take as being a very good thing, or a very very bad thing.

Bungie world building is in full effect here. They have a knack for creating visuals that give a a real sense of history and scope to an environment.  And they back it up with some inspired musical scoring.  You always feel like you are part of epic events bigger than yourself in a Bungie game.  Unfortunately, some of the MMO tropes are in effect, and they serve to flatten the epicness a bit versus a truly single player series like Halo.  It really kills the mood when you're on your way to see the Speaker with evidence of an impending invasion, and a random dude stops in front of you and starts break dancing.  

The story is pretty interesting so far.  It's essentially a sword and sorcery setting with a very heavy dose of space opera, or a space opera with a heavy dose of sword and sorcery.  Could go either way really.   Humanity found this ancient artifact/intelligence/thing called the Traveler on Mars and it triggered a golden age.  But after a few hundred years of the good times, some ancient enemy of the Traveler shows up and starts a war.  The Traveler somehow stops it by sacrificing itself.  Creating a single safe protected place on Earth and empowering a line of Guardians to defend it.  A few hundred more years pass, and now the ancient enemy is returning, dun, dun, duhnnnn...

All the MMO mainstays are here: races, classes. quests, loot, and raids.  Fortunately, it's a quality shooter at its core.  If you played Halo, the mechanics will not be unfamiliar.  The weapons and enemies all have pretty close analogs in Halo.  But you get some bonuses from the MMO elements too.  Challenging boss enemies, and devastating class based powers.

My 9th level Human Rogue errr, I mean Hunter.

The races in the game provide no mechanical difference, it's purely cosmetic.  You can be Human, an Awoken(elf), or an Exo(robot).  The classes, at least so far at the lower levels, aren't that much different either.  You can be a Titan(fighter), a Hunter(rogue), or a Warlock(mage).   You get unique grenades and special abilities, but you have access to all the same weapons.  So when your super ability is in cooldown(which is most of the time) you are going to be falling back on your FPS gun-play skills.

A bonus to playing as a Hunter is that Nathan Fillion is your boss. Gina Torres is the head Warlock if you're more of a Zoe fan.  Peter Dinklage is your Cortana, but he doesn't have much characterization outside of telling you who you should be shooting at any particular moment.        

Most of the story missions are spread out on big public co-op maps.  You'll commonly see other players going about their business.  Though occasionally you go into small instance zones, usually at the end of the mission where only members of your party can come with.  Co-op also includes raid and patrol missions; all happening in the same map.  

The other game-play mode is the Crucible which is the game's PvP multi-player.  Pretty much standard Halo multi-player modes, but the vehicle usage is downplayed considerably.  Only a few armed jet bikes are available.    

This game will probably swallow me whole for a few weeks.  I generally don't care for MMOs, but mostly for the boring click based combat.  This has the good elements of an MMO(you know, the really addicting ones) on top of a game I would probably be playing anyway.

I briefly thought about picking up an Xbone or PS4 for this.  But the game-play is the same, and I don't feel like spending $500 for a visual boost.

If any one else is playing this on the 360, let me know.  We can try and team up for some raids.