The Endgame - Destiny

Format: PS3, PS4, Xbox360, Xbox One, PC
Story Completion: 100%
Story Satisfaction: 10%
Character Level: 24/32

If you're a dedicated gamer like me you'll probably understand that our playthrough of a game is just one of the many lives we live, and pretty much every one of these lives spans from a game that asks 'What if?'

Destiny certainly poses this question, more specifically it asks 'What if we lived in an age of prosperity where we've managed to colonize the Moon, Venus and Mars and thanks to a war between various alien factions there is now only one inhabitable city in the universe and every day we wonder if our city will fall. Oh and by the way there's a huge Death Star in the sky that protects us.'
You play as a Guardian, one of the few that reside in the last city left on Earth, with your underline goal being to fight back against the numerous alien factions across the inner galaxy before they bring the fall of this city as well

As you can probably tell, Destiny's story is not it's selling point, in fact most of the story could be ignored without detracting from the game at all to be honest, however everything else is handled in such a way that it will just keep you coming back for more.

This little light is your companion throughout the game. Though a lot of companion in games are renowned for being painstakingly annoying,  your 'Ghost' is actually a surprisingly amiable and witty comrade.

At the basics, Destiny is an FPSMMO, and as a game it's strikingly similar to Borderlands. The most enjoyable part of the game basically comes from hunting for rare and valuable weapons and armour to make you even stronger, and this aspect appeals to the little boy gamer inside of me so much. See, the chance of getting all the really rare loot is really tiny, but that chance is still there, and it does happen, so you'll find yourself doing everything you can to find it. Destiny offers a lot to help with this, but it's basically all end game content, the best loot comes in the form of engrams: Items that you can get decoded to reveal a piece of armour or a weapon, but unlike in Borderlands Destiny limits your access to the best loot based on your level. You'll find shitty white and green drops up to level 15 or so, before white fades out of existence altogether and delicious blue engrams start dropping, these give good stuff but you really want to find the purple ones that give you legendary equipment, the only stuff better than these beautiful babies are the Golden associated Exotic stuff, but seriously good luck getting any of that stuff without grinding ten hours a day.

Each of the enemies has a weak point which will cause them to take extra damage, none of them are particularly hard to find, I wonder where this one's could be!

All that said, developers Bungie have done exceptionally well at helping us answer the call to loot keeping the game fun (in fact in hindsight this is where the fun begins) after you hit the level cap, with Rare and above equipment having an extra stat to boost you above level 20, as well as much harder missions for you to test your skills at with the potential for those beautiful blue and purple orbs to drop on the way keeps us playing the same simple missions over and over again. If you like to keep things fresh there are daily bounties which offer a goal to strive for and some excellent rewards too. The multiplayer is pretty decent too, it's easy to see evidence of Bungie's roots with Halo within, and that's not a bad thing as it's a fun and enjoyable experience, and the completely random distribution of loot at the end means you don't always have to do well to get the best of prizes. What? still not good enough for you? You long for an epic adventure? Well, like any strong MMO Destiny also gives you super capped out players the chance to do Raids - reeeaaallllyyyyy long missions for the highest level and best players, with epic bosses and of course the rarest of loot. I'm not at a decent level to try one yet but my overly obsessive friend that I played through the game with tells me doing a Raid with some good quality equipment on will take around six hours.

SIX. HOURS.

Is that a mighty enough feat for you?

When you find someone with gear like this, just smile, and know that you're probably never gonna 'get there'

Destiny really shines through in terms of its combat though, which feels very smooth and satisfying. The guns look good and there's a genuine feeling of power when you squeeze the trigger, and melee kills are often more fun than blasting an alien in the face. There's no feeling quite as satisfying as knifing a full health enemy in the face and sending it's corpse ragdolling back a few meters, the animation just gives a level of impact that screams 'Ooohh that's gotta hurt' as you laugh and tower over your victims sprawling corpse.
The three classes to choose from offer a variety of unique playstyles to suit all preferences . Titans dive in head first and punch the ground in the face to annihilate everything nearby; Hunters stay back and shoot everything in the face with high damage and precision; and Warlocks do whatever they do and magic everything in the face. Each has it's own diverse skill tree allowing you to create a class that truly suits you as a player.

Aside from class you can also choose your character's race. Chose from Human, Android, or Extra from James Cameron's Avatar

With all that said and done, how does the story end? Does the end of the story make up for the rest of it being basically irrelevant? No not really, one of the factions awakes a giant blobby heart in the sky, potential for epic battle against omnipotent god-like jelly. Reality, a disappointing fight against three statues empowered by the heart one at a time, and are about as generic as most of the bosses in the missions prior. Kill the third statue, the heart just sort of... implodes... and that's it, cue the ending sequence which didn't even play for me for some strange reason, but hey who cared about the story anyway?

Overall Destiny is a very solid and enjoyable game, with a huge amount of content (and growing) for you to explore and discover. It really didn't live up to the hype upon release but I fail to see why, the story is insignificant but that doesn't stop the game being enjoyable. It's less like an adventure, more like good fun stress relief and opening-a-pack-of-trading-cards level excitement.

TL;DR: Great game, brilliant combat. Story may be pointless but who cares when the promise of loot is abound. Haters gonna hate, but they have no reason to. Deal with it.