Sorry, this isn’t a post about Star Wars. No Darth Vader for the time being. Although there might be some Star Wars coming soon (sort of).
So for the last few weeks I’ve been pottering about with games (I’ll come back in a few days to write a post about my main game) but at the moment I’ve been back to what appears to have become a bit of a classic.
Destiny
My colleague and some time *Inbetweeners voice* online gamer friend, Phil, finally cracked and bought a PS4. Brilliant. Now we can play online again.
“What shall we play?” “Erm… I bought Destiny” “Okay, cool, I’ll get it reinstalled”
Was how the conversation went (or something similar at the very least).
So. We dived back in to Destiny. Now yes, there are been a number of updates and expansion extras added since I bought my copy (at launch) and Phil was unsure if he’d like it enough to dive right in a buy the super expensive Legendary pack or some such. So we just hung about on Destiny vanilla, played a bit of co-op and had a bit of a rumble in the Crucible.
Right, okay. I’ll back track a bit here for the benefit of those not familiar with Destiny.
Destiny is a science fiction RPG, specifically an online multiplayer RPG. Kill the monsters, robots etc… earn experience, level up, get better weapons, armour, then kill bigger enemies. There are so many quest givers and so many targets that it’s quite easy to level through the ranks and unlock new things. Go here and do so many missions, kill this many of this type of enemy. They are often a little samey (for us at least) but we don’t really need to do them as we have reached our level limit and I expect the expansion stuff deals with this by giving more varied quests.
That’s about it. Except of course it isn’t. There are the simple levels (we are capped at 34 because we don’t have all the extra bits) where you gain experience and unlock new powers and are granted access to better weapons and stuff. Then this better equipment has a value called Light. Light is another way of leveling up, giving you an idea of if that new area is too tough for you, or if it will be easy. Light affects your powers. your skills rather than your weapons.
This is my character. The Warlock (The sort of spellcaster) has specific special skills, compared to the Hunter or the Titan. If you want to read more about the classes then I am sure there have been plenty of books worth written about this game by now. Go and read up on it.
The Warlock, Gw1dor.
So, off you go into the world, on your own or with others. In our case because we are locked out of most of the story stuff (yes, we are true Yorkshiremen, too tight to buy the expansions just yet) so we’ve been playing against other players in the online battle arena, The Crucible.
The Crucible is the player v player battle arena, with a number of different types of match. 6v6 (again, all we are allowed to play because of our lack of dedication) means that we can play clash – team deathmatch. Kill the players on the other team more than they kill you. Control – a variation on capture the flag, hold the points on the map and stop the enemy from taking them back. Vehicle combat where there are flying vehicles, mounted guns and such. All good fun.
The Crucible is very well balanced. Destiny as some pretty impressive matchmaking. If the match becomes very one sided, the timer ends quicker and you are rematched to your level. Win by a massive margin and you find the same thing. This means that most of the time, matches are close and usually only a few kills or points split the teams.
Rewards are handed out randomly, win or lose there is a chance you’ll win some new gear or such. Which means that even if you are losing, it’s often worth hanging around to the end of the match to see if you are rewarded.
After a night in the crucible, Phil and I end by heading back to the base, handing in any quests, buying new weapons or whatever while we generally chuckle about the evening’s fun.
Sometimes we muck about a little more than others, this week we had a bit of a dance on the ceiling of one of the stores.
Later, Phil was trying to see how close to the edge of a ledge he could get.
“Dude, I’m right next to the flashing light” he says.
“Cool” says I.
Boom. I laughed. Lots.
That seems to be the general feel of the game. We have a laugh and chill out after work. Tuesday evenings. Bit of a midweek wind down.
Anyway. I have found that I enjoy this game again and I have a feeling we will be buying the expansions and playing more of this…