Destiny Alpha Impressions

I got to tell you, I wasn't really expecting much of Destiny.


Destiny is an upcoming online first person shooter from developer Bungie, who created the Halo franchise. It was first revealed to us February 2013. And had not really impressed me. It just looked like an online co-op shooter with exploration elements. It didn't look too special. Don't get me wrong I was looking forward to it, but I wasn't super hyped either. So when Sony announced an exclusive PS4 Alpha for the game, I thought I'd give it go. Sure enough Friday morning I got the invite, and I jumped in.


And it's been hard to jump out.


Destiny has stunned me. It has blown away ALL of my expectations. It went from a I'll wait for a price drop to I need this day one. Sure it was just a little sampling of an unfinished game, but what we got was impressive. You start out with creating a character. This isn't as in-depth as customizing the width of your nose like in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, but it was a pretty substantial customization for an alpha build. The Alpha doesn't give much explanation to the story, there's the intro mission and another mission you can partake in. In addition to that, you can take part in an exploration area, where you and 2 other people can roam around taking side missions or taking out enemies. The enemies, while there isn't a whole lot of variety yet, are smart and fun to take out thanks to the excellent combat system. There's also the tower, which is above Earth and right next to that giant ball you've seen in promotional art. That is essentially a hub, and you can purchase weapons and armor, get missions, and interact with other players. Then there's the Crucible, where the competitive modes take place. My personal favorite, Control, involves teams running around trying to hold capture points.


So that's all that's available for the Alpha. There obviously will be more content in the final build, and that excites me because what's available in the Alpha is amazing. The co-op areas are wonderful. You can hop in your vehicle and zoom across the map, then jump off and take out the enemies. As I said earlier, the combat system is excellent. The shooting is fluid and responsive and maneuvering around enemies is awesome. The competitive multiplayer on the Crucible is also fun (though I'm terrible at it) but I wish there would be some competitive space battles. I'm sure it will be there eventually, but it just seems perfect for a game like this. After all, Bungie showed they could do space battles in Halo Reach. The Tower is the only place where the game is viewed in third person, much like how you would find it in an MMO. It also is the place where you can start dancing with five other players, laughing the whole way through.


The controls feel good, although I do find it a little strange that the mapped the melee button to the R1/RB button instead of R3/RS. The rest of the controls are standard shooter controls, but you can double tap the jump button to activate your jetpack for a few seconds. This made for some entertaining firefights with other players while playing Control. The graphics are also really good, they actually look a lot better than they did in the trailers. In terms of problems, I don't have many. Obviously the content here is limited since this is an alpha, but I do hope the final release has some substantial varied content to play. Surprisingly I didn't find too many bugs except for maybe the occasional texture pop-in, but it's hard to notice and I'm very happy the game is in this state for an alpha.


After putting several hours into the Alpha, I have a new opinion on Destiny. I headed into E3 last week with my doubts on Destiny. Bungie had to really impress me with it. And now that I've played it, all my doubts now seem foolish. Bungie may have something special here. They might have just topped their work with Halo. I could see myself really getting into this. I don't know if this is going to make the numbers Halo makes, but than again, Destiny has already surpassed expectations before release.


Did you play the Destiny Alpha on PS4? What did you think? Will you be picking up Destiny? Let me know! And, as always, thanks for visiting 8-Bit Ape.