Destiny (E3 2014 Hands-On Preview)

Developer Bungie will be straying from its roots with the upcoming release of Destiny, though the massively multiplayer online title still feels familiar to fans of the Halo franchise. The forthcoming release was available to play in its alpha form, though an open beta is scheduled to begin on July 17, and a lot of the user interface and gameplay feels familiar to the popular shooter series from Bungie. There are MMO elements of traveling around an Earth wasteland accepting and completing missions and using money and resources earned during missions to shop for new equipment after returning home, and the player customization options are deep enough to keep characters feeling unique from others in the same world. Players can also use a wide variety of emotes for their characters to really give them that extra burst of personality! Nothing shows other gamers how cool you are like busting out a few dance moves after an intense battle. Destiny made a great impression in its early form, and we definitely can't wait to play more when the full version is released in September.

The MMO elements featured in Destiny were immediately understood after beginning a session of the game. Characters can be from either the Titan, Hunter or Warlock classes and be either Human, Awoken or Exo as a race. There are additional character customization options available as well including clothes, accessories and colors. Once a character has been created, the player is flung into a mission set in the crumbled ruins of Old Russia to find and destroy an objective. The simple mission style is seen a few times through the test version of the game, but there is enough storyline to make Destiny more interesting than the next MMO. The world and its inhabitants are also interesting enough to make players desperately want to learn more about the world and how it ended up in its current state.


When not in missions, players will spend the bulk of their time interacting with other players and shopping for new items in the Guardian home base. The hub world switches the camera to the third-person view, and players are allowed to take a break with no real danger in the area. Players can purchase new weapons and equipment for their guardian or upgrade a hover bike that is used during missions to help explore the world. There isn't a whole lot of other things to do here currently, since the game's NPCs have little to say, though players will likely be able to interact safely with one another when the game is finally released later this year. Players can then head to space to find and select new missions and locations to visit.



A couple of cool features stood out in Destiny that are definitely worth mentioning. Whenever the player needs a little direction or help, a friendly, AI cube known as the Ghost is available with missions objectives and a few helpful pieces of information. This creates a sort of atmosphere not unlike some of the more recent Legend of Zelda games, although we hope the Ghost won't be as annoying as Navi! An even cooler feature is the dynamic events that can trigger at any time during sessions and cause players to team up to take out enemies even if the players weren't already in a group together. BioGamer Girl was able to get a walkthrough of the game with the Destiny team at this year's E3 and it was a blast learning about all the great elements the game has to offer and we even got to experience a community event live and in person. Community events only happen at certain times and give players the chance to team up with other online gamers to take down massive enemies or quests with huge rewards. Players can always be seen out on the battlefield completing the same objectives, but these tough enemies can drop from the sky and really change how players choose to progress through the rest of their mission. Destiny looks to be a really strong contender for game of the year in 2014, and Bungie no doubt has another great game in the works.

Destiny is now available for preorder from most major retailers for the MSRP of $59.99 and is scheduled to release for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One and Xbox 360 on September 9, 2014. Destiny is not yet rated. For more information on the game, check out the official Destiny website.Stay tuned as we get more hands on time with the Destiny Alpha in the future and the full release of the game.

Game Features:

• Massively Multiplayer Online
• 3 Playable Classes
• Dynamic In-Game Events
• Open Beta Begins on July 17
• Trophy/Achievement Support

Game Information:
Developer: Bungie
Publisher: Activision
Platforms: PlayStation 4 (previewed), PlayStation 3, Xbox One & Xbox 360
Release Date: September 9, 2014