After quite a few more hours spent in Destiny I’m starting to enjoy it a bit more than I had initially. There are still problems, as I’ve stated before there absolutely needs to be some sort of voice chat (ideally limited in range so that it’s not overcrowded) in the open world and also in matchmade strikes and crucible matches. The lack of voice chat makes it feel like the entire world consists of AI bots who aren’t really human controlled at all.

That said, as a Halo fan I’m enjoying the Crucible. It’s satisfying in many ways, one of which is the fact that you get to bring your own guns into the fight. This makes everything feel all the more personal, even if there’s some sort of behind the scenes work to even the playing field. My favorite Crucible matches are the Control matches, which are basically 6 vs 6 three point king of the hill matches. When you get matched up with a good team there’s nothing more fun, especially if you get the chance to stay with those players for several rounds. Unfortunately the lack of voice chat again makes it feel as if I’m playing with a bunch of AI that occasionally acts human.

The story is still…Destiny. Not quite sure how to put it, but it’s a bunch of jibberish with the occasional cut scene spouting some nonsense or your flying Cortana cube spouting some nonsense during a loading screen. Every single mission follows the same format, infiltrate some place, find a terminal, defend, fight a boss, end of mission. This would ruin the game if the shooting wasn’t so satisfying.

There’s still no real loot drive in the game, at least for me. In games such as Diablo and Borderlands I’m constantly driven to try to find a better weapon to devastate hordes of enemies with. In Destiny no loot drop seems to make any significant difference at all. Sure once you hit level 20 you need to find legendary loot to increase your Light level (I just hit 20 today, so I can’t comment much on this process), but there’s no endless pull to cause you to keep playing like there is in Diablo and Borderlands.

All that said, I’m going to continue playing for awhile longer, probably until Master Chief collection and GTA V come out for the Xbox One.

Until then, I’ll again leave you with this: If you enjoy shooting things, Destiny may just scratch that itch. If you enjoy first person shooter multiplayer games The Crucible may give you what you’re looking for. Destiny excels at giving you stuff to shoot at and making it feel satisfying, but it’s not necessarily great at anything else. At least Halo had an enjoyable story alongside its lasting multiplayer and Borderlands gave you interesting characters and an endless supply of satisfying loot.