Destiny Beta, Day 1: Downed Servers, Long Loads, and Improved Dinklage
The first day of the Destiny beta has come and gone, and this gamer, for one, quite enjoyed herself. Well, I enjoyed myself once I got into the game. As one of the many who pre-ordered through a retailer, my…
The first day of the Destiny beta has come and gone, and this gamer, for one, quite enjoyed herself.
Well, I enjoyed myself once I got into the game. As one of the many who pre-ordered through a retailer, my download codes didn’t get to me until around noon EDT. By then, both PSN’s servers and Bungie’s servers were already stressing. It took fifteen minutes just to successfully enter my download code, and then another twenty before the downloading actually began. And once it was downloaded, it was another twenty minutes before the Destiny server was available to verify my install. And THEN I got into the game only to face another 10 MB “Update” that took over an hour to download.
If you’re doing the math here, yeah, that’s over two hours from code to play. Not fun. It’s disappointing that neither Sony nor Bungie were apparently ready for the numbers that the knew they were likely to get logging into the Destiny beta.
As far as the game goes, Destiny is a really is a well-made game. The combat is challenging and often it requires more than just stand-and-shoot or run-and-gun tactics to win; these AIs are smarter than the average street thug.
I think they’ve also struck a nice balance between solo play and cooperative play. The way they’ve built these locations, with the wide expanse of exploitable areas and the seamless transition into areas of “instance”, really works well. It allows people to help each other in incidental ways, but when the chips are down they either need to go in with friends or go it alone. Today I was going it alone, and I was still able to complete the missions. The challenge seemed to scale nicely to my skill level.
Oddly, a game that came to mind more than once as I was playing was World of Warcraft. Maybe it’s just because the Awoken look like Night Elves, but I also feel like there’s a lot drawn from MMORPGs here. Destiny is very much a hybrid game.
Oh, and that whole Peter Dinklage voiceover fiasco? They’ve patched it by running his lines through a robotic-voice filter for the Destinybeta. The player’s Ghost sounds much better. Also, they edited the script. While the Wizard may come from the Moon (and there is a Wizard), the Ghost no longer points that out.
All in all, I think the first day of the Destiny beta was a qualified success. The next two weeks should be fun. There’s an 8 level cap in the beta, though, so players may run out of things to do fairly quickly. I guess it’s time to memorize the Old Russian Cosmodrome and hunt down every last hidden item I can!
