Game review: Destiny

A Guardian gets amongts the action in Destiny.

Destiny turned Chris Schulz's nerves into quivering piles of jelly. He wouldn't have it any other way.

My hands are like claws. My eyes are like saucers. My nerves are so shot I should probably order some Xanax. I'm also tired, lonely, and a little bit lost. I've been roaming around a post-apocalyptic Russian wasteland for what seems like hours now, searching for spare parts for my spaceship.

I've been shot at with lazer cannons, attacked by marauding zombie ghosts, overrun by giant glowing orbs that shoot purple neon pulses, and been zapped by mini-recon robots armed with Tazer-like weapons.

But I've been exacting my revenge, sitting on rooftops and taking out those four-armed alien enemies with my sniper rifle. I've run down sewage tunnels and right into a melee, dropping flash grenades in my wake and leaving bullet ridden carcasses twitching on the ground.

Then there are the times that really bring a smile to my face, when I've run right up to those pesky alien enemies and punched them in the face with my bare hands.

And I've also helped out some of my Guardian buddies too, taking out an alien-assembled swat team one-by-one from the safety of a bunker and helping free an online player pinned behind a shipping container. A word of thanks might have been nice, but he was off on his next mission.

Welcome to the world of Destiny, the addictive new game from Halo creators Bungie. If you own a console, or know someone who does, then you've probably heard all about it, thanks to a wave of hype that's resulted in the game's record-breaking opening when it came out on Tuesday.

But, two days on from its release, it's still hard to find a full review of Destiny online. Metacritic still hasn't compiled any. Most are headlined "first impressions". That's because, this early in the piece, it's a game that's nearly impossible to review.

For starters, it's huge. Gamers start out by choosing their Guardian, picking from one of three races (human, the Albino-ish Awoken, and the bounty hunter-esque Exo), then customising them with haircuts, helmets and facial markings.

Then it's straight into the action. You're woken up by your AI robot sidekick, Ghost (voiced by Peter Dinklage), told to run into an abandoned warehouse, and fight your way through various alien hybrids, until you emerge out the other side, shaking and sweaty with adrenaline.

Because, yes, in case you were wondering, this is a first-person shooter. You're there to kill things. Mostly those things are wonderfully rendered, seriously scary, sometimes difficult-to-kill alien beings. Get ready to become educated in the differing combat styles of the Fallen, Vex, Cabals, and the Hives.

Yes, there's a back story: it's the future and you're a Guardian, one of the special folk in charge of defending the last remaining human city from those marauding aliens. Earth was wiped out and planets were colonised, and now aliens are threatening to overrun humanity. Or something along those lines.

It's not a massively original story. But the game's real winning touch is that Bungie have done a great job in building in elements of online multiplayer to its story modes. Often, you'll be in the middle of a mission and other Guardians jump into the fray. Sometimes, if you're playing alone, it pays to hang back and let a team with more firepower and better weaponry take out the Fallen for you. Or you can form fireteams of three to make missions easier. This will probably be more of a necessity as the game advances and missions get harder.

But just how big is Destiny? At this point, it's hard to tell. After spending the better part of a day with it, I'd completed around six missions, and progressed to a level six Guardian. But I'd only visited Russia's desolate wastelands on Earth and the cold glare of the moon. Missions on Venus, Mars, Mercury and Jupiter are all promised. Add in the game's side-missions, Tower activities, exploration adventures, one-on-one battle sequences and promised DLC, and we might still be talking about Destiny come Christmas.

There are gripes: because every man and his dog (approximately 4.6 million of them) played the beta version of Destiny, much of its opening moments will feel like repeats. There are loading screens, and some of the onscreen demands - holding down the triangle button to move objective screens on, for example - feel unnecessary.

And, as pointed out during the beta, Dinklage's voicework won't be earning him any Emmys. Yes, he's been roboticised since the beta, and you will get used to his corny comments over time, but for someone with such an integral part of the game, it's the one thing in Destiny that feels underdeveloped.

But there's just so much to love: those beautifully rendered landscapes that gleam in all the right places; the stunning soundtrack that never seems to repeat itself; the perfectly-weighted reward systems and difficulty settings that never make you feel like throwing your controller at the wall; and the feeling of accomplishment after defeating an alien horde, well, that just can't be beat

Yep, this feels like a game that feels like it deserves to be played to the very end - wherever and whenever that may be. Bring on the claw hands because I'm planning on seeing this one through. Yes, it's my destiny.

What: Destiny
Platforms: Xbox 360, Xbox One, Playstation 3, Playstation 4
Rating: M
Verdict: Destiny's destiny is to become something special.

- nzherald.co.nz