Format: Xbox One
Genre: First-Person Shooter
Developer: Bungie
Publisher: Activision

Destiny's graphics are a melding of Halo and Mass Effect. Like both of those games, Destiny's visuals are high resolution and full of special effects. The game could be praised by saying that some of the title's extra-terrestrial landscapes look like concept art come to life-- unfortunately, that concept art was apparently downright dull; Destiny is certainly not an ugly game, but it's just too generic and uniform looking to be interesting.

Destiny's music is the kind of Hollywood orchestra music that's designed to fill in the silence, but not to really be noticable in and of itself. Boring! That said, a couple of the songs actually have a melody, which is unique amongst Hollywood-style music. Voice acting is mediocre and it could just as well be ripped from some other generic shooter; no one would probably notice or care.

If the venerable Halo mechanics hadn't been superceded by more modern shooters like Titanfall, aping them completely would have been a great idea. Maps are just a bunch of drab, look-alike static geometry. There are character stats to level, but once the game's level cap is hit-- which can happen over a weekend of solid play-- all that's left is to grind for loot. There is a competitive deathmatch mode, but it's basically just thirteen year-old Halo with new window dressing.

There are lots of events, "bounties", and other assorted quests to take on, but everything just devolves into running around the same static, copy and paste maps shooting the same enemies over and over. The game's loot is interesting, and some of the classes have fun-to-use skills. The fact that the player can use his character in both single player-focused missions and deathmatch is a neat concept. Destiny's problem is that it just doesn't have enough variety of gameplay possibilites to be engaging for very long.