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Forsaken is a new expansion for Destiny 2 – with its own season pass containing content between now and August 2019, and as everyone knows who plays this game, it’s shaking up the universe with loads of new additions/fixes etc and a half decent – if long-winded – campaign to boot.
The campaign takes you through various missions which inevitably up your power level towards the new soft cap of 500. The story itself is pretty dark compared the the previous Destiny instalments, the last one being Warmind. This time around, it opens up with the scene you will have seen in the trailer of Cayde-6 up against a hooded figure and his Barons. It doesn’t end well for Cayde with the scene itself being extended a little after the beating he gets where he is murd -ered by Uldren Sov (you remember him – the Queens brother on The Reef).
This is where you come in: It starts out with you assisting Cayde at The Prison of Elders in the first mission. All is going well until Cayde gets ahead of himself. as well as you and Petra. He ends up in the lower levels where everything has been released from their cells. By the time you get to him, he is all but dead and the cut-scene sees Cayde finally kick the big one. So after speaking with both Zavala and Ikora (and hearing your Guardian speak for the very first time), you head off to The Reef to take out the 8 Barons and Uldren Sov. This is all well and good, but as a Titan I felt I had no real connection to Cayde except turning in my weekly tasks. Yeah, he played his part and out of the three Vanguard characters, he was fun but his death just felt a bit empty to me.
So after all that, this boils down to a story about revenge, taking you to The Reef and other locations in pursuit of the 8 Barons and Uldren Sov.
Now as my readers will know, I have been a HUGE fan of Destiny since Day 1. I always looked forward to new content and things to do, and on top of that, it was one of the only multiplayer games I actually enjoyed playing as it had a different pace to those like Call of Duty WWII. Destiny 2 has changed… changed in a BIG way over the past few months, a lot to my disliking; some good though and quite a bit of stuff I just plain hate (which is a strong word). Looking around the net, the past week, I’m not the only player having these thoughts about all the new elements Bungie have implemented.
So we will start with the good.
The new campaign is decent enough, it introduces new enemies called The Scorn, which are kind of similar to The Fallen. There are all the other races in the Destiny universe, so I can kind of forgive this.
The new Gambit mode is quite fun. It is a PvE vs PvP type mode where you have 2 teams in their own map and have to collect items dropped by slain enemies that come in waves and then bank them. The other team also has to do this. Bank enough and a portal opens which the banking player can use to go into the other teams map and take out the players in there. If a player is killed and has a load of un-banked items they lose them. It is quite a clever game mode, but it does take a little getting used to and can be fun.
Now for the mediocre stuff that has changed.
The heroic strikes are gone. They upped the power level in the previous expansion Warmind, but the trouble with that was with the light level, which shot up, making them way to difficult. This coupled with trying to get past the soft power level cap of 340 was a nightmare, and again having to grind in the hopes of getting something to up your level. Additionally, the Nightfall Strike has a crazy high light level requirement, so after getting through the campaign, the grind is back on before this activity will be playable for many players.
Instead of Heroic Strikes, you now have Heroic Missions which are played in a similar way to said strikes, with a three-man fire team that is taken care of with matchmaking. These are just replaying the story missions, which is pretty cool and you do get some decent drops.
And finally the down right ugly…
So with the new update came a lot of new changes. I agree some stuff did need changing, but it shouldn’t be from one extreme to another. As an example, the weapons you have you infused with other weapons to up the power level: This was overly simple, but now you have to have masterwork cores and elements found on planets to upgrade weapons and armour. I’m not talking maybe 5 or 6 items to infuse… nooooo… that would make life to easy! You need at least 2 or more masterwork cores and 25 of an element from a planet. So you end up having to grind the various places and activities to get these elements to upgrade your gear.
On top of the grind, I haven’t had a single exotic or legendary drop in the time I have been playing. Everything has been the standard blue items, albeit with them being a high level. I did get one or two purple items from public events on the reef, but nothing I would use.
The multiplayer is my biggest gripe. It is what kept me going when I sickened of the grind. They upped the 4v4 to 6v6 a few months back, which may not seem much but the maps are really compact and it has become really chaotic with 4 extra players running around. These maps were designed for fewer players, so could they do with expanding them to thin the concentration of players out a bit. They have also upped the movement speed so it can be a lot harder to hit your target which means you have to be on point and at one with your controller to succeed.
Another major gripe is what they have done with loadouts. You now get sniper rifles and shotguns in the primary and secondary slots. Of course, now you get people abusing them in multiplayer: point blank shots with sniper rifles and people running around with shotguns, you have no chance.
Matchmaking on the Quickplay is currently not working. It was broken early July by a patch and Bungie’s response to this is “We will leave it and see how it goes”. So now you are getting high level players with high KDA ratios (Kills, Deaths & Assists) in teams of 3 and 4 obliterating lower level/less experienced players. This inevitably will put a lot of new players off.
Overall, Forsaken is bittersweet for me. It marks the point where I have finally got sick of Destiny. After the changes I was dreading getting this for review… Now that it is done, though, Destiny 2 is being uninstalled to gather dust on my shelf NEVER to be played again. Well done Bungie, you have destroyed my favourite go to game on so many levels.
The campaign is decent enough as is the new Gambit game mode. The problem I have here is that I REALLY don’t like the sweeping changes, especially the weapon loadouts and the multiplayer. I cannot just look at Forsaken itself. I took into account all the changes Bungie have made to the game. For me, this has ruined a decent experience for me, I agree that stuff needed doing as there were to many exotic, legendary and blue drops but most of the time is was just dismantled so grinding for a few hours you could end up with nothing.
If you enjoy loads of changes then this could well be up your street. However, if like me, you feel they have gone to far and one extreme to a polar opposite other, then you could well hate this as much as I do.
Overall: 5/10
Thanks to the Youtube channels featured for the gaming footage.
Destiny 2 is out now PS4, Xbox One and PC/Steam.
Important info:
- Developer: Bungie
- Publisher: Activision
- Players: single player, co-op, multi-player
Retro at heart and lover of all things ’80s, especially the computers, the music and the awesome movies and TV shows! Crazy huge retro gaming collection spanning the ’80s and ’90s with hundreds of tapes, discs and carts for various machines on top of a 600+ strong Steam library that is ever-growing. No I am not a serial hoarder, just a dedicated retro gamer!