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The Curse of Osiris is the first expansion for Destiny 2.
I love the Destiny universe and always have enjoyed getting my teeth into the DLC. Even the first two which were released for the original game (Dark Below and House of Wolves), which are average at best held my attention as it was more Destiny!!
Osiris is a veteran Guardian Warlock. You will have heard Ikora talking about him a few times in the past. He was exiled by The Speaker for his misuse of resources and obsession with the Vex (There is more to it than that, so go check out the Destinypedia!). After many years of exile, Osiris contacts his former student Ikora to tell her the Vex from the past and the future are gathering and gaining strength on Mercury, so Ikora sends her favourite Guardian off to investigate what is happening.
The Curse Of Osiris gives you a new social space, a new planet to explore and three new multiplayer maps on top of a host of new weapons, shaders and armour, and the level cap has been raised to 25. The campaign, itself, will take most players around three hours to complete, as the power level (why did they rename it from Light?) required is 220. If you have gone through the main game already, you will be heading your way to 300, making most missions on the DLC a walk in the park.
The campaign sees you venturing into The Infinite Forest on Mercury. This is essentially an area that the Vex use to test combat techniques against the other races (Cabal, Fallen and Hive) so they are more effective in battle. Each mission will take you through a section of the Infinite Forest and then onto a boss. The trouble with this, is that even though it kind of feels like a randomly-generated area, it is set and you will fight a specific enemy each visit. It’s like you are redoing the same bit over and over again for each mission. After the first two occasions, it was becoming tedious and long-winded.
It must’ve seemed like this was a great idea, but it was poorly executed. I do feel they could have done a hell of a lot more with it. Overall, the campaign made little to no sense and felt like you were just going through the motions to see its end. On the prior game, The Taken King DLC, is how it should be done. Maybe the release of The Curse of Osiris is a bit to soon after the main game’s release?
There are two new strikes on Mercury, both of which are similar to the story missions you will have played. The first sees you going through the Infinite Garden and then onto a boss fight where the boss moves from area to area. The second is the Garden World, where you make your way up a tower and take out a Cyclops-type weapon which circles an arena. Additionally, with the strikes introduced with this DLC, the Heroic Strike playlist returns from the original game, and these require a higher power level to, play but give greater rewards for completion.
The three new multiplayer maps (3 on Playstation and 2 on other formats) are excellent and is what stands out the most for me in the whole DLC. Pacifica is what you will be used to seeing whilst exploring Titan and is the exclusive PS4 map, Wormhaven also sees you on Titan but is in the Arcology and has Hive amber coloured scenery in places and the final map is Radiant Cliffs which is my favourite of the three being quite colourful and set in Mercury’s past.
There is a new Raid available which is essentially a shorter version of the Leviathan with new areas, puzzles and bosses to take out. I have yet to play this though as haven’t been able to get into a team so hoping that when things settle after Christmas and the New Year the queue times will be shorter for guided games or more clan members will be online.
Now there are a few gripes, apart from how short the campaign is. The three new multiplayer maps have a new Osiris icon in the Crucible, but that is all you will play. It doesn’t appear to add them into rotation with the existing maps (I have played Crucible a fair bit over the past week and not seen any of the original maps in the rotation). Going on that, you can see that Bungie has split up their player base with content being locked behind the DLC. Another issue with the DLC lock is that the new level cap is 25 (I find quite strange and pointless as within the few story missions, I had hit the cap), your power level has also been upped to around the 335 mark. To actually reach the new cap on both counts, you need to have the DLC. Weapons and armour drops for upgrading are included within said DLC. Another thing with this DLC, is that access to the Heroic Strikes are locked behind the DLC wall. You really shouldn’t lock players out of certain things on games like this, at least include, say, the multiplayer maps free to keep everyone together.
Then there are the usual things, such as an enemy which has a shield, will hide behind something, circling away from you so as to not get hit, while a shield recharges, which can be infuriating at times. Other times, when you try to pick off enemies from a distance with a sniper rifle to thin their numbers, they will suddenly start moving about or go hide behind something when you try to get a shot on them. It’s strange, especially, when you haven’t alerted the enemies to your presence! Then, to top it all off, you can spend days playing and not get a single item dropped that you can use to upgrade your gear, making it extremely long-winded and a grind to hit the new power level cap.
I can’t really say this DLC is a decent addition to the universe. I hoped for a lot more after the excellent Taken King and Rise of Iron. Yeah, the multiplayer maps are great, but they should have been included for free, or at least let people buy the map packs if they don’t want the full expansion.
One thing still worth mentioning is The Dawning, an event which runs until January 9th. There are snowball piles everywhere for fighting, a Crucible mode called Mayhem, where your special abilities recharge faster, so it lives up to its name, and milestones to get event specific winter emblems. There is also a daily mission which will have you kil -ling enemies and collecting items to make a gift for a NPC for some Dawning-only rewards. It is a fun event, even though Sparrow Racing is missing and I have spent more time with this seasonal stuff than Osiris!
Thanks to the Youtube channels featured for the gaming footage.
Destiny 2 is out now PS4, Xbox One and PC/Steam, and click on the packshot for the full-size version.
Important info:
- Developer: Bungie
- Publisher: Activision
- Players: single player, co-op, multi-player
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GRAPHICS SOUND GAMEPLAY ENJOYMENT |
7 7 5 5 |
| OVERALL | 6 |
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!