Recent reviews by Ditti

Osteo Striga
Buy this if you want to see the best of what this game has to offer

Commemoration, Succession, Lament
also stasis I guess
Buy this on sale

It's crack. Stay away.

Wowie, Free!!!

Keanu Reeves Wholsome Chungus 100

Buy this on sale! None of the content from this expansion is getting vaulted, but it's worth noting that compared to whats on offer from beyond light and witch queen this is a weaker franchise entry. That said, the exotics from this dlc have stayed in my loadout since 2019 so I'd say its worth it for the gear if nothing else. The dungeon and raid are also pretty nice, with the raid set to receive a loot refresh to bring them up to current gear parity in the near future

Apex Predator, Ace of Spades, Izanagi's Burden
Pick this up on sale

I think this game is a lot of things to a lot of people. I'm also of the opinion that the only people who really hate it are the people who have played too much of it. Now, I'm not talking about the people who gave the game a fair shake and it just...didn't take - I'm talking about the people who feel earnest, deep animosity toward this game. I think for a lot of them, it comes from one of three places. One, feeling like they are owed something back because of their investment, both monetary and in terms of time. Two, frustrations with Bungie, the publisher and corporation, as opposed to Bungie, the developer, over their chronic mismanagement of Destiny as an IP. And three, a desire for the game to be something it isn't.

If you try the game out and it doesn't click with you, it probably just isn't for you - and that's fine! People have different tastes - and Destiny can certainly feel like an acquired one at times - but for many, the core gameplay loop has always been appealing - which is another aspect of why people feel their frustration with the game so intensely. For every review that reads something akin to "Destiny Ruined My Life" left by an author with with either triple-digit or quadruple-digit hours worth of playtime logged, there is a person who, at one point, felt satisfaction while playing, and felt it long enough that Destiny took up a significant place in their life. They could have been a seasoned raider, an ardent crucible player, a nightfall conqueror among conquerors, their favorite activity could have even been gambit. They adjusted their schedule and habits to accommodate for weekly and daily reset times, soaked up lore like a sponge by reading grimoire and watching YouTube videos, and they very likely came up with an excuse at some point to avoid a life responsibility - a job shift, doing the dishes, schoolwork, or even going out with friends - just so they could play more Destiny.

And that is time and energy that they will never get back. This realization is what, for many, causes what in most cases would just be simple boredom with the game from playing for extended periods of time to curdle into bitter anger - they come to resent the game because they feel robbed by it. To those people, I acknowledge first that, by design, the game is meant to keep you playing by enticing you with powerful gear that you need to go get right now or it'll be gone forever. Destiny players are loot goblins at heart, and telling them that they can only earn a gun on the third Friday of the month but only for this year until it comes back two years from now isn't something they like to hear. But, and this needs to be said, you do not need every gun in the game. There isn't even enough total inventory space available across three characters and the entire vault to contain one copy of every gun in the game. That's how many there are! And, not for nothing, but the nature of the game means that for every 5/5 god-roll-greatest-of-all-time weapon you can get now, Bungie will release a gun bigger and scarier than it in six months. If you don't like playing anymore, stop playing. The guns will still be there. That's as harsh as I'll be during this review to anyone, because I have a lot of compassion for the people who grew to hate this game because they stopped enjoying it. My best advice for anyone reading who feels like they're getting bored with the game - take a sabbatical! You'd be surprised how much better it feels to play when you haven't for a large span of time. But that goes for anything done in excess, really.

For the people who are angry at Bungie, you're right to be. I have immense respect for anyone who quit the game because of sunsetting. Drawing a line in the sand because content you paid for was being removed is the right of every consumer, and refusing to further patronize Bungie as a result is a perfectly reasonable decision. I will, however, take this opportunity to clarify to readers that sunsetting was a solution to two problems the game had - being too large to deploy even small updates in a timely manner, and power creep. Bungie at one point quantified that sunsetting would allow updates to be deployed on a timescale of hours and days rather than a timescale of days and weeks. Updates did, generally, deploy at shorter intervals than before sunsetting was implemented. As for power creep, at some point Bungie decided that creating increasingly desirable loot over time was an easy way to maintain player engagement. They also realized that taking desirable loot away from players didn't feel good, so they retired weapon sunsetting. This has resulted in the game continuing to trend toward more powerful and overtuned armaments with every release, but most players don't inherently hate that. All of this is to say, sunsetting was chosen not because it was inherently the best solution to these problems, it was chosen because it could be implemented with the least amount of dev cost and effort on the shortest possible timescale. It also prioritized newly releasing content that was available at a premium, ensuring that Bungie would still have a steady revenue stream. Hindsight being 20/20, most players probably would have preferred enduring a lengthy content drought followed by the release of Destiny 3, but that isn't the world we live in.

As for the layoffs in the wake of Lightfall, they are unfortunately not unique in the gaming industry - especially in the last year - but the comments made by studio executives about having "kept the right people" and refusing to take pay-cuts to keep personnel because Bungie is "not that type of company" felt especially bad to hear and - again - refusing to further patronize Bungie as a result was a perfectly reasonable decision. The upshot to this? You all voted with your wallets and created enough financial incentive for Bungie to let its developers do their job. The game is much better now, and continuing to get better, so...thank you.

For the people the people who want the game to be something it isn't, I think I feel for you the most. You see in Destiny the potential for it to be one of the greatest games of all time - and I'll tell you right now, that it is never going to happen. Don't get me wrong its really good, but it isn't going to be what you want it to be - it will never be that good. No AAA release is really capable of that, save for a few that sit in a league of their own (looking at you souls games). In my opinion, the closest thing there is to a perfect game, or at least a perfect RPG, is something like modded New Vegas, giving the player complete control over the way they want to engage with the game world through the systems already present in the game and ancillary systems that can be added by the player. That kind of fine tuned tinkering and control over your experience as a player offers level of agency that most players find very alluring, and that very few games can offer. Base game NV is pretty good too, but that's kind of my point - in a world where players have the tools to shape games into whatever they want them to be, players will almost always want to make them better. Destiny simply can't offer you that, and the sooner you accept Destiny for what it is rather than what you want it to be, the better.

So why play? For me, there isn't really anything like it. Sure, if you read this game's genome you'd see Halo written all over, Marathon if you really looked, but Destiny feels different. Bungie's weapon design is among the best in the industry. Mobility options afforded to the player are second only to the likes of Titanfall. Abilities make you feel like a space wizard. The story is convoluted, and hard to follow unless you've been here since the beginning, but has more than enough genuine intrigue and mystique to reward anyone who takes the time to invest themselves in it. Give it a shot when Final Shape drops.

1. This game was developed within strict time constraints so that it's release would coincide with that of the film.
   
2. Fronteir have directly stated that there will be free DLC (along with paid DLC) in addition to post-launch support.
   
3. The game is very well optimized, no game breaking bugs have been encountered thus far.

Take the game for what it is (which is a very pretty park builder where dinosurs are the primary focus) and I guarantee that you'll enjoy it. However, the game is by no means perfect, so don't expect the world from it either.

As a side note, I'm really not entirely concerned with the AI/Animation issues mainly because we know the game is receiving post launch fixes/updates, and as it stands, the game is still a direct upgrade to its predecessor (Operation Genesis.)

CD Projekt Red have proven themselves to be one of the best developers not just from the overall quality of their game, but from their no bullsh*t approach to selling it as well. The Witcher 3 sets the gold standard for what you should get for the cost of a full price game.

I'm completely ready to pre-order their next title the moment it's available. GG CDPR.