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Bungie's 'Destiny' delivers the addictive goods

 
Join other Guardians in a quest for better fashion.
Join other Guardians in a quest for better fashion.
Published Sept. 25, 2014

You may have noticed Geek Speak skipped a week's installment. Or maybe you didn't.

That would be appropriate, if you were consumed with playing Bungie's latest monument to addiction, Destiny. Because really, there's no other way to play it, except with the sweaty-palmed, dry-mouthed tremors of a truly lost cause.

Is Destiny a good game? I really can't say that it is or it isn't. The setup and gameplay are dreadfully old hat, yet that doesn't mean it's bad.

There's a punishing leveling system and a glossy storyline that reminds me of how Roger Ebert called The Matrix "slickly underwritten."

There are multiple online components clearly at the centerpiece of the game's design, although that's a flawed concept if you want to enjoy something like the Vault of Glass raid — that means you need a host of friends to enjoy some of the game's best content.

There's also an inadvertent cheat that can help you equip your personalized Guardian in the so-called Treasure Cave, which requires you to waste hours on end to exploit to your fullest advantage. That's considered a weakness by some and a boon by others (I'm pretty much in the former camp).

But most of all, Destiny provides next-gen consoles what it most needed: A tentpole release that really gives people a reason to buy the boxes in the first place.

Titanfall was okay but flawed, and the next Modern Warfare will surely draw more of a crowd than Call of Duty: Ghosts, but Destiny is a different animal altogether. It's a big-budget opus that delivers on what it promised: An enigmatic storyline, dazzling presentation and no qualms about standing up and saying that all you're gonna do is shoot things for days and weeks and months. And if you buy it and stick with it, there will be more.

It's a simple formula, but it works for a reason. Indie games have their audience. Racers can get their fix. Sports gamers have endless choices. But a game for a mass audience that is so spectacularly competent in its mission, even with its flaws, that it can draw people in to keep playing up to and through the holiday rush, when units really move? That's where Destiny shines.

Its cross-platform availability, online offerings, accessible gameplay and straight-up addictive milieu of open-world virtual mayhem makes it a winner. Who cares if we've seen most of it before? It's all the parts we like and very few of the parts we don't.

That's a code precious few titles seem to crack these days, despite the high-powered GPUs and state-of-the-art streaming services. That cash you were gonna blow on a game isn't as easy to find as it once was, after all.

No, if the next-gen wants to succeed, it needs games like Destiny, which hit enough sweet spots to make you feel like that $400-plus investment was worth it. It pushes its own envelope just enough to feel new, when you know it isn't.

In a software business obsessed with churning out mediocrity in order to inflate console libraries, that's enough.

— Joshua Gillin writes about video games for tbt*. Challenge his opinions at jgillin@tampabay.com.