Destiny 2 Lightfall Expansion PS5 Review
Summary: Lightfall sums up the experience given in this game. Is this the end of Bungie's brilliant single player experience?
3.1
ho-hum!
There were so many things about the latest expansion pack for Destiny 2 Lightfall, that just fell so short of the game that we all know and love that it made me really sad to do this review. Having said that, Destiny is one of those games that is ongoing and takes place in a living, breathing world that is constantly changing as developer Bungie makes updates and creates additional content for us all to enjoy.
What is it about this version of the game though that gets it all so very wrong?
There are so many things that my head just boggles, trying to think of how to tell you about them. For starters, this would be one of the weakest single player storylines that Bungie have ever put out, and quite frankly, I’m so disappointed. So many avid gamers love the lore of Destiny, that quite frankly many of the elements of this particular title don’t even make sense when put into context with the rest of the game.
We finally get to meet our impressive nemesis, the Witness who shows up in Earth’s solar system and in a cut scene faces off against the Traveller. The Traveller appears to be no match for the Witness and the threat of destruction hovers over Earth in the form of what seem to be endless spacecraft. Now, you would think that would mean that we get to play a game on Earth, facing against insurmountable odds doing what Destiny does best.
This is not to be the case.
Nek minute we are being dragged off to Neptune for some crazy arse mission that doesn’t seem to make any sense, with consequences that don’t make you care, one little bit. This has got many people who are greater fans than myself utterly stumped, and this is the way Lightfall seems to continue right until the end of this expansion. The story that doesn’t make sense that you won’t particularly care about.
This expansion deals with a new power, called the Strand, which takes forever to figure out how to learn and frankly by the time you do, you know how to use it you just won’t care any more
The game seems to of thrown in, quite randomly, a couple of Cloud Striders, who really don’t resonate with gamers, and whose dialogue is poor to say the very least. In fact, it is so bad that it matches up with just how bad this expansion is. Get ready to play a single player game that will take 10 to 12 hours roughly and not answer many of the questions that it throws in your face throughout. Even the arrival of the Witness, which should’ve been a grandiose occasion is trivialised and done with way too quickly. It just feels as though the developers said to themselves, “Oh my god we’ve done all the gameplay stuff. What happened to the talky story stuff? Let’s just throw some crap at the start and some more dribble at the end and take some people’s money.”
Compared to previous efforts, this is a weak game when it comes to the single player storyline, and really not that diverse when it comes to new content. In terms of the multiplayer, the title is pretty strong, and Strand does help change the way that you navigate through some of the levels, imagine sort of feeling like Spider-Man. There are new Melee abilities, such as suspend and sever, which do exactly what they are named. But to be honest, we’ve seen this before with stasis which came out in the beyond light expansion.
Neptune is a pretty empty world as most of the citizens live in a virtual network, so you will see them as ghost like creatures which is a shame because heck it would’ve been someone to talk to!
Once you’re done with the inconsequential single player game, you’ll be thrown into the usual go and fetch nature of the Destiny multiplayer and of course this will be impacted by the effect other players have on your game. Running around with your friends remains fun, but with the exception of the Tormentor, most of these enemies are pretty darn easy to give a good old-fashioned flogging to.
Graphically, I’m not too sure what is going on with this game, but for me, it did look as though it took a bit of a dump on itself, with what appeared to be quite the cell shaded appearance. It might just be my eyes, but this looked as though it was being accentuated rather greatly, and to the detriment of the title. Normally, I really enjoy just how cool Destiny looks, and frankly, this did not do the trick.
The rest of the game is its normal bump and grind, complete quest and get loot. There’s some new exotic weapons, but nothing really to make you grind as the game has got you to do quite successfully in the past. This quite frankly is simply not an exciting expansion. I hope that Bungie picks up its game, it is lucky enough to be in a position to do so, and I think even with significant changes, it won’t upset the fans ending up with a better title. This would be the first Destiny expansion that I would actually say, most people would not mind if they missed out on, except for the fact that most gamers have put so much time into the title that to miss out on these abilities might be a little bit too hard to handle.
Final Thoughts?
Destiny 2 has been out for quite some time now and there is talk of a new title. You will be treated to a solid single player story only if you do play from the beginning however, there is so much meat on the bone of this old cow that I do think the convoluted menu systems and quests may scare away the casual gamer and overwhelm those who genuinely want to get into it. Let’s see what happens down the track, but for now, I personally think that Lightfall is a run of the Mill expansion that does not do the legacy of Destiny any favours.
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