Destiny 2, God of War 3 Remastered, Another World 20th Anniversary and more

[hanselthecaretaker]

for the PSN+ games of September. [https://blog.us.playstation.com/2018/08/29/playstation-plus-free-games-for-september-2018/]

Not bad. There?s at least three I?d like to check out, including another reason to turn my PS3 back on.

 

[sXeth]

Well that just reeks of desperation on Bungies part.

Although vanilla D2 is already a freebie effectively in the whatever its called bundle for the new expansion, so nothing really lost on them on throwing it out there I suppose.

I would actually recommend D2, even just on its base game form though. The endgame is a mess, the expansions are baffling decisions and unrealized potential, but there's a solidly fun FPS before that with something like 20-25 hours of actual content between the campaign and the adventures (Side quests, but proper quests, not just the dull bounty stuff).

Might give God of War a go. Never really played any of them for whatever reason (mostly that action brawlers tend to be a little on the low side as value goes)

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Destiny 2 must be doing really bad for it to already be a PS+ game. From the little bits I see about Destiny 2 on Youtube, it seems like the community basically abandoned the game. I remember playing the beta for the 1st Destiny and deleting it after an hour because of how much it sucked.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Basic Destiny 2 has the best executed storyline in and Destiny game or expansion. The two mini expansions are huge letdowns, and every decision outside of the physical gameplay and the main story range from baffling to infuriating.

Especially shaders. The shader system from D1 was better. If they had permanent shaders you could individually apply to your stuff, that would be fantastic.

But they chose to make them single use, give them out in stacks that can't even cover a single stack of armor, and require the use of in game currency to apply. It's trash and I'm surprisingly angry about it.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Destiny 2 must be doing really bad for it to already be a PS+ game. From the little bits I see about Destiny 2 on Youtube, it seems like the community basically abandoned the game. I remember playing the beta for the 1st Destiny and deleting it after an hour because of how much it sucked.

Not just PS+. It was in the Humble Bundle monthly pack a couple of months back too. More on why below...

but there's a solidly fun FPS before that with something like 20-25 hours of actual content between the campaign and the adventures

Following on from above, I don't think this is true. Well, maybe "solid" is okay to describe it, but to my ears, describing any game as "solid" is the last nail in a coffin of mediocrity. D2 is mediocre and worse, fundamentally flawed.

First, there is no in-game general chat. So there is no way to to communicate with ANYONE, for help, advice, teamming, NOTHING. Other players run around doing their thing but you cannot communicate with them. The game is like a tomb, completely dead and silent. Knowing they *intentionally* made the game this way is beyond my comprehension. For the gameplay, the weapons are horrible. They locked two major weapon classes (shotty and sniper) as *power* weapons, limiting them to a handful of shots, essentially useable briefly once every one or two encounters. Everything else was weedy, pathetic inaccurate automatic rifles/smgs. Since all enemies scale throughout the game, every single enemy encountered on any world at any time took exactly the same amount of bullets to kill. The very first fight in the game plays out *exactly* the same way as every other encounter.

Then, the classes. The main abilities are somewhere between underwhelming -> alright. The *main* issue is that they are on such a long coooldown that you can only use them every five to ten minutes or so. Since they last less than 30 seconds, it means you have to wait that bloody long to have a few, brief seconds of fun playing your class, make little impact to the gameplay and go back to shooting things with the weedy auto rifle/SMGs I mentioned. Borderlands 2 lets us use our class abilities with only seconds of downtime between uses, if any. Destiny 2 makes you wait over 5 minutes.

It's grindy, repetitive, contains lootboxes, has no in-game chat, "solid" gunplay that doesn't change at all, snipers and shotguns aren't viable playstyles, class powers are limited, there's zero role-playing. I only ever heard good things about Bungie games, that they are responsible for Halo which many people regard highly. My first experience of a Bungie game was utterly disappointing. Play Warframe instead, it's better in every way.

 

[sXeth]

Destiny 2 must be doing really bad for it to already be a PS+ game. From the little bits I see about Destiny 2 on Youtube, it seems like the community basically abandoned the game. I remember playing the beta for the 1st Destiny and deleting it after an hour because of how much it sucked.

Eh, they effectively pack it in as a freebie with the year 2 bundle whatever thing anyways. I'm actually surprised base Destiny 1 never was (possibly cause base Destiny 1 was really underwhelming and they didn't have faith in that being any kind of good PR). Also there was only like 45 minutes of stuff in that beta anyhow, lol.

First, there is no in-game general chat. So there is no way to to communicate with ANYONE, for help, advice, teamming, NOTHING. Other players run around doing their thing but you cannot communicate with them. The game is like a tomb, completely dead and silent. Knowing they *intentionally* made the game this way is beyond my comprehension. For the gameplay, the weapons are horrible. They locked two major weapon classes (shotty and sniper) as *power* weapons, limiting them to a handful of shots, essentially useable briefly once every one or two encounters. Everything else was weedy, pathetic inaccurate automatic rifles/smgs. Since all enemies scale throughout the game, every single enemy encountered on any world at any time took exactly the same amount of bullets to kill. The very first fight in the game plays out *exactly* the same way as every other encounter.

Then, the classes. The main abilities are somewhere between underwhelming -> alright. The *main* issue is that they are on such a long coooldown that you can only use them every five to ten minutes or so. Since they last less than 30 seconds, it means you have to wait that bloody long to have a few, brief seconds of fun playing your class, make little impact to the gameplay and go back to shooting things with the weedy auto rifle/SMGs I mentioned. Borderlands 2 lets us use our class abilities with only seconds of downtime between uses, if any. Destiny 2 makes you wait over 5 minutes.

It's grindy, repetitive, contains lootboxes, has no in-game chat, "solid" gunplay that doesn't change at all, snipers and shotguns aren't viable playstyles, class powers are limited, there's zero role-playing. I only ever heard good things about Bungie games, that they are responsible for Halo which many people regard highly. My first experience of a Bungie game was utterly disappointing. Play Warframe instead, it's better in every way.

The chat thing always struck me as an odd quibble. There's not really anything that would merit a chat to it. On consoles anyways, I don't how it necessarily works out on PCs. There's an argument for some sort of self-contained LFG system to be made, but games being overly reliant on external support has been this weird trend for awhile now, afflicting everything from Minecraft to Dark Souls.

I use(d) hand cannons, which is for all intents and purposes, in D2 your non-power shotgun. Granted, the game is just a little too up its own RNG ass and getting a weapon of whatever type you prefer (nevermind specific archetypes) is way too out of your hands. ITs entirely possible (other then midway through you would've had the chance to get the Sunshot) to not get any hand cannons across the whole campaign and get the SMG/wispy bullet hose ARs that are only quasi-useful in PvP.

Cooldowns got fixed in patch (although if you had a team, chain supers were always a thing. At some point they finally made orbs of light pick uppable by yourself I noticed in my last head poke back), though abilities did take a bit of a hit from D1, where there was definitely more versatility. Apparently hiring some nitwit wannabe Esports magazine writer who critiqued Halo 2 PvP into your company then letting him direct a game makes for a terrible PvE experience, who knew. The perennial paradox of Destiny is trying to have some form of looter-shooter crossed with some sort of balanced but not separate PvP experience, and the apparent hubris to think that they can somehow pull this off where every single other MMO-esque thing has failed and had to separate it. But yeah, Luke Smith's direction on D2 was (as you'd expect from his backstory there), very focused on PvP much to the detriment of the RPG aspects.

I'll take Destiny's eternal scaled to you (or you scaled to them) over Borderlands inane bullet sponges anydays. Borderlands iisj ust the worst aspects of an MMO shoved onto a physics-subpar shooter even for its time (nevermind however many re-releases TakeTwo's wrung out of it at this point)

I could praise Warframe pretty vociferously, but I could also tear it a wide swathe of criticisms (like actually having distinct enemies. Or funnily enough since you mentioned, not being able to use your abilities half the time without having one of the two lynchpin methods(*) of actually getting consistent energy. Or their weird method of having had lore, but then literally removing it from the game but leaving (completely out of order) missions in related to it). Its a sideways step, that gets a certain amount of leeway for being (mostly) free as its negatives go. Its certainly more ambitious then Destiny (currently) in general, but its ability to deliver on that ambition is severely questionable much of the time.

*(footnoted because of the slight spoiler for Warframe)

Spoiler

There is of course Zenurik focus. but since those two abilities aren't Way-bound, to use them you're deprived of any other focus schools benefits (and I'd basically exclude Way-bound as any kind of "general use" solution.

The other energy source is Hunter Adrenaline/Rage. Which also arguably should be excluded since its an event drop and they could stop cycling Ghouls at any given moment for years like every other event. And is totally unviable for squishy frames (which is most of the caster types that need energy to begin with.

 

[EvilRoy]

Its cool that another world is being released again. I haven't thought about that game in a thousand years, but I remember it was a lot of fun. And pain. For a moment there I forgot the bullshit but then my doughy white friend popped into my heand and I remembered some of the bullshit.