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My Impressions from the PlayStation 4
Since most people who were interested in Destiny and trying out the Destiny Beta will have had many opportunities to play it over the last couple weeks, I won't dive too deeply into the technical aspects and features of what most people will have already seen and heard of from game so far. Personally, I have played the Beta across the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 over the past week and Destiny has performed extremely well forboth of those platforms, to my surprise. So instead, I will share some favourite aspects of the Destiny Beta and hopefully many of you can happily share some of your own personal impressions as well.
After thoroughly enjoying the Destiny Alpha on the PlayStation 4 just last month, Destiny as a whole had definitely shown real potential to become an engaging online, co-operative first-person shooter with its solid shooting mechanics, deep class customisations and beautiful, expansive universe. The sheer quality and polish of the title at such an early development stage already was what led me to feel the absolute need to pre-order the full game in order to access the Beta, even though I had initially planned on keeping the rest of the game a mystery until release day.
At first glance, the Destiny Beta looked and felt exactly the same as the earlier Alpha build with the addition of more story-related missions on Earth. This was in no way a negative since many players would have been experiencing Destiny for the first time and it has definitely been enjoyable recreating and experimenting with the new classes and features from a clean slate. It was also very encouraging to see that the impressive visuals and fluid gameplay were maintained with barely any noticeable drops in performance - especially knowing that significantly more players were populating the servers across both the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live this time compared to the Alpha Build.
From the safe sanctuary of the Tower hub to the huge sandbox map of Old Russia in the Beta, Bungie's attention to creating and polishing the intricate details for all environments and characters made the entire atmosphere of the game easily engrossing while exploring alone or with friends. The lighting effects were fantastic and I was especially awed by how consistently detailed the textures appeared for foliage, rubble, the dilapidated buildings and basically everything in the world of Destiny. I have also enjoyed playing alone at times just to slowly explore parts of Old Russia and to admire the scenery at my own pace. Watching Tower the lights bouncing off the stone floors at the Tower and seeing the Traveler's presence looming ever so silently over the rest of the city were awe-inspiring moments for me when I first played the Alpha and they were still breathtaking whenever I saw those vistas again in the Beta.
Additionally, these visuals seemed all the more impressive when taking into consideration the fact that there are no loading screens for travelling between different areas of the maps after landing from orbit. The transition between the narrow, Fireteam-only building interiors and corridors to the open "instanced" areas and landscapes (where you could randomly come across other players that are are playing in the same location as you) were almost always perfectly seamless. As a consequence, the gameplay just felt that much more smooth and intense when I became completely absorbed in travelling and fighting with alongside my fellow comrades. The only times that truly felt deserving of a breather were the blissful moments after defeating an incredibly tough boss or huge waves of enemies, and the Destiny Beta nailed this pacing perfectly in the Devil's Lair Strike mission.
Meeting Strangers and Chilling with Friends
My favourite aspect of Destiny Beta, by far, has been how simple and easy it is to join up with friends in-game and coming across new people across your journey. The Roster sub-menu was very simple to navigate and check to see exactly what your friends were doing and how many players were already in their Fireteam (party) so that you could immediately choose to join them or invite them to your own. Apart from the opening mission to the game, every other section of the Beta so far has actively allowed and encouraged team co-operative play, which has definitely provided many distinct and memorable experiences with different Fireteam buddies and strangers through matchmaking. Even while repeating the same limited Story and Strike missions multiple times.
So far, I have absolutely loved the different experiences I've had with purely completing missions with some friends to help them with their campaign or to hunt for better loot, occasionally teaming up with the more competitive ones for the Crucible battles, and then kicking back with others to simply enjoy and explore the hidden little secrets and locations scattered all over the maps. Although the drop-in/drop-out co-op feature is certainly not unique to Destiny, the seamless transition between single player to social, team-based game in such a huge, persistent world still impresses me to no end. My biggest hope in this respect, is that there will be missions and game modes at full release that allow us participate in Fireteams with more than three players (aside from the Crucible).
How did the PlayStation 3 version compare?
First and foremost, while the overall graphics and texture details of the PlayStation 3 Destiny Beta were definitely a step down from the PlayStation 4 version, it still looked very stunning and impressive given that the scale and size of both games felt exactly the same. Many of the textures for objects and the environment were understandably less detailed and flatter in comparison, such as the cushioned walls in some of the buildings of Old Russia and the cartoony-texture of the first story cutscene where Ghost revives your Guardian. But at the same time, other sections of the game like the Tower looked virtually the same on both consoles with simply more polish on the PlayStation 4.
Aside from the visual differences though, everything else from the Destiny Beta on the PS3 ran almost identically to the PS4 version. From the shooting mechanics to the user interface, the character animations and map sizes - it wasn't long before I started getting deeper into the gameplay again and stopped noticing any graphical differences altogether. Especially since the character and enemy designs were still very detailed and that the orbital loading timeframes seemed reasonably similar as well. In fact, I actually created my Warlock Class and played through the Story, the Strike mission and a few Crucible matches with a friend all on the PS3. The best feature was seeing that all three of my characters in the Beta were shared and transferred between both the PlayStation 3 and the PlayStation 4.
If nothing else, after personally experiencing just how well the Destiny Beta played on the PlayStation 3, it has made me appreciate the efforts that Bungie have put into polishing their new IP for all fans by striving for performance parity across the platforms.
More Destiny, Please!
And now we wait. The Beta has all but confirmed Destiny's place as one of the main games that I (and I'm sure many others) will consistently be playing long after release day.
With plenty more planet systems and celestial bodies available to explore and access in the full game, Destiny seems to have a lot to offer for the base game already. I hope we will eventually see a much wider range of enemy types and races across the Solar System too.
(Screenshot above is courtesy of manshootingman)
Author: I_live_4_fun
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. Yeah, there's a whole bunch of other features and touches that Bungie deserve a lot of praise for from the beta. Things like the actual "instanced" areas where you can run into other players and trigger the Public Events or even the epic battles between the Hive and the Fallen are awesome features. I basically just drop everything I'm doing (including waiting for the rest of my Fireteam) to look for the enemy ships and rush to the enemies, hehe.
. Destiny looks like it'll be the go-to coop shooter when it launches, and could well have a crack at being 'the next big thing', the beta was deffo a blast 
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Aromaci, on 28 July 2014 - 05:08 AM, said:
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