PC REVIEW – The consoles and PC version of Destiny 2 took more than a month between them, with a release of the former which was of remarkably high quality but still not free of controversy. All in all, there were tremendous expectations to see how Bungie’s work on PC would unfold. Of course, you will learn the result in this review, but we already anticipate that it is a really robust and technically polished product, although we miss some comforts that are indispensable in PC shooters.

 

There were lots of expectations. For many people, it was little less than unjustifiable that the original Destiny was not already released on PC back in 2014. Even with the controversy that brought the original, there were plenty of reasons to think that the sequel would be pretty good. At PS4Pro we have already been able to get lost in their impossible worlds without technical limitations, and the truth is that we have been very pleasantly surprised by this reunion with Bungie‘s ‘shooter.’ It is ironic because it is the same studio that was responsible for popularizing the genre on consoles with Halo: Combat Evolved (2001), but Destiny 2 is still a perfect match for the PC, as a blade in its sheath, although unfortunately in its release it presents a range of errors and rough edges pending filing and that we can not ignore.

We can also confirm that the best auguries regarding the progression of the series are They have seen compliments. The studio has learned the lesson of launching the first part in 2014 that, in its original format, was a very estimable title but also very far from the expectations that surrounded it. It took many months and a handful of expansions to eliminate the superfluous, focus on the important parts and change a series of elements of the progression that ended up significantly improving the formula. The best news of Destiny 2? This time it will not be necessary to wait so long. We are not going to dwell much on the story or gameplay aspects, as Dante already did it in his review.

Guardians of Light

If anything could be said of Destiny‘s first installment, it was an unnecessarily convoluted video game. In a campaign, you have to agree on what you want to tell and how to do it, and the original episode did not show a correlation between both parties. The second installment, without having a particularly brilliant script, is more effective in this sense. Everything begins with the offensive of the Red Legion on the Tower, destroying the order as we knew it until then. It is the plot pretext that Bungie has devised to turn the premises of the previous game upside down and present an adequate context for the continuation without losing bases, known characters and the universe … Nor the player’s own hero or heroine.

The positive is not derived from that change that does not affect the foundations but, rather, the company’s commitment to focus on telling a story with which they feel more comfortable. We already know the mythology, we know how the different factions work, the mechanics are presented and, finally, they can focus on developing an argument. They do it in two bands: on the one hand, we have the cinematics in which the heroes tell us their plans to counter the threat of the Cabal and, on the other, we have many videos in which the villains tell us about their motivations, and we know how things go from their point of view. Otherwise, the video game uses the same mechanisms as the first part for the in-game parts: much intercoms to listen to Zabala, Hawthorne or the rest, and many monologues of the Specter that comes back to accompany us. It is not that the dialogues or the plot development are a prodigy of wit in the style of Aaron Sorkin, but they are still better than in the first game.

Still, the scheme of main missions is quite similar to that of the first part (somewhat shorter, maybe?). But this time around they are accompanied by a series of secondary ones that offer a different formula to the situations we could see in the past. They respond to the name of Adventures and are one of the great successes of the program. They are tools for not getting tired so quickly of the main mechanics, and they are masking with their careful integration with the argument and with their long successions of chained goals the fact of being, more or less, reiterative commissions of action. They do not have the same level of work as a campaign mission, that is for sure, but they do raise the bar a bit from what we usually see in smaller missions of the game, with more depth regarding mechanics, history or simple curiosities. For example, on Titan, we can spare the life of a Fallen captain (one of the enemy species of the game), who ends up returning the favor by letting us complete the mission without resisting. However, are these details and resources enough to combat those feelings of repetition we are talking about?

Still, we have to admit, that we have to be careful with the word “repetition”. I always read funny phrases such as “I have spent 300 hours, and at the end, it has become repetitive, what a game crap! Nothing, absolutely nothing, what you spend several hundred hours will stop being repetitive. If it’s your favorite television series, if it’s a music album or if it’s your partner talking about how your day has gone at work, so, as I say, Destiny 2 (as it happened with its first part) includes a strong factor of repetition of situations, but it is not as much the fault of the game as of the genre to which it belongs.

However, there are also some decisions that could have been made when smoothing out all this: for example, having unpublished enemies would have helped to make more variety. There is not a single new race, and although the second part includes those of original and expansions, as well as some mixtures, it seems to us a very scarce baggage.

On the other hand, it is very smart either to have bet again for the same playable three classes. Yes, it is true that there are certain changes in the bowels of these in the form of some specific skills that change (not all), and the subclasses that make their debut … Again it is one of lime and another of sand.

By then the narrative and the variety no longer matter, and we will only have become more runners of that race to maximize the index of Power that will lead us to the hardest activities. Because in the end what makes for many people who have spent an afternoon with the game is good or bad depends exclusively on how juicy the rewards we get at the end of a task: unlocking weapons like the King of the Rats, the MIDA or Sturm multitool. Combat tools that not only provide a good boost to the power level of those who want to catch up quickly to overcome the raid but are also really fun to use.

On the other hand, the way they are released, are not so much fun. We believe that Bungie is still like a rookie company when it comes to forcing us to do boring things to unlock new steps in the adventure. “Kill ten fallen elite with this weapon.” “Kill fifty enemies with a submachine gun while you are in the air.” Moreover, it would not be such a serious problem if there were not numerous steps of the same nature so that we end up helping to complete the arsenal with that object that we so desire.

Once we are properly equipped and decide to go a little more at our pace, the launch offers us optional challenges for all activities that are equivalent to the original Destiny contracts, divided into daily and weekly categories. Again, we can not help but feel this Russian doll feeling that we have already seen: it is really good, and its implementation is perfect, but it is another recovered and improved feature of the first game. On this occasion, at least, they are much more comfortable to manage, and there is a greater variety of activities at our disposal. To be honest; everything is going to focus on minimizing the waste of time and focusing on what really matters: massacre everything that moves.

To the list of things to do while you play, add public events, which arise spontaneously in the public areas of the planets and unite close guardians of different squads. There are both new and classic, and all of them present a heroic debutante version. The mere fact of activating this variant is a challenge in itself as it requires teamwork even among strangers, and the rewards are often worthwhile. We miss, however, new public events and, again, a little more variety in them, especially from the perspective of someone who may have already experienced them in the first part.

The assaults, on the other hand, have also experienced a good step forward. These are cooperative activities in which a three-player squad completes a dungeon that ends with a boss battle. Both the route and the boss himself have a linear design that varies slightly each time we repeat the mission, changing lines of dialogue and certain enemies. The truth is that they manage to break the general tone of the game with some mechanics and a more complex and interesting level design. Some are brighter than others, but in almost all, we find some funny moments.

The golden touch of the PvE content (Player vs. Environment) is the new incursion of Leviathan, that takes us to the exile of Emperor Calus to face his tests in search of glory. We are pleasantly surprised by the setting of the raid, in a majestic palace full of tests to overcome. We could say that it is, together with the campaign, the field where Bungie has most dared to change the established formula. We find fewer bosses, in favor of another kind of challenges inspired by the culture of the cabal who descend directly from the Roman Empire and involve solving puzzles, stealth, platforms, and combats. Some are more original than others, but all offer something different.

Bullet Storm

If there’s anything taken for granted from this company it is the certainty that you will enjoy with them an exquisite control of the shooting section. Shooting in Bungie’s games is formidable, and Destiny 2 is the latest demonstration of that. Having softened the self-guidance that so unpleasantly surprised us in the original, the truth is that now the thing is more in our hands than before. This means that we still notice a slight thrust that moves our peephole towards the adversaries, but this has been minimized to extremes that are almost always barely noticeable.

Because in reality there is an important sense of familiarity if we have already enjoyed Bungie‘s video games. In fact, the main missions that make up the final stretch of the campaign have an aroma reminiscent of the most epic sections of a Halo. The big stages, those punctual presences of vehicles (although never as colossal as in the adventures of Master Chief) and, above all, the feeling that cooperating we are stronger.

All this is very good, but to a large extent, it was already present in the previous game. How has it progressed? In the creation of the world and in the way of splashing it, in a very intelligent way, of different distractions. I am not going to bore you with details, but it was very easy that in the original we lost desperate amounts of time between trips going through orbit, back and forth, returns to the Earth… All that has ended in a sequel that can take us hours and hours without interruption carrying out all kinds of activities on the same planet. That is a blessing. This is not only achieved by optimizing everything technological, but also by complying with a promise that should have been put into practice in the first part and, probably due to the burden of having Xbox 360 and PS3 as a heavy trailer, it was wanted / could be implemented in the past.

However, not everything is directly related to the world, and in fact, a very interesting part of the video game is separate from it. We speak, of course, of the Crucible. As a novelty, it has been completely redesigned to host contentions between two teams of four players. A reduction that, not analyzed in detail, can lead anyone who wants to attack Destiny 2 to think that it will make it worse but while indeed, it limits the maps more, it gives a tactical point to the action and, in general lines, this competitive aspect improves. There are even surprises reserved for those who dare to face the Tests of the Nine.

On the other hand, destructive ammunition now appears only in two places, and the interface has been redesigned so that players become more aware of the map, the super and the destructive ammunition of the team itself and rival. The set is, in short, more interesting and tactical, more in line with what is seen in Halo, and will undoubtedly satisfy the most dedicated players in the community. The pairing system, however, faces common problems of this kind of productions for solitary or even occasional players. These people will have to fight against prepared and well-coordinated squads, which will leave them in clear inferiority even taking into account the possibility of using a voice chat.

A New Horizon

For the PC version, Bungie has had the support of Vicarious Visions (Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy) and has signed one of the best ‘ports’ of recent times both in polishing and technical requirements as in customization possibilities. It is surprising, too, the choice of Blizzard’s platform, Battle.net, as support for the social fabric of the game. Moreover, the truth is that exchanging players from Overwatch, Diablo III or Heroes of the Storm from the same interface fits the program very well, especially considering the improvements that have been made in this field in recent weeks.

The equipment used to play this version had a GTX 1060 accompanied by an i5 4460 3.2GHz and 8GB of RAM. As a result we have found a game visually spectacular: the modeling of characters, special effects and landscapes gain much in HD or even 4K resolution, and we also talk about a product that can maintain a rate equal to or very close to 60 images per second in critical situations where the screen becomes saturated with elements; although the “bailout” of squares over this figure in monitors that cool to 144Hz can make the fluidity suffer very punctually. In general, we speak of a very successful version and with many configuration options, which fits well in PC. However, it is worth emphasizing that there are certain rough edges in the comfort of a keyboard and mouse handling.

Let’s take an example, okay? Among the guardian classes, we find two that have a movement to dodge, the warlock and the hunter. On the console, this action is executed by pressing twice the button B / circle, while in PC are two separate keys because that of the hunter is considered “class ability” and that of the warlock, in turn, is an “air movement” exclusive. Since these are almost identical actions, for me it makes sense that they are in the same key. The game presents an internal tool to assign the keys to pleasure, but if you want to configure two actions in a single button, you must manually configure it in an XML file.

Along with the example that we have just given, there are other characteristics which are openly uncomfortable. Do you want to congratulate the opposing team with a “gg” at the end of a Crucible game? You can not do it because there is not an open channel for both teams. Have you seen someone with a great weapon and want to ask where he got it? You must first add friends to be able to send a whisper. Do you want to use the overlay of programs like Discord, Fraps, Afterburner and the like? Forget, they are part of the “do not alter the program in any way” policy. These are small details that overshadow a really successful version, and we can only wait for Bungie to add these possibilities over time.

The artistic direction is, on the other hand, one of the strengths of the works that make up the Bungie catalog, so we had very high expectations in this regard. While we are still overcome with the disappointment of not finding new creatures, just some with wild form, still the scenarios do not disappoint. The worlds of Destiny 2 are a real beauty, and more than once we will surprise ourselves by contemplating some really impressive sets. Again we do not talk about reinventing the wheel and, except for the last world: Io, everything has strong reminiscences of what we already saw in the past. However, the result is fantastic, and that also has to be valued positively. In fact, we do not believe that it is a coincidence that the Hummingbirds are made to wait until the end of the campaign, the company knows the effort that these planets have entailed, and they do not want us to pass them at full speed of loot in booty without noticing what that surrounds us.

To finish with the audio, this once again becomes a section that Bungie done extraordinarily. The soundtrack of the first part was already a formidable exercise of elegance, which knew how to combine soft scores for the quiet moments of the social areas with other trepidantes and brutal that did not lose a bit of his solemn touch. The conclusions with Destiny 2 are identical, although the quality of the issues is even greater. On the other hand the dubbing is still fantastic, with the familiarity of the voices that repeat (including that of a Spectrum that in Spain stayed away from the controversial changes of its original version), and the certainty of the enormous work that they have brought back out in audio effects that are as deafening as they are used to in their works.

Now that Destiny 2 has reached PC; it is still a beautiful, addictive and pyrotechnic demonstration of Bungie‘s vision of the multiplayer shooter. If you skipped the original because it did not appear on the computer, everything is surprising, but it is important to clarify that this time there are no new classes, there are no new enemies to mow down, and there are not too many playable signings that make us think that what we have in hand is a sequel as such and not one of those famous 1.5. So we are not facing a launch that will convert “non-believers”; but if you thirst for new weapons and worlds to travel, Destiny 2 will be deeply satisfying experience.

-BadSector-

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Publisher: Activision

Developer: Bungie

Genre: FPS

Relase date: October 24, 2017