Convinced yet, Guardian? Ready to come back to the fold instead of drinking your woes away locked in a dark dingy Tower bar? Sure, you might see Cayde-6 roll on through, but does he really have anything interesting to say yet? He’s just waiting for the action he has no idea is on the way. The Cabal have been a long time coming and what better way to kick off Destiny 2 then an all-out assault on the place Guardians call home? Get it while it’s hot Guardian, the Tower won’t be around for much longer and all that hard work you’ve put in over the years (or Pve Weapon Rolls ignored), well either keep at it or kiss it good bye. See you in space, Guardian.
Who would have ever thought a mobile game would end up on my list? As a big fan of the Hitman franchise since its second iteration, when it was announced that Square Enix Montreal would be working on a mobile game in the same universe, I was no doubt concerned. To my surprise, it ended up being one of the best games of the year. It takes the scenarios we’ve come to love in the full-fledged stealth games and creates bite-sized puzzles. There’s no game on my Nexus 5 that I played more of this year, trying to master each mission, while doing so with the least amount of turns or picking up the optional briefcase. While it’s not what I hope the series will move towards in the future, it is a nice side activity that will distract you for a couple minutes at a time.
The most exciting thing by far is the fact that all the Raids are back. Updated Raids matching appropriately the light level of Guardians and its fair because it’s not even the max light level of 400, it’s 390. This ensures that more people will get to experience the Raids, instead of just the top tier level players. Besides having free reign on all Raids and smashing in some old baddies’ faces, the updated Raids come with something even more worthwhile: the coolest armor to ever come out of Destiny. While I haven’t been the biggest fan of some of the armor choices made by Bungie, whoever thought of this totally revamped package of all armor was a genius. Seeing the new Raid armor was enough to sell me on Age of Triumph — Vault of Glass aside. It just looks so space-magic, and isn’t that what it’s all about?
[DeeJ] We pick up the adventure where it last left off. You are a Guardian of the last safe city, except it’s not so safe anymore. The entire might of the Cabal military descend upon you. Dominus Ghaul leads the Red Legion, the most dreaded fighting force in Cabal Empire to scatter the Guardians across the Solar System and capture the Traveler for himself. So, in the opening act, we lose everything that makes us a Guardian. Our power, our weapons, our armor, it’s all gone. Scattered into the wild, we’re going to find new subclasses, new power, new weapons and armor so that we can become more powerful, regroup the survivors, and launch an attack to reclaim that was rightfully ours.
What is surprising is the antagonist, Gaul. Presented in trailers as a hulking brute, Gaul appeared to be a walking cliché. The end product is the complete opposite with Gaul having much more depth than anticipated. Gaul doesn’t get the amount of screen time he deserves, which is disappointing considering he’s the best part of the story.
For example, in the EDZ, one Adventure features the Taken taking up residence deep in the forest. At first, the mission is simply about pushing forward and clearing away all hostiles. Following some speculation by Ghost about why the Taken are here, players face off against a Taken Cabal boss who remains shielded as long as grunts are running about. Take care of them, and the boss becomes vulnerable until more grunts spawn.
The next week the raid reset and all Destiny 2 players learned something new about the raid: not only did the raid reset, but the order of the rooms was different. This is a smart design, allowing players to take on challenges they are unfamiliar with or maybe were having trouble with the week previous to improve upon them. Dogs were now first; this was fantastic news as the same fireteam could tackle the raid and knock out the part that had been challenging us, first. Unfortunately the same fireteam couldn’t all make it, instead the four that did show (myself included) ended up playing Trials of the Nine. We did try everything in our power to fill the two spots putting out lines throughout our friends list and even Destinylfg.net and other sources, but we gave up after a few hours at this. No raid this week it looked like. This is not a new problem for Destiny, with Destiny 2’s new feature of Guided Games it seemed some of this searching for party members stress could be alleviated.
While thinking about all of this, one other raid consistently keeps popping into my head, Vault of Glass. Ask any veteran Destiny player and they will probably say Vault of Glass is one of the best, if not best raid Destiny has ever had. It was a perfect blend of platforming, puzzles and bosses that created a ridiculously fun raid that could be played with ease over and over again. Even when taking new people in, it was understood that the longest it would take was minimum six hours. Leviathan was a false sale. Guardians struggle with it even when knowing the strategies for each room, the rewards are the most lackluster yet with no armor or weapons dropping to even give the slightest sense of accomplishment, and new players will probably not want to touch it because it requires a level of communication and coordination that only close friends, professional streamers or elite gamers really have.