Destiny 2

For no particular reason except someone mentioning it, I reinstalled Destiny 2 and put quite a few hours in it. Quite a few hours for me… playing a shooter, that is.

If you thought coming back to an MMO after a couple of years (in my case it seems I last played in autumn of 2019), this feels worse.

But anyway, I’ve had fun, and I’ve reached Rank 20 of the Season and was working on Guardian Rank 6 until just now, everything reminds me of the Season Journey in Diablo III. Some of those Bounties where I have to do 8 for a Vendor Weekly (and where I need two) are a bit weird, but ok.

My main problem right now are solo quests with real bosses. The public events and the parts leading up to the bosses are ok. Anyway, some goal reached, maybe I’ll rewatch one of these “things you need to do this season” videos and try to understand more.

When I’m not posting much it means either of two things: Nothing has happened or I was too busy. This week definitely the latter was true. Activision Blizzard (is that how we’re supposed to call them?) gave us Destiny 2 for free and back when I wrote about it I seemed to enjoy it very much. So of course I grabbed it and as is typical for me didn’t play it right away but waited like a week. So for the last few days I’ve been slowly puttering along, 20-30 minutes per day, one story mission at a time. I really do think my time as an FPS gamer is past. I’m not really good and if it’s not Quake (I didn’t really write about Quake Champions back in the summer. I liked it) I’m really tense and waiting for some enemy to pop up behind a corner, which feels kinda unhealthy. I’m not really scared… just kinda tense, which makes it not fun – multiplayer doesn’t have this weird problem for me.#
Anyway. I’m trying to not burn out on it after only 10 hours like I did on Borderlands 2 and so I’m taking it slow. I’m pretty surprised it runs flawlessly on my 6 year old potato (with a newer graphics card) in 2560×1440…
Also, I get it – he’s not a bad voice actor, but why always Nolan North? Maybe I played too many hours of an SWTOR Consular in the last months, but come on – there MUST be more voice actors out there…

Is Destiny 2 the shooter I’ve been waiting for all those years?
My first real shooter was Quake 1 back in ’96 ond the coming years, on LAN parties. Then came Quake II with its various mods, which I played for many years, even in the ESL. I tried a few more, Duke Nukem 3D on LAN parties (didn’t really like it), SiN (awesome), Kingpin, Malice, Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith, Starsiege: Tribes, Half-Life, Team Fortress, Quake III Arena, Soldier of Fortune, Unreal, and Unreal Tournament (or 2003?, I don’t remember). But that was it, I’m sure I played nothing serious or for a longer period of time for the last 12-13 years, except a few hours of Borderlands and Borderlands 2 (and Blood Dragon, apparently, my first and only entry in the FPS category…) and a single game of GitS: First Assault.
But.
But I downloaded the Destiny 2 Beta after watching a few trailers and reading what Belghast has been raving about since I’ve been reading his blog and also some others generally speaking highly of it.
And to my surprise… my only complaint was that the Story mode mission was too easy (hey, I didn’t die once and as I said I’ve not played FPS for years… I’m like 7 hours into Borderlands 2 and I’m dying all the damn time), and the first 3 person strike mission (with 2 randoms) was perfectly well-balanced already. One was a bit better than I was and the other was slightly better and we made it.
So yeah, I’m usually not the person to grab stuff at release day, I’m not the person to buy shooters, but if I’m still in the right mood when it launches… I might join.