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Angry Joe Destiny 2 Review

because you don't like it, surely that means people who do are just in a honeymoon phase

at this point, destiny is a proven formula. i don't know how popular D2 is compared to D1, but this game isn't going away. it's a monster with staying power. people need to get over it.

Never said I didn't like it but thanks for the assumption there, Destiny seems like it lives and dies by the social community nothing was wrong with my statement I feel people are in a honeymoon period..like all games are at the start. And a big reason for that is because of the social aspects the zeitgeist can be addicting especially with friends. I just feel like the social experience rather then the game itself will be remembered more fondly.
 
The game's biggest issue right now is definitely variety. Coming off of Destiny 1, the loot feels especially paltry and uninspired. The last year of the first game, people were running strikes for strike specific gear. Now everything is tied to tokens, so there's really no reason to run them if you don't want anything from Vuvuzayla. It's better to just grind public events.
 
But that doesn't answer anything. You ignored how I pointed out connotation means two completely different things when it's a 2.5/5 on a stars system, and when it's 5/10 on a 10-point review scale. Just because it's in the middle doesn't mean it's average.

that's precisely what it means lol
 
I played the first Destiny for two months, got incredibly bored, and never picked it up again. I tried playing the beta for Destiny 2, and got the exact same vibe from the game so decided not to buy it.

I thought I was simply missing something, but Joe has perfectly expressed what I've been feeling about the series as a whole, and about D2 specifically from playthroughs and livestreams that I've watched.

I continue to have friends that pester me to buy the game, but I think I'll continue to resist the urge.
 
I wonder what kind of community this game will have by the time us in the PC world get a crack at it.

interesting question. Personally, I was kind of cold on the game at first (way too similar to D1) then warmed up, and now I'm getting cold again. Not that my personal experience applies to everyone, but I wouldn't be surprised if the backlash train- or even worse, the apathy train- was in full swing by the time the PC version launched, which could be bad news.

That said, the complainers might just be a vocal minority and the PC version could sell like hotcakes.
 
im holding off on my opinion until finishing the raid, but the raid has soured my opinion of the whole game.

Vault of Glass had me thinking my issues with the game was worth it for the raid, this is the complete opposite.
 
The game's biggest issue right now is definitely variety. Coming off of Destiny 1, the loot feels especially paltry and uninspired. The last year of the first game, people were running strikes for strike specific gear. Now everything is tied to tokens, so there's really no reason to run them if you don't want anything from Vuvuzayla. It's better to just grind public events.

The strikes seem forgotten. Like why would I even run them? The rewards are zero. Seems like a lot of effort for not much return.
 
Will watch later, but I'd easily give the same score if not lower.

The campaign was rubbish and most of the changes from D1 I found to be worse. Some really disliked the grind, but being kitted out in all Legendary gear and exotics BEFORE the strikes and other world content even unlocked completely sapped my interest entirely.

the backlash begins

hasn't even been 2 weeks

A lot of people are now finishing the campaign and digging into the meat of the game(or what is there) at this point, seems about the perfect time-frame for criticism to gear up considering normal schedules and playtime averages. The pretty visuals and bombastic audio made everyone swoon in the early hours, but a couple weeks later and the critical eye opens up.
 
The strikes seem forgotten. Like why would I even run them? The rewards are zero. Seems like a lot of effort for not much return.

strikes are literally there for practice for nightfalls.

Knowing Bungie and how they fixed issues in D1, they won't fix strikes to make them more worth it, but will nerf public events to where they don't happen as often or where their rewards percentages are much lower to the point you'll go to strikes instead.
 
He has a totally different taste in games than I do, but I think his review is pretty on point. I'm having loads of fun with d2, but that's because I really enjoyed d1 and there is nothing like it out there. But I must agree that what we have here is a really good expansion sold as a full priced game.

Also, I may be proven wrong in the future, but I too think that they made a mistake when they took the random trait off of weapon drops. It did not solve the frustrating aspects of rng, but it took away the good part of having something to grind for, and eventually the good feeling you get from a good roll.
 
The raid does really leave you salty on the game, it was exactly like that guy said in that it wasn't fun...it was just tedious. He pretty much gets it right in my opinion with all the other issues, though I did like failsafe more than him. The other thing about the soft cap at 260 or so is BS.

I also think he is alluding to a bigger problem that is growing with the 'influencer' bull going on that is being confused as reviews.

I am glad its my PS4 so like the first one, every once in awhile I will go in and do some screwing around as a temp change of game kind of like how I jump back into Diablo once in awhile. Though could have left D1 on and probably would have been just as happy. Bungie has now fooled me twice...last time it cost me a white ps4...this time not so much at least.
 
Don't agree with 90% of what he said. Especially since he somehow never heard of rasputin. But it was entertaining.


Raid was tedious though
 
Don't agree with 90% of what he said. Especially since he somehow never heard of rasputin. But it was entertaining.


Raid was tedious though

I don't think he touched the expansions and Rasputin's name drop in Destiny 1 certainly wasn't memorable. Overall I agree with the assessment that Destiny 2 is a half measure and they're going to have a difficult time up against the competition. Especially if there's more loot shooters on the horizon and Warframe continues adding content like Plains.
 
He's done an actual game review? I was beginning to think he'd sacked them off in favour of film reviews. It's been nothing but game 'impressions' for months now.
 
Even after playing the pc beta to me it felt like destiny 1 but a bit better but overall the same no new improvements why they even bothered to slap a 2 on it and joe in depth review showed what i feared of..they really put to much recycle on the same thing. I've bought lesser and lesser games and i feel my money needs to be spend on something i'm willing to play for a long time.

And for the people who keep comparing this to diablo 3 or even World of Warcraft, sorry it is not the same at all.
 
I love the game but can totally see why he gave it the score he did.

It's basically a soft reboot of the first, improved in many ways, but absolutely unimproved and sometimes downgraded/oversimplified in others.

Want difficulty settings? Too bad, the game is ridiculously easy.

AI, completely unchanged and as abuseable as before. What point is getting better loot, if you can kill anything with relative ease.

Absolutely zero new end game activities. Raid. Nightfall. Trials.

Story, while presented much better, is laughably bad with zero depth. It comes close at parts then falls apart as it is clearly rushed.

Absolutely no motivation for most races other than Cabal. They're just sort of there. Actually, the Cabal don't even have motivation, just Ghaul.

Lore is still painfully unused for the most part. The one interesting part of the universe, barely ever mentioned.

Friendly NPCs now appear in actual gameplay. They stay in place and do absolutely nothing. Complete window dressing.

Subclass trees neutered to be as barebones as possible. The customization of subclasses wasn't even good in D1 but at least you had choice. They managed to make it even worse in this.

Most exotic armor is somehow even worse and boring than it was in D1. Increased reload speed for sidearms? I had a pair of gloves that did that for every weapon in D1 and they were legendary. This is an exotic now.


I love the game, but it's painfully the same in way too many areas. What was improved is definitely the worlds and activities to do in them and the loot being much more rewarding.

I also do really like the new enemy types, however, only the Fallen and Cabal received any, which is bizarre.
 
It is. That already started with Taking King. Joe just doesnt like this kind of game probably. Wich is fine.

I don't think that it's that he doesn't like the type of game, so much as he sees the flaws so many people ignore.

I love Destiny, but I can totally see the games huge flaws, despite it being enjoyable.

It's a game with such a huge amount of potential, that just has some very strange and bizarre development decisions made.
 
We use words and symbols to convey meaning. That can only happen if those words and meanings have a universally accepted meaning. To redefine it per each individual defeats the whole purpose of using abstract symbols. To see how silly the reverse of this argument sounds, tell someone that you rate the looks of another person as 5/10. Then ask them whether they thought you meant the person looked very bad, bad, average, good, or very good. In your world view, 5/10 looks would mean average. You of course would have failed to convey that meaning.

Your argument about using the whole scale equally doesn't hold up under scrutiny. The 10 point scale is being appropriated from the objective use cases where it does have meaning to use the whole scale. The whole scale isn't used here because only the qualitative version of the scale is. Have you forgotten that when a qualitative meaning is applied to that full scale in the form of the letter grades A, B, C, D, and F, that F represents everything below 60%. According to you, that scale is unworkable. It should instead be the A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J scale.

Once again, you can't simply change the meaning of well understood symbols. Oh, and if you do, you definitely can't then try to claim that your new definition is the objectively correct definition. Mind boggles.



A reviewer can use whatever numerical scale he or she wants as long as they definite it. You know, like in math when variables get defined. If joe assigns 5 = average game, then that's what it equals. There is no universal definition of what a 7/10 means.
 
We use words and symbols to convey meaning. That can only happen if those words and meanings have a universally accepted meaning. To redefine it per each individual defeats the whole purpose of using abstract symbols. To see how silly the reverse of this argument sounds, tell someone that you rate the looks of another person as 5/10. Then ask them whether they thought you meant the person looked very bad, bad, average, good, or very good. In your world view, 5/10 looks would mean average. You of course would have failed to convey that meaning.

Your argument about using the whole scale equally doesn't hold up under scrutiny. The 10 point scale is being appropriated from the objective use cases where it does have meaning to use the whole scale. The whole scale isn't used here because only the qualitative version of the scale is. Have you forgotten that when a qualitative meaning is applied to that full scale in the form of the letter grades A, B, C, D, and F, that F represents everything below 60%. According to you, that scale is unworkable. It should instead be the A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J scale.

Once again, you can't simply change the meaning of well understood symbols. Oh, and if you do, you definitely can't then try to claim that your new definition is the objectively correct definition. Mind boggles.

Hate to break it to you: the idea of "universal meaning" is a non existent pipe dream. Currently.

In everything except science and engineering (hard or soft) - and even then nothing is sacred and everything can be contentious.
 
So Destiny 2 which is an improvement over Destiny 1 in about everything still received the same score? How does this make any sense??
 
That is simply not true. A 5/10 objective score by definition means you have a halfway functional game. A qualitative interpretation of a halfway functional game is very poor to failed game. People simply keep trying to incorrectly directly apply a qualitative meaning to an objective scale. Stop it.

Oh, you were serious? And now your going all in.
 
I laughed at the part with the usage of epic music when nothing is going on and then no music when epic stuff is going on. I haven't played the game, but that bit was funny.
 
So Destiny 2 which is an improvement over Destiny 1 in about everything still received the same score? How does this make any sense??

It's not an improvement in everything, just many things. Some things were actually better D1.

It's a huge 2 steps forward, 1 step back.

Subclass variety was absolutely destroyed in terms of customization. Not to mention many enemies were literally just recycled. Many ignore things like this, but it's blatant and obvious. Loot rolls are static, which is nice at first, but in the long run will definitely make the game have less staying power. Really though, you shouldn't get a pass for unimproved AI with hardly any new enemies to fight.
 
I can't be arsed with AngryJoe reviews, they're too long and filled with too much pointless fluff.

He makes some good points about the game he is reviewing but there is too much exaggeration and his constant gesticulating gets old. Then he'll throw in some gag then spend three times longer than was necessary running it into the ground.

If he toned down his schtick, cut out the shit gags and just got to the fucking point I'd probably still be interested in his opinion.
I laughed at the part with the usage of epic music when nothing is going on and then no music when epic stuff is going on. I haven't played the game, but that bit was funny.
That kind of what I'm talking about, it's not a bad gag but by the fourth scenario I'm like "dude, I get it, very funny, let's move on".
 
He just doesnt get what destiny is...STILL.

This is not a single player game. The repeatable activities are there for a reason. Its to hang out with your friends and do stuff while shooting the shit.

He is asking too much of this game. It is a shooter to play with friends and get loot to get more powerful.
He grasps what the game is fine, what the game happens to be however is not exactly a free license to be shallow or a get out of criticism free card.
 
Vanilla destiny 1 was absolute dog shit and this is coming from someone who put 600+ hours into D1.

Why do you think putting 600+ hours into a game you think is dogshit make your opinion any more valid?

If anything it shows unparalleled level of poor judgement to waste so much time on something you don't like
 
Why do you think putting 600+ hours into a game you think is dogshit make your opinion any more valid?

If anything it shows unparalleled level of poor judgement to waste so much time on something you don't like

Oh boy.

The guy you quoted probably dropped 40 hours into D1 and then the rest into its expansions.

The game got good. It just didn't ship good. And D2 is not innocent of all the faults from the first game's launch.
 
The game's biggest issue right now is definitely variety. Coming off of Destiny 1, the loot feels especially paltry and uninspired.
Add to that, in Destiny 1 you actually got decent loot before the endgame.
in Destiny 2 it was all only color variants of the same horrendous armor set until literally finishing the story.
 
I played something like 2,000 hours of D1 and have played D2 an absolute ton. These are my favorite games ever and basically the only reason I’m a gamer at all anymore.

That said - I agreed with most of the points Joe made on the first review and I still agree with most of his points now. The game is a 10/10 masterpiece for me not because I’m not aware of the faults he mentions (which I find to be mostly true and accurately depicted) but rather because we are looking for different things in the game and value stuff differently.

I absolutely don’t care about the storyline at all. Whether it’s perfect or nonexistent makes zero difference to me since it represents maybe 8 out of thousands of hours of play time. The things that matter to me are:

- Does shooting and using my abilities feel fun? Visual feedback, the slight rumble, the crisp predictable kick of the reticle - it’s just incredibly satisfying to me. Even though I know shooting in Destiny is objectively inferior in many regards to what other games do (with bloom, in-air accuracy penalties, hipfire accuracy penalty etc) shooting in every other game I’ve tried feels hollow.

- Are activities fun to play with friends? Whether it’s Trials or just a regular Crucible train I laugh a ton playing with more or less the same dudes I’ve been playing for years now. Since Destiny came out GAF has produced a fantastic community and loading the game up is as much about talking shit with buddies as it is about gameplay. New stuff like Clan rewards encourages team play even more.

That’s pretty much it for me. So yeah I wouldn’t give it a 6/10 but coming from a die hard Destiny fan: everything he lists as a fault is absolutely true. If I cared about a voice actor being corny or a cosmetic item being sold for real money maybe I’d be on the same boat?

Add to that, in Destiny 1 you actually got decent loot before the endgame.
in Destiny 2 it was all only color variants of the same horrendous set until literally finishing the story.
Decent loot in D1 before endgame? Wut
No really like what? Before Factions are leveled your chances at getting anything decent are very very slim.
 
Assuming all the stuff Joe is saying is accurate, I'm glad I didn't bother buying Destiny 2. It sounds like all the stuff I didn't enjoy from D1 got transferred over.
 
Add to that, in Destiny 1 you actually got decent loot before the endgame.
in Destiny 2 it was all only color variants of the same horrendous armor set until literally finishing the story.

In Vanilla Destiny? you sure about that?
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Assuming all the stuff Joe is saying is accurate, I'm glad I didn't bother buying Destiny 2. It sounds like all the stuff I didn't enjoy from D1 got transferred over.

I'm still baffled they even bothered to slap a 2 on it without putting a new class in if they wanted to.
 
And even if that's your opinion, Titanfall 2 offers up a campaign mode, PvP, and a wave-based defense mode. That's it.

It doesn't have the PvE Destiny has.

I dont think they want to offer the same PvE experience, I rather have solid separated modes that everything tuck together with a light cote of lore
 
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