Are We Having the ‘Right’ Conversation about Bungie’s “Destiny?”

I have no idea what I did with my first ten hours with Destiny. They are gone, poof, no longer retrievable. Which isn’t to say that they were forgettable. On the contrary, I didn’t feel like I had spent a full ten hours yet, I just assumed that I had considering how much my character had leveled up. There are few examples where the critical review and the perceived user experience have differed this much on a game, but I suspect, as most things, the difference lies in the expectation. Let’s get something out of the way early that has not been contested: the gameplay of Destiny is phenomenal. The weapon handling, enemy A.I., skill tree, and all the elements of actually playing the core of the game are first class, all consistent with Bungie’s polished vision and physics that made the Halo franchise so unique. There is a very short list of First person shooters that can claim the outright joy of reloading and aiming down the sights that Bungie’s games can and Destiny is no exception. But that label in itself is the first tumbler that falls on unlocking what exactly Destiny is. I mean it most definitely and acutely is a FPS in its most literal definition, but it’s not in the way we’ve been accustomed to. Titanfall took a gamble by making such a game that was devoid of any single player campaign and while it sold well enough early on, I’d shutter to see what those server traffic numbers look like now six months later. But Destiny has a solo campaign. Sort of. It’s a co-op shooter…