Destiny review

I've been playing this off and on, right up until my hard drive decided to give out on me. There's a lot about this game that I liked, and wanted to like. So, let's get to it.

The first thing I like is the gameplay. It feels almost distinctly like Halo, which I've always enjoyed playing. The gun play is one of the things I've always enjoyed in Halo, and for me, it's great that this game has the same type of gun play.

I like some of the loot, but one of the problems I have is that it generally doesn't drop enough, and by the time you level up to what the vendor sells, he's already selling higher level gear and no longer has what you were going for. This creates a problem, because you have to spend the in game currency to buy stuff before you level, which wouldn't be bad, but then when you actually do find loot, it defeats the purpose of buying it.

If there were a way to either pick up a little more loot or be able to buy what you were wanting when you level up, then that would better. The current system now just isn't very good, from what I've played.

The graphics are pretty good, and I've not had any reason to complain about them. The character models look great, especially the enemies. More than once I've just sit and admired the graphics in the game, especially whenever I come across a new area.

There's a lot of gripes that I have for this game. For starters, for this to be an MMO, there's not that many people. I mean, the hub world has had at most, 20-30 people whenever I'm there. As someone who's played WoW, and used to seeing anywhere around 100-200 people online at a time, seeing that few people seems to give the game more of a sense of isolation.

Occasionally when questing or exploring, you come across a couple of people, but overall, the world just seems really isolated, which for this game, doesn't feel right.

The other problem I have is the PvP. How in the world, does a level 9-10 guy, get grouped with players that are 29-35? How does that happen? Also, when it does happen, how do you not scale the players to the others level for that period? That happened multiple times when trying out the PvP.

Something like this just leaves a big hole in the competitiveness, and makes it practically no fun to try and play PvP, which is one of the major draws of this game.

Other than those complaints, the game is fairly good. I like what Bungie tried to do here, but it seems like they didn't implement everything correctly or just didn't think everything through. The game is good, but don't go in with high hopes, and you should be good.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

First of all, I have to say, I really like this game. As someone who didn't jump on the CoD train until Black Ops, I have to say that this is by and far my most favorite CoD game ever.

I have to say, I love the Exo abilities. They add so much more to the game then what has been seen in quite some time. Double jumps, jet-boosted dodges, the ability to cloak yourself, there's so much to love about it.

I also love how they've upgraded the grenades and the weapons as well. I like(and hate) the laser based weapons, but the grenades are really good. I like the ones that can tag nearby enemies myself, but they're all good in their own way.

The campaign is also pretty good as well, which is saying something because I literally had given up on the campaign up to this point. It has a strong sense of pacing, and I absolutely loved Kevin Spacey's role in this game.

I really liked the gameplay in this one as well. Where past titles introduced cool ideas through one-off, barely interactive sequences, this game delivers combat tools that let you be an active part of the spectacle, then brings them back through multiple levels.

The multiplayer also is aided greatly by this as well. The added mobility adds makes each fight less predictable and makes things more interesting, with all three dimensions of movement coming into play.

The new Pick 13 system for create a class, which draws in scorestreak rewards and a new class if exo abilities, makes creating a loadout that fits your personal play style a much deeper affair than in past installments.

The new zombies mode is one thing I don't like, though that is more just me than it is the mode is bad. I didn't care for zombies in BO or BO2. The one thing I have to say is that this time it seems easier than the modes in either Black Ops games. That's just my opinion though.

This series has never struggled to tack on more features, but it's often been unable to improve upon the existing ones in any meaningful way. Advanced Warfare manages to be both bigger and better, and that's something to be excited about for the future of this series.