Credible Destiny Reviews May Have to Wait

Published: September 8, 2014 9:00 AM /

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For many gamers, tomorrow is an important day, marking what is likely to be the biggest release of the year - Destiny. However, those seeking full-length, in-depth reviews, as developer, Bungie, explains, may have to wait.

Bungie's Community Manager, David Dague, explained their decision not to activate servers for review copies of the game via blog post on Friday:

After thousands of internal playtests, an internal Alpha, and a public Beta, we’ve also learned that Destiny isn’t Destiny without the most crucial component to our living, social world: You.

From the beginning, we set out to make Destiny feel like more than bits on a drive. We wanted to build a place for players to visit – a place filled with luminous life. Without a vibrant population for the last safe city on Earth, and Guardians roaming the wild frontiers, Destiny is a shadow of what it should be. That’s not how we wanted to submit for review.

We explored several options to populate the world for reviewers. Our team estimates it would take thousands of gamers to ensure each potential public space in Destiny would be populated – that every activity would be accessible at all hours of the day and night. Where on Earth would we be able to find thousands of gamers?

On August 22nd, Dague announced that Destiny had gone gold, and pre-loading began for some PSN users as early as last week. Servers for the game officially opened earlier today, however, and some reviewers, as well as YouTube personalities, have already begun streaming the game and offering their impressions.

It would also appear that some gamers have acquired early access to the game by changing their language and location settings on their consoles to New Zealand, thus allowing them access to download the game from that country's online store due to time zone differences. I am unable to find reliable confirmation that this actually works, and in all likelihood, doing so violates the terms of service of your preferred platform.

Bungie advises players that the game "really begins" after level 20. For now, though, gamers looking to alleviate concerns before they buy, regarding one location per planet, balancing issues, or an alleged push toward the Crucible, will have to wait a bit for the reviews to trickle in as reviewers spend the next week investing the bulk of their time into the game.

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Matt Duke has enjoyed video games for over twenty-five years, and strongly maintains that Super Mario Bros. 3 was the greatest video game ever created. He… More about Matt