[url=http://metro.co.uk/author/david-jenkins-ukmetro/]David Jenkins[/url] really does a good article on The Taken King just 6 days after its initial release: you should have a good read out of this and it's too bad that many consumers didn't even bother reading some of these articles before buying. ~( - , - )~ [b]Link:[/b] [i]http://metro.co.uk/2015/09/21/destiny-the-taken-king-review-a-new-beginning-or-the-final-straw-5400561/[/i] [quote][b]Destiny: The Taken King review – a new beginning or the final straw?[/b] David Jenkins for Metro.co.uk Monday 21 Sep 2015 1:00 am Destiny’s massive new expansion is a great jumping on point for new players, but does it play fair with existing fans? Destiny must be the most unpopular smash hit ever released. The reviews that greeted its initial launch were surprisingly muted for such a massive blockbuster, although they weren’t reflected by its sales. Soon stories started to emerge of people spending hundreds, even thousands, of hours on the game – despite others echoing the reviews’ complaints about a lack of content. And with this third, and largest, expansion new grievances have emerged, even as the game itself has noticeably improved. This is going to be a difficult review because not only are the contents of The Taken King complicated but how you view them will depend greatly on your previous experience of the game. We’ll get into that later, but first the basics: The Taken King is an expansion, available both digitally and as boxed versions, that contains nine core story missions, three strikes (four on PlayStation consoles), and one new raid. There’s are also seven (eight on PlayStation) new Crucible maps and two new competitive multiplayer modes. The distinction around story missions is blurred in The Taken King, in that there are also several additional quest missions that have significant consequences – including one that allows you to set up a patrol on the new location of an enemy spaceship and another that gives you access to the new subclass for each of three main classes. (In the case of our main Hunter character a bow and arrow that fires an anchor which at first merely slows downs enemies, but can later be used to blow them up and set traps.) There are also hundreds of new weapons and items to collect, and a myriad of nips and tucks to virtually every aspect of the game (a new quest tracking system is particularly useful). But the most significant change is the new experience system, which raises the level cap to 40 and allows you to reach it purely by earning experience. Accumulating Light is still a factor, but the amount is calculated purely as an average of the ratings for your armour and weapons. Once you hit level 40 you start producing motes of Light again, instead of levelling up any further, and the expansion’s new raid suggests a Light level of 290 – which is likely to be at least a third more than where you are at the end of the story missions (you get a free bung to level 25 when buying The Taken King). This is a far, far better system than before, and turns the random lottery of Destiny at launch into a game that rewards progress in a fair and predictable manner. The storytelling has taken a similar leap forward, although considering how bizarrely awful it was when the game started it’s now only progressed as far as bog standard. The plot is no more complicated than a new big bad has turned up and wants to kill everyone, with the dialogue being equally banal. However, there are attempts to inject a sense of humour and to give the lead characters some sort of personality, particularly Nathan Fillion’s Hunter leader and the Nolan North-voiced Ghost. None of it is very good though and in the end we think we preferred it the way it was before, where it seemed like Bungie were purposefully doing away with traditional narrative. Now it just seems like they’re not very good at it. The world-building in particular remains some of the worst we’ve ever seen in a major video game, and after all this time we still have no idea what an Awoken is or what any of the aliens actually want. In terms of the level design there are still very few actual set pieces, but there is more of an attempt to add a cinematic feel to proceedings – including cut scenes before most of the story missions. The boss battles are still weak, but although all the bad guys remain brain dead bullet sponges there’s again a little more evidence of showmanship; especially one genuinely memorable fight in a near pitch black prison. Although Bungie won’t admit it, the obvious reason why the missions aren’t more scripted, with the sort of memorable set pieces they used to create all the time for Halo, is the fact that Destiny is built around repetition. Even a relatively casual fan will end up replaying these levels multiple times in slightly different guises, and that means that no matter how exciting a set piece was the first time around it’ll become boring eventually. As an example, there’s a simple stealth element in one of the story missions and while this was excitingly unique the first time round it’s going to end up a tedious slog on the tenth run through. Instead, Destiny relies on a much simpler gameplay loop, one encompassing its peerless gunplay and the twin rewards of loot and experience. Add in co-op and the reason for the game’s success is clear. Destiny doesn’t appeal to the intellectual part of the brain at all, but instead grips the more primal half with its constant drip feed of uncomplicated action and instant reward. The one exception is raids, which have an almost puzzle-like element to their progression. As most players agree the six player co-op is the best thing in the game but with just one new, hard to access, new raid The Taken King does nothing to expand it. Especially as there’s still no matchmaking for anything other than the three-player strikes. There remains no obvious answer why there isn’t matchmaking for other mission types, or indeed why Bungie don’t bother to create more locations. The Dreadnaught ship is the first new playable area since the game launched, which is something at least – even if its dungeon-like interior is rather drab and unimaginative. But all the story missions are set in existing locations that are still predominately made up of areas you’ve seen before. And we swear, if there’s just one more mission involving going to the Moon for something to do with Crota the game’s getting 0/10. Destiny is also in desperate need of new enemies, especially as the new Taken army is made up of palette swaps (literally, since they’re all now coloured black and white) of existing bad guys. They all get a new ability, such as being able to split in two or create a shield, but like so much in Destiny it’s just a minor variation of what’s already in the game. And yet this is not a new problem. Destiny has been a huge hit despite all the seemingly obvious flaws, and fans have poured hundreds of hours into it regardless. But given that time investment the most controversial aspect of The Taken King is that it marks the dividing line between ‘Year One’ and Year Two’ of the franchise. As a result all year one weapons and armour have had their stats reset, no matter how long you spent improving them, and many exotic items cannot now be upgraded to a useful level – essentially making them useless for combat. They can be dismantled to improve new equipment from The Taken King though, and you’re able to repurchase exotic items you previously owned and took apart. But the only real upside is that there are now a greater number of viable weapons, rather than just a select few that everyone’s trying to get. Another knock-on effect of The Taken King is that anybody that doesn’t own it can no longer do Heroic Strikes or Nightfall missions. Perhaps Bungie will change this as they cycle back to using older missions, but there’s no guarantee they will. Similarly, the Crucible now only lets you select between random 3v3 or 6v6 match types, instead of the vast array available to those who own The Taken King – or that were available before its release. But perhaps the one thing that seems the most unequivocally unfair is simply the price of The Taken King. The expansion on its own has a RRP of £40, and although it does have more content than the average £10 expansion that’s still absurdly expensive. Especially as the Legendary Edition, which also includes the base game and the earlier two expansions, is only £55. Although that’s a great deal for newcomers it feels as if existing fans are, literally, paying for it. Especially considering the first two expansions are still being sold online for £20 each. But value for money is always in the eye of the beholder and most of those complaining of being ripped-off are those that have already got hundreds of hours of entertainment out of the game. In the end all we can say definitively is that The Taken King is a good expansion that, while it’s far too expensive and doesn’t go far enough in addressing the flaws of the original, makes Destiny a considerable better game by its addition. In fact if we were to review the Legendary Edition alone we’d give it an 8/10, as it’s an excellent package and a great jumping on point for new players. Although Bungie should consider how it treats these newcomers, least they become as angry and divided as current fans.[/quote]