COGconnected Heads to LA and Goes Hands-on With Destiny 2Â
Last week, COGconnected headed down to the Destiny 2 event in Los Angeles. At the event, Bungie and Activision debuted Destiny 2’s gameplay for the first time to a global, livestreamed audience. The live broadcast showcased a variety of the activities, opening on a dramatic campaign mission that sets up the premise of the game to answer how you recover when your home is destroyed and your powers are taken away. The broadcast went on to detail the game’s social and cooperative activities, including the all-new “Guided Games” feature while highlighting multiple brand-new destinations. While at the event, we managed to capture some PvP gameplay and Destiny 2’s Strike Mission.
Our man Steven attended the event and had this to say about the PvP: “The Crucible featured the new mode: Countdown. Teams of 4 swap roles of attackers and defenders; attackers are trying to plant an explosive in one of two locations while defenders must, well, defend. This game mode is the epitome of the new design philosophy in Destiny 2. That is, it’s easy to understand the basics and everyone has a high-level understanding of what should happen; however, there are many subtle strategies at play that make this mode hard to master. This becomes clearer when you realize the map we played on was designed specifically for this mode. Both bomb points are strategically designed with certain tradeoffs in mind. One is closer to the attackers but provides little cover when planting the bomb while the other point in sheltered but susceptible to a deadly grenade or super attack. I will admit, these subtle design points weren’t immediately obvious to me until talking to a few veteran CounterStrike players who said they felt right at home.”
In terms of the Strike Mission, Steven said this: “Everything I played was fun and engaging, but the crown jewel of the day was the Strike mission. Three of us who have never played or seen this mission before set out to complete the raid. Sure, Bungie set us up with some great gear, but that didn’t make things too much easier. The mission started out a little slow with small waves of enemies and light platforming. But as we went deeper into the level I could feel something awesome was waiting. Everything up until then was just getting us ready for the boss, a multi-phased helluva hard-hitter. Waves of minions swarmed him as we chipped away his health. Things really got tough in the final phase were large sections of the floor were electrified and those that weren’t were covered in a hail of bullets from the boss. Each of us died a couple times but thankfully we never fully wiped and we managed to take the big baddie down in a proud display of fire and lightning from our collective supers. Those are the moments I’m looking forward to most when Destiny 2 comes out, those crazy near-death finishes that you want to share with your clan and maybe embellish the tale of victory, but only just a little.”
In September, Destiny 2 will be available on PlayStation 4 systems with additional, timed exclusive content, and Xbox One (PlayStation Plus or Xbox Live Gold subscription, respectively, required for significant features). Additionally, Destiny 2 will be available on PC at retail and as the first third-party game to be offered digitally via Battle.net, Blizzard Entertainment’s online gaming service.
What do you think? Will you be picking up the game day one?
