Activision's MMO-styled shooter Destiny is the kind of release that would usually see a wave of launch-day reviews when it hits stores and download services on all major consoles tomorrow, especially given the interest over whether the Halo creators at Bungie have any life left in them after parting ways with Microsoft four years ago

That interest won't be met with much critical reaction tomorrow, however. Bungie has decided to let reviewers wait to experience the game with the public this time around.

"Typically, games receive their report cards before they become available to the public," Bungie community manager David "DeeJ" Dague wrote at the company's official blog on Friday, before adding that Destiny is not "a typical shooter." After listing some of the in-game activities that could be accomplished by a group of two-to-four players (a standard group size for a review), Dague described those activities as merely "a foundation for so much more."

That "so much more" will require "a vibrant population" of "thousands of gamers" populating the game's servers, Dague said. And while Bungie and Activision reportedly "explored several options to populate the world for reviewers," in the end they decided "reviews will wait for [the public's] arrival." Dague added that Bungie has, up until now, never launched a game without early reviewer access, and he conceded the move was "a risk" (though we don't expect the game will lose sales due to the lack of early reviews).

Dague's description of the in-game population stood in stark contrast to our experiences in the Destiny alpha and beta, in which we never saw more than about a dozen human players connected to each other in any "public event" battles or deathmatch modes. However, his post went on to describe a wealth of "end-game" content which may very well improve with more populated servers, including faction battles, public events, and "daily" and "weekly" goals that players can accomplish after reaching the game's level cap of 20.

We can confirm that the game's servers weren't turned on for critics until Monday, the day before the game's public launch. That's much too little time for any full reckoning before the midnight launch. Look here for day-one Destiny impressions on Tuesday, but a full review will come in the days ahead.