Octavianus 7

A decent game let down by a disappointing story, lack of content and a broken loot system, in short.



First of all, to get the negatives out A decent game let down by a disappointing story, lack of content and a broken loot system, in short.



First of all, to get the negatives out of the way. The first thing that should strike you is the generic-ness of it - we land on Mars, in what could be a lovely homage to classical sci-fi, but instead we get a bland and basic lecture about The Darkness, which is supposedly engulfing Light, and then you're thrust into the game with The Fallen chasing you with no explanation as to who they are or why they're dangerous, or what they're even for. An excellent demonstration of what we're to expect - embarrassing nomenclature combined with factions and backstory that aren't included in the game itself, you have to go to their website to read up on it.



Undoubtedly a beautiful game, the graphics are wasted on dull level designs, lacking in any significant character. Perhaps my favourite of all of them was Venus, though even that lacked anything that distinguished it from any other garden or jungle type map in any other game. The influences of The Vex on the planet seemed negligible. Nothing seemed to indicate any kind of culture - The Hive's possessed places were identical to that of The Fallen's, only with squishy grey pods on the wall. They all occupied human buildings and never seemed to expand on their own or give themselves any characterisation beyond a different model to shoot at.



It's also disappointing that there are only 4 total free-roam locations, and all of them quite small. There's nothing more annoying than having such a visually stunning game be limited so severely, especially when you spend most of your time inside stock sci-fi metal corridors anyway. The Nav System is practically useless and you can't access any sort of a map, so good luck getting lost while trying to explore for the sake of exploring. You'll be backtracking a lot, and it'll lose a lot of its sense of wonder.



Your character classes are also superfluous, and don't seem to matter. Usually you would need a balanced party to succeed in any serious dungeon-delving experience in any other game like this, but it doesn't seem so here. The classes seem superficially different, with all the same types of skills - a grenade, a double jump, a melee augment, etc. It makes forming a team less fun.



Peter Dinklage's voice acting is also unremarkable, and I chalk this down to bad directing. I understand that behind the mic is a lot different than in front of a camera, but there's no way this man can deliver such excellent performances in the T.V. series and movies that we've seen and yet fall down at even the most basic lines here.



Loot is also randomised, with even Legendary Engrams (item schematics you get decoded into random items) turning up something useless. I trust anybody who's played an MMO shouldn't need the reasons why this sucks explained to them. It does seem Bungie are working on fixing this, though, so that might be a temporary complaint.



I think what makes this game is that it has serious potential. I played it and got hooked, but found everything so... lacking. I'm keeping on with it because I genuinely want to see what Bungie have left to unveil. … Expand