GiN Guest Reviewers Craig Charles and Chris Wolf have been playing Destiny since the beginning. They’ve stuck with it through its various ups and downs, and now are jumping into the brand new Destiny DLC: House of Wolves. Each will offer their thoughts on the new DLC. The content is edited by GiN’s Michael Blaker.
The official score for House of Wolves is a combination of both Chris and Craig’s scores. Here is how each one of them individually scored Destiny’s newest DLC.
Chris scores it as:
Gameplay: 4/5
Graphics: 4/5
Audio: 4/5
Value: 3/5
Fun: 4.5/5
Craig’s reviewer card reads like this:
Gameplay: 3/5
Graphics: 4.5/5
Audio: 4/5
Value: 3/5
Fun: 3/5
Editor Michael Blaker writes: Destiny has seen some shaky times since its launch, with the nerfing of caves and the abysmal failure that was The Dark Below DLC content pack. House of Wolves adds a few new additions while changing very little of the basic premise of the game and changing nothing of my personal concerns. That being said, I asked two guests of mine to actually review the game and these are their thoughts.
Craig Charles: I’ve only done the story missions and strike as well as the level 28 and 32 versions of the Prison of Elders. For the story missions it’s more of the same that we saw in The Dark Below, doing levels backwards in the same areas we’ve seen before. There is very little story to be had.
Chris Wolf: I’ve also done the same content, and agree that it’s pretty much more of the same we’ve seen and done before countless times. There is no PlayStation Exclusive Strike this time around however. The new strike is a lot like the Omnigul Strike in that you end up chasing someone, although you can actually damage the target before the end and have it count towards the last fight. There is an annoying point in the Walker boss as it’s in a confined area and it’s hard to get a hit on him.
CC: There are also two new enemies, sort of. The Shank enemy type has been expanded to include a sniping version and an exploding version. I did find the new strike to be a lot more enjoyable than Omnigul.
CW: That reminds me, the new Heavy Pike is kind of fun, but it’s not used all that much so far. [Editors Note: The Heavy Pike can be found in the Venus Patrol in the Ember Caves area in one of the caves usually. That is still only one area in a game with essentially only four glorified public play areas and two (three if you count the secret you unlock via Trials of Osiris) “social” areas.]
CC: It is nice that the Nightfall and Weekly Heroic Strikes are different now. For the Prison of Elders the level 28 version is doable with only two people. The level 32 version is considerably more difficult.
CW: It’s nice that the game feels more balanced in terms of difficulty scaling, although I haven’t attempted to do the level 35 version of the Prison of Elders yet.
CC: The first four “waves” are nice, but if you get stuck with the Cabal the last boss is incredibly annoying in that every grunt enemy you kill doesn’t really do anything but spawn an extra grunt. This leads you to be constantly bombarded and you’re going to have to kill the boss while dodging lots of lasers and bullets.
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CW: I didn’t experience that, but I’d have to say that it was definitely nice to have some new modifiers to help you kill enemies. The areas are new, and the first few waves are nice like Craig said.
CC: Another new feature that is a vast improvement to the older systems is the revamp of the Upgrade System. In the past you had to upgrade your weapons and armor, and it had unnecessary “bubbles” that only increased weapon damage or improved defense. Those are now gone. In addition you can “reforge” your new HoW weapons to get the perks you want on the weapon, which means all weapons have the ability to be relevant in the new content.
Chris Wolf: I’d forgotten about that, in addition to removing those unnecessary bubbles all Exotics are now upgradable to the max level, including previous ones like the Vex Mythoclast which were not upgradable in The Dark Below.
CC: I’ve had fun in my limited play time with House of Wolves so far. Do I think it will have good replay value, probably although this is Destiny we are talking about. I do wish that they had given us more content, I heard someone say that for the price of the Season Pass ($30) we should have gotten our money’s worth which is at least half of what Destiny originally gave us. It definitely doesn’t live up to the promise of that and was probably not worth even close to $30.
CW: I agree with Craig about the above, but it is definitely an improvement over The Dark Below.
CC: Agreed for the most part, although the higher level content looks like it will have the same issues as the Crota’s End Hard Mode Raid, which is false difficulty in unsurpassable level differences.
Michael Blaker: Thanks for the review Craig and Chris! It was lots of fun working with you on this!
Developers: Bungie
Platforms: PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One