Why I’m Excited for Destiny

I guess everyone has a reason for everything they do. People who play video games are no different.

I remember playing as Mario on the Super Nintendo and N-64. I vividly remember being dropped off at daycare and sitting in front of the small, boxy television and picking up the controlled to waste the time until we all filed out to meet the school bus.

Sports were a huge part of my life, so it was only natural that I try out the best of sports games. NHL 99 was out and I would play that game for hours. The default player character’s name was “Jacques Strapp.” That humor was not lost on me. I would always play at Team USA and try to defeat those evil Canadians.

The challenges were real though. Sometimes the puck would glitch through the boards and I’d have to just wait until the period ended for it to reset. Same thing with the baseball game. I well placed double to the gap would become an inside-the-park home run when the ball glitched out of the field of play.

GameCube brought Luigi’s Haunted Mansion. I loved vacuuming up ghosts with Mario’s green counterpart.

I played Halo 2 on the original Xbox and enjoyed the story mode. During one summer after our basement had been finished, I would spend all day and night down there with my brother and friends playing the campaign.

We’d snack on M&M’s and drink soda until it was time to eat dinner or sleep. That summer was probably the laziest summer I ever had.

My first online games were Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4. This brought my gaming to a whole new level. I met awesome people and had fun chasing achievements and beating up on buddies.

As I improved at playing these games, I looked for new achievements to accomplish and new ways to enjoy the game. I turned to communities and the rest, as they say, is history.

However, gaming has gotten old in ways to me. The Call of Duty series is seriously old and stale. That’s why I’m so excited for Destiny to come out in September.

The evolution of my gaming from Mario to Luigi’s Haunted Mansion to Halo 2 to Xbox Live Gaming has reached its apex. I thought I was at the end. My boredom even trickled over into KSI and forced me to reconsider my role in Clan-Ops. I thought I wasn’t a gamer anymore. I thought I was ready to sell my consoles and just lurk and troll on the Forums.

The Xbox One brought hope to me that I could find a new outlet to continue gaming, but through the first six months, I had been more than a little disappointed.

The Destiny Beta, however, gave me a level of enjoyment that I had long-since lost while playing on a console. The missions were fun, the graphics amazing and the concept so well thought out.

I have my copy reserved and I’m ready to play with KSI members on this upcoming game. I look back at where I started playing games and not until the Destiny Beta had a rediscovered the child-like enjoyment of a game. Even if I died five times in a row, I wasn’t upset. Even if I was lost on the map, it wasn’t a burden.

If the full game is, as it should be, as good as the Beta, then I know it’ll be my favorite online experience since Call of Duty 4 was released.

That’s why I’m excited for Destiny. Are you? Why or why not?