Destiny a visually stunning shoot-em-up video game

ALL three gamers in my household were addicted to Destiny within hours.

Destiny is just so gorgeous to look at, from busted up old Russian spaceports on Earth to extraterrestrial vistas on the Moon, Mars and Venus.

ALL three gamers in my household were addicted to Destiny within hours and squabbles, pleadings and downright bullying over who would get the controller to the family PS4 soon broke out.

I pulled rank by saying I needed to write a review ­but from here I will have to resort to withholding pocket money and other ­parental tricks to get a look in.

What’s the appeal? Probably that Destiny is just so gorgeous to look at. From busted up old Russian spaceports on Earth to extraterrestrial vistas on the Moon, Mars and Venus, Destiny is a first-person shooter with pretensions to being an adventure quest and within its large maps I spent plenty of time just playing goggle-eyed tourist, as much as a death- dealing guardian of the universe.

Ditto my 17 year-old daughter who hasn’t been hooked on a killing game since The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. Her rusty trigger finger got a good work out. The 12 year-old son likes a good rumble and Destiny delivers, at least on the PlayStation 4 version we played, with smooth frame rates, decent enemy AI and exhausting wave attacks, many of which have to be completed as a whole, without the option of saving in between.

The flashes, bangs and booms of combat are well done and the three character types offer a variety of special attacks.

Weapons and armour can be bought or found, although on-ground loot is scarcer than in many other games of this type.

There’s also a strong multi-player bash and you can team up with other players to play the main storyline game co-operatively or go on Strikes which are single, co-operative missions for three player fireteams or Raids which are less structured and involve six players.

Unlike most shooters where the campaign game is played offline and the multiplayer slugfest is online, the Destiny world has other players in it all the time, similar to a massively multi-player online (MMO) game. This means when you are a squishy, vulnerable low-level punter, you can sometimes tag along for a while with stronger, levelled-up players and take some advantage of their firepower.

There’s some put-offs in Destiny. The questing can get repetitive and the storyline swings from intriguing to sparse. There’s too little variety in the opposition with just stronger versions of the same creatures coming out to play as you level up to different missions and environments.

I found the lengthy delays in moving in and out of the combat arenas and the Tower, where you can socialise, buy things and get a breather, very annoying.

Still, its early days for Destiny and there’s plenty of improvement and expansion headroom for developer Bungie, of Halo for the Xbox fame.

Rating: 8/10

Price: $99.95 for PS4, PS3, Xbox One and Xbox 360