PR vs What people really think (Destiny)

by Reconcilliation , Imagination Station, Tuesday, April 29, 2014, 22:26 (3869 days ago) @ Decom

I've been reading some of the reviews and aggregations of what's been said.

The PR-speak is off the charts, from one of the news stories today:

• "Step into the world Bungie has been carefully crafting for so long"
  
• "Aptly titled, Strikes are attacks on key locations that the enemy holds. The aim is to attack full-force, reducing any enemies you encounter along the way to either shriveling cowards; or dead meat."
  
• “A shooter is only as good as its sniper rifle. In Halo, the UNSC Sniper Rifle System 99 thunders with each pull of the trigger…In Destiny, the sniper rifle – whatever its level, whatever its rarity, whatever its name – also thunders.”
  
• "everyone loved the gunplay. It spoke to them, and allowed them to effectively dispatch their foes while riding on that successful gamer high."
  
• "It felt like they had actual lightning at their fingertips (which is actually a Focus-related Super), able to dash their foes away in mere moments with a superbly flashy yet explosive Nova Bomb."

These aren't honest reviews, they're canned PR responses. It's like how a burger ad describes burgers as juicy and succulent with a zesty flavour. Normal folks just say 'tastes fuckin' great, man'.

Contrast with what I see from the non PR sources; messageboards, IRC channels and forums:

• "Im very on the fence, it sounded great with the adds they had going but the game play just looks so bland."
  
  
• "The preview they just released made it look like a Borderlands clone with dull looking gunplay and it isn't on pc"
  
  
• "It's literally halo combat with borderlands coop. It's not even openworld AND they're too lazy to make a pc port. Fuck bungie."
  
  
• "I watched the newly released 7 minute gameplay trailer and I didn't see what makes this at all different from any of the other 4 player FPS coop games on the market. So far not very interested in this game."
  
  
• "The music in the latest trailer was complete shit."
  
  
• "But it [not being on PC] literally is the only reason I'm not going to buy Destiny. FPS on consoles feels so awful"
  
  
• "Yeah, it's [the music] all orchestrated and high quality, but this just sounds entirely forgettable. It's also just sounds kind of all over the place. I have no idea what kind of feeling this song is supposed to convey because the tone shifts so much."
  
  
• "It's a game I was excited about truthfully and honestly. But hearing that it isn't coming to PC literally killed every ounce of interest I had in it." [The PC thing gets repeated a lot]
  
  
• "The RPG elements kill it for me, I don't want to be running around firing at fucking sponges for the entirety of the game and having to constantly upgrade/find a new weapon every few levels. This is what killed Borderlands for me. RPG and FPS just don't go very well together. Art style and music scream Halo, which isn't a bad thing."
  
  
• "Massive Bungie and Halo fan but I hated everything about Borderlands. The latest footage actually crushed me as Destiny was the only game I was looking forward to"
  
  
• "Brown and bloom borderlands with a lot of false promises. Someone's going to have to show me something pretty fucking amazing about the game to get me to change my mind."
  
  
• "To me it looks like a smaller scale Borderlands with Halo gameplay copy/pasted. I'm also worried that the alleged exploration is going to be another "See that mountain? You can climb it" situation where it's been exaggerated to the point of lies"
  
  
• "I'm not a Halo fan, especially after 3, but it had some things in it that stuck out. Destiny doesn't stick out at all. Should've made another fucking myth."
  
  
• "I'm not looking forward to it any more."

I've yet to find anyone who actually played the game and wants to give a candid opinion, but right now there's basically: A lot of normal people who are very pessimistic about what they've seen so far, and a PR/Media that is going hog-wild with praise for the game splurting buzzwords everywhere while not actually describing anything they didn't like or gameplay in actual detail.