The Hottest, Most Precious Loot

In the history of gaming, we are at an interesting crossroads. On the one road, we will call it the road of “Ideas,” we are headed in the right direction. We have new and innovative games pitched to the community on a yearly basis at all of the hottest conferences, and the hype is really heavy.

One of my favorite game styles that has come out of that innovative work has been the advent of the Online Multiplayer Looter-Shooter (LS for short). In an LS game, you generally get the chance to portray a more powerful version of the universe’s best soldiers, and you traverse a wide variety of terrains and maybe even planets, conquering and protecting in the name of the greatest good, all while hoarding all the best, most priceless, most epic loot you can acquire so that you can recycle the whole process again, by equipping your best gear, going out into the unknown world, destroying the bad guys and taking all their cool stuff.

The first stand-out game that really kickstarted this game style was Destiny 1. Sure, there were other games before that that did these things, but Destiny began shifting the LS from just any other game to a single game-as-hobby model. I probably put well over 3000 hours into the first game over its 3 year life-span (and I even still switch it on every once in a while to run my favorite strikes and raids in-game).

Destiny succeeded at creating a rich, full world, with a variety of locations, enemies, and loot. They created literally an entire solar system of worlds for players to explore and discover, and they built onto it for 3 solid years, and millions of players devoted their gaming time weekly to exploring, playing, and looting that world. It was something special, something that had been lost with the new generation of console and the ever-expanding online multiplayer title collection being force into our hands.

Now, 5 years after the release of Destiny, we have a wide variety of loot-based games. You can even enter into some of these worlds for totally free and loot incredible weapons, stunning cosmetics, and even items that reward you with real world loot like exclusive replicas and jackets that signify you as one of the best of the best.

That’s the first road we’ve got. The innovation of real hobby gaming. The second road in this cross section is the road of quality.

In the past 2 years we have seen the release of 3 major Online LS games that promised greatness but had varying levels of delivery.

Each of these games provides an incredibly unique experience. In Destiny 2: Forsaken, you get the opportunity to portray a super-powered zombie for the greater good with assumingly unlimited revives (as long as your mechanical ghost retains its “light”) and incredible ultimate abilities that can defeat even the strongest vile competitor.

In Anthem you’re a human piloting a 9-foot tall mechanical suit with stunning maneuverability and a fairly wide variety of special gear and area-clearing ultimate abilities on some strange alien world where all of humanity is struggling to not only survive but find a strong enough foothold to thrive.

The Division 2 lets you stand in the shoes of one of the U.S.A.’s sleeper agents from a secretive organization known only as The Division, picking up the scattered pieces of the nation’s capital, rescuing the remaining bits of our greatness from the cutches of criminals that have taken control of the city.

All of these plot lines sound frankly incredible to me. I have played all 3 games though, and I have to say, the delivery of each is very different, so I want to rank them for you, the supposed hobby gamer, so that you can place them in the right priority in your gaming rotation each week.

Anthemtakes you into a stunning world with mech suits called Javelins, and loot ranging from Common to Legendary, and some pretty interesting customizability to your Javelin. The mechanics of the game are top-notch, and if you’ve ever wanted to fly around in a large robot suit shooting rockets at enemies, bashing them with oversized shields, or shooting wizard magic at them, then this is a great game for you!

It ranks at number 3, though, because the loot is uninspiring. Even the legendary loot, the best stuff you can get, is just a re-skinned version of the common stuff. Gear names, types, and essential functions don’t change really from common to rare at all, and there is no actual functionality to the armor you wear beyond differentiating classes in the game. Colossus armor is colossus armor is colossus armor.

The story is too fast, and there is very little to do in the end game. If you’re looking for a game that you can get the full experience of un under 30 hours of play, this one is great. But we aren’t here for that. If you’re reading this article it’s because over the next year you want to know where your 400+ hours of gaming can be best spent, and Anthemjust doesn’t have it.

The Division 2really delivers something special. Out of the 3 games on the radar today, it has had the strongest release, and I really do think that Ubisoft has offered something special that will have a long life-span much like their other titles like For Honor and Rainbow Six: Siege have had.

The Division 2 has smooth gameplay, next to no loading screens once you’re in-game (unless you fast travel or enter a PVP area), and really entertaining gadgets. I’ve only spent about 30 hours in the world, and I am not quite at the end game yet, but I can tell you the progression systems and variety of activities and area types are worth the purchase as-is. On top of that, though, they have plans to introduce large scale PVE activities, and have made mound of improvements on the original Division title.

The only thing missing is a meaningful reason to visit the world daily. The Division 2 is very casual gamer friendly. I feel next to no pressure to log in every day or even every week to keep up. If my friends get ahead of me, that’s no problem. I can join them and the game scales my damage output to meet theirs and I can participate in almost anything they are doing outside of PVP.

The pace of The Division 2 is comfortable and at launch it is the best offering here. It’s put at number 2, though, because we aren’t talking about just the launch stats. We are talking about how many hours I can pump in each week for a year or more, and the casual, pressure-free nature of The Division 2 falls just barely short of the desired mark there.

Destiny 2had a really rocky first year. I was a die-hard Destiny 1 fan. I played it almost exclusively for 3 years. The lore of the Destiny franchise is deep, rich, and expansive. I watch videos of people in the Destiny 2 community explaining that lore, having farmed all the bits of dialogue and info-tabs attached to various pieces of armor and weapons and other gear (even the purely cosmetic travel vehicles have lore attached to them to enrich the world).

Destiny 2 had a strong first few months, but it left players wondering what was next. We finished the exciting but all-too-short story and ran through the Leviathan raid 20 or so times and hit maximum power level and then sat in the world and used our dancing emotes until something else exciting came up.

The Curse of Osiris DLC fell flat. Destiny 2 saw a mass Exodus, many fans traversing other games to find some semblance of the hobby they expected after the incredible experience of Destiny 1. Then the Warmind DLC hit and it gave us something more. A few secrets to explore, an exotic weapon hidden behind a public event with an extreme task to complete to retrieve it. We thought maybe finally we would get the game we wanted, but still, once that weapon was in hand and the secret ship had been found, we got back into the dance circle and waited.

::: SPOLERS AHEAD :::

And then they did the unthinkable. They released their first massive DLC, Forsaken, and killed a beloved character, and caused the entire community to chomp at the bit. Players who had loved Cayde-6 from the beginning of the life of destiny dusted off their controllers and keyboards and prepared their vengeance.

Forsaken brought with it an incredible story that brought out real emotions in the player-base. It also brought a restructuring to the way the world worked and how we got loot and how we grew in power. We found ourselves exploring new worlds, doing bigger strikes and raids than ever before, and we found something else.

Weekly story.

That’s right. We found story that released every week, and once that week was over, the story changed. We also found it harder to increase our power, and along with that a new myriad of ways to increase it gradually. The game took me from being able to complete every milestone on all 3 characters (including all in-game raids) within a few days, to now struggling to complete all the milestones and raids on even one single character each week. And with that I had a need to specifically hit the story for that week.

Destiny 2: Forsakenbrought new life and meaning to the world of Destiny. While Curse of Osiris had put the world on its death bed, Forsaken completely revived it. And now, we are in the Season of the Drifter. No longer are we in a linear story that leads us through a strange journey between us and the Queen of the Reef, we have, for the first time in Destiny history, been given the chance to pick a side, and see the world evolve based on that choice.

Destiny 2 is number 1 on the list because its loot is incredible interesting (personally I just spent a week grinding in the Crucible PVP to obtain the exotic hand cannon, Thorn, and now I am using it constantly so I can figure out its best use), the story is deep and rich, and there is ALWAYS something to do, something to work toward, a new exotic, higher power, new story points, and greater gear variety to complete specific tasks.

All of these games are good to own for one reason or another. I have Anthem installed to help me mindlessly let of steam and paint robots. The Division 2 is great for just wandering an expansive single city and tactically solving puzzles and objectives. Destiny 2, though, has something special about it. It’s truly a new world, that constantly changes and invites new and exciting exploration on a weekly basis. I’ve got nearly 2000 hours invested in this game already and we aren’t quite 2 year in, and I plan to play it a whole lot more.

I’m on Xbox One. I’ll see you starside.

by Percy Hudson
Percy is a pastor and a podcaster in Houston, TX