10 Years. 10 years have passed since we first made contact with one of the best and most important universes of all time, full of Guardians, Ghosts and conflicts between Light and Darkness. After 10 years of expansions and DLC, celebrations and incredible moments lived inside the purest fictional world, finally the main narrative arch of Destiny universe arrives at his end. This has been a long journey, an incredible crossing through multiple plot twists and multiplayer epic moments: we have fought against Oryx and Crota, seeing the destiny of the Awokens, lived Seasons after Seasons of Events linked with real-life festivities, watching the death of iconic characters and seeking revenge only to love the murderers as new allies. 10 years of new classes and specials, new powers and discoveries, arriving at the everlasting question: what’s inside the Traveler?
Destiny 2 The Final Shape tries to give an answer, and I can immediately say that the clarifications are spin-chilling, observing one of the most emotional and incredible stories I have lived during my career as a gamer. The only problem in this whole moving ending is the excessive multiplayer contents it requires in order to be completely experienced.
Let’s start by saying that the incredible artistic work made by the developers is the most helpful element to deliver a nostalgic and summary telltale, all set inside the Traveler. Without doing spoilers about the locations, I can immediately applaud the great work in meta-narrative made for this expansion. In fact this eternal war we try to end is turned slowly in a love letter to what Destiny could be without all the difficult problems it had in the years. The Final Shape is in fact the necessary perfect form Bungie would like to give to its creature, an impossible objective for the chaotic nature of video game development. In this case, we find zones and locations all created with the purpose of showing the potential energy of every little content they would like to give us. The Traveler is nothing else than Destiny itself, it is the place in which everything of the world is created and given to players.
The Final Shape is also an enormous occasion to close all the little backstories the main characters were still trying to conclude. We have always thought that Zavala, Cayde-6 and Ikora were the main three heroes of a world in which the gray scale makes it so difficult to find a pure legend. Here the three icons for the classes of the guardians eliminate the remaining glimpse of NPCs they had to become the real members of a vanguard against the Witness, and all of them solve the remaining gaps among their characterization. If you wanted to finally obtain the glorification of the lost ones, or if you wanted to finally see the conclusions of every plot line, well, you will be satisfied, with a writing of great quality for intelligence in mixing up the cards, without ever flowing in an exaggerated fan-service.
As Destiny 2 The Final Shape approaches to the definitive storytelling for this universe, the same could not be said about the game design, and the nature of Game As A Service of the project. Let’s make one thing clear: the beautiness of Destiny has always been to follow a narrative with all the other players, giving everyone the occasion to feel the videogame as a container for events and ideas. My expectations about this new great moment for the saga were, however, a little different. I truly hoped that the entire new contents could be lived without the necessary intermission of other players, but yet the great ending of The Final Shape is locked behind a new Raid, as every other conclusion of every other expansion. The main difference, here, was the opportunity Destiny gave to every member of this community to live a great story even without thinking to all the extra online elements, forcing a narrative in which it is suggested to not do other activities until its completion. Obviously it’s all fun and captivating, with the new prismatic classes as a great way of summing up all the last 10 years of classes and abilities, turning the light score in a mere PVP thing and offering a varied list of different missions, but yet the low duration of the whole thing and some bad map designs and conceptual problems (please don’t make us repeat the same actions ever during Boss fights) turned the majestic and poetic Traveler into a bullet hellish nightmare, still full of entertainment and tears, but not perfect as the title would like to suggest.

Gameplay: 4
Game Design: 3
Technical Feature: 4
Narrative: 5
Protagonists: 5
Villains: 5
Multiplayer: 3
Score and Music: 4
Artistic Feature: 5
Atmosphere: 5
Emotional Impact: 4

Final Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Helldivers 2 has represented, since its launch, a wonderful dream inside videogame medium. In a moment for games in which the most problematic element is the incredible amount of Live Services, here the incredible community of Arrowhead’s creation picks the testimony of Destiny 2 building up a real line of war. Entire social post about the fallens of imaginary planets’ battles. Direct bond with Apocalypse Now in the light of Starship Troopers. Obnoxious music in regards to the actions of Automaton and scary images on the Terminids missions. An amount of social comments capable of turning Helldivers 2 into a pure event, a new rising universe in which you could live one of the best atmospheres existing on PlayStation Platforms and PC. All of this…until the arrival of violent polemics. PlayStation Network issues, lack of attention for the category of players in nations in which the game is still unavailable, a decrease of epicness in favor of new contents are all the key factors for the ascent of the real face of Helldivers 2. My arrival inside this universe is part of this exact phase, gaining me the possibility of discovering what really the project could offer.
Helldivers 2 is nothing else than a co-op shooter game with one of the best asynchronous multiplayer I can recall inside this medium since Death Stranding. All the players are part of a galactic war in which every successful mission has a little contribution in the liberation/defense of a planet, or the achievement of a specific objective. The suggestions of the single order are awesome, in which every new narrative content is a fight between a single game master, called Joel, and the players themselves, with constant new theories and little easter eggs anticipating the new huge thing. A wonderful construction of a universe in which the story reduces itself to the destruction of the new creations of the enemies, giving us new potential stratagems, special attacks you should make with a specific combination of arrows. In this sense the great success of the whole setting is granted by the imaginary and the very original take on the player-based economy inside a game like this, mixed with the great amount of iconic soundtracks and loading screens which are pure legends of modern gaming. However, here lies the first shadows of the production. All the major orders the players receive are unclear on the impact they will have on the game mechanics and statistics, and the usage of the Dispatches gives the game both a wonderful flavor and confused grounds. Also, the sense of contribution to the cause is minimum. The sensation the game gives is linked with the necessity of spending so many hours that you should focus only on this project to see your actions have value inside this universe. This is linked with some Game Design issues, among an unbalanced difficulty of the single operations and the least amount of points every victory gives to the many percentage of completion.
Let’s talk about the gameplay. It is clear that Helldivers 2 doesn’t overthrow Destiny from its throne, the incredible shooting system of the Bungie project remains incredible. Yet, here we find some very cool ideas. Firstly, the necessity of stratagems turns lots of moments of the game into a sort of satisfying trial and error, learning all the combos like the best of the fighting experience. Do you need to clear a zone? Do you want to have more ammos and more powerful weapons? Do you want to ride a mech, obtain a zero particles riffle or place anti-tank mines? There are different enthusiastic stratagems waiting for you. At the same time, all the weapons are really interesting to use, with a sensible difference among their play style. We are not talking about anything exceptional, but the solid core of the combat system doesn’t annoy you so often. The boredom arrives instead as soon as you notice that all the missions are the same. We live in a period in which loop-gameplay is a huge reality in videogames, especially if we talk about japanese ones. The repetitive actions are always sustained, however, by a variety of events and activities capable of turning those same schemes of controls interesting to use over and over again. Helldivers 2 doesn’t fulfill this need. We have always the same enemies, and despite their AI being truly incredible they don’t change a bit in the disposition of bases or enemy placement, and even when something appears a little different, everything is threatened by a bullet hellish development of proceedings.

Helldivers 2 is a wonderful dream. It shows an interesting iconography whose cinematography and powerful presence turns every member of the community into a pure soldier of the galactic war, in a videogame event as I haven’t seen in a long time. A splendid patina for a project covered in shadows, all revealed thanks to the multiple polemics. A not so brilliant game design, among unclear development of events, lack of numbers quantifying the single dispatch effects, repetitive missions which lacks of surprises and an unbalanced difficulty turns one of the best and most iconic asynchronous multiplayer I can recall in a long time into a normal tiny co-op title, maybe a wannabe universe showing to the world all the problems it gives to its own fanbase.

Gameplay: 3,5
Game Design: 3,5
Technical Feature: 4
Narrative: 3
Protagonists: 3
Villains: 5
Multiplayer: 5
Score and Music: 4
Artistic Feature: 4
Atmosphere: 4
Emotional Impact: 3,5

Final Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐1/2