Destiny

Destiny was Bungie's first major project outside Halo, the franchise that made the studio famous: a shared-world first-person shooter that fuses the aim and nerve of an FPS with the leveling and loot chase of an RPG. You play a Guardian, a resurrected soldier defending the last remnants of humanity beneath the Traveler —a colossal white sphere that ages ago brought a golden age and now watches over the last standing city. From there you head out across the ruins of the solar system —Earth, the Moon, Venus and Mars— gunning down enemies and chasing ever-better weapons and armor.

Unlike a traditional MMORPG, Destiny doesn't drop you into massive servers: it leans on on-the-fly matchmaking, so you run into other Guardians in social spaces and public events without the crowds of an MMO. The result is a more intimate world, halfway between a self-contained shooter and a massive game. Its real backbone is co-op: three-player Strikes capped by a boss fight and, above all, six-player Raids —long, intricate runs built around tight coordination that became its signature. For the competitive itch there's the Crucible, its team PvP.

Destiny is Buy to Play: you buy it once, with no monthly subscription. The base game launched at full price and added paid content across four expansions —The Dark Below, House of Wolves, The Taken King (2015) and Rise of Iron (2016)— which are what turned a lukewarm launch into a genre benchmark. Bungie eventually repackaged everything as Destiny: The Collection, bundling the base game and all four expansions for a single price; it's the sensible way in today. There are no aggressive microtransactions: beyond the Eververse cosmetic store (added with The Taken King), what you pay for is content, not advantages. It never came to PC or Steam —it lives only on PlayStation and Xbox consoles— and is often deeply discounted.

Destiny is in maintenance mode. Bungie hasn't added content since Rise of Iron (2016), because active development moved to the sequel, Destiny 2, in 2017. The consoles it was born on —PS3 and Xbox 360— lost server support in September 2017, but the game is still online and playable on PS4 and Xbox One, and via backward compatibility on PS5 and Xbox Series. Despite its age it keeps a surprisingly alive community: Strike and Crucible matchmaking works fine, though rounding up a group for Raids or high-level missions is harder than in its heyday. The servers have no announced shutdown date.

If the shooter-plus-loot mix appeals to you and you've got people to play with —or the patience to find a group— Destiny still delivers one of the most polished co-op loops of its generation, at a bargain price. It's also a piece of history: the modern looter shooter was born here. That said, let's be honest: it's a game frozen in 2016, tied to consoles, with no new content and no promise of any, and its most ambitious activities are ever harder to fill. If you want a living world that keeps growing, its successor Destiny 2 is the natural home. Destiny 1 is for anyone who wants to experience —or relive— where it all began.