Destiny: House of Wolves Impressions

Guardians find themselves falling into familiar patterns when it comes to playing Destiny. Every Tuesday we’ll jump in and take on the latest set of weekly Heroic and Nightfall Strikes, perhaps even have a quick solo run through the early part of Crota’s End in order to get a loot chest while we’re at it. We’ll spend the rest of the week doing the daily Heroic story missions, playing some PvP and raiding where possible hoping to grab all the upgrade materials we desperately need to make our gear the best it can be, or perhaps get that elusive Gjallarhorn loot drop, which of course, never happens. With the arrival of House of Wolves, players hoped to receive a fresh injection of energy into Bungie’s ever-addictive shooter. While it doesn’t rewrite the rulebook to Destiny’s galaxy, nor does it offer the breadth of content we might have hoped, it certainly gives players a wonderful sense of ‘new’.

Jumping immediately into the new campaign missions, your new guides – Petra Venj, the Queen’s Emissary, and Variks of the Loyal House of Judgement – are more invigorating than either Dinklebot or The Dark Below’s always-angry Eris Morn. Then there’s the mission structure itself, which is excellent thanks to the new areas you get to explore. Or, when you’re revisiting old ground, you’re getting the chance to walk around territories previously held exclusively for raids. Being able to journey through the Vault of Glass alone in a story mission was quite an experience, especially when I was left alone to make part of the infamous descent through the caverns. I'm not ashamed to say I fell straight to my death a couple of times.

It also helps that Bungie has thrown scores and scores of new enemies in every mission to kill. Granted, these new foes are variations on a theme, with slight changes to appearance as well as name (for example, Servitors will now have a spiked dome, perhaps to make them more menacing to the eye) to already well-established villains. But, as always, the hook of Destiny (as with all Bungie games) has been its solid foundation, an exquisite 30 seconds of combat on repeat, seeing familiar faces with slightly new attacks simply keeps players thinking and engaged in the action, in your first couple of runs as you climb the Light levels at least.

After the very first mission I received my first House of Wolves weapons – a sidearm and chest armour. Vestian Dynasty is an incredibly powerful pistol with 15 rounds of arc damage-dealing bullets in its clip which can be fired at a rapid rate. Being a HOW weapon, its upgrade path is slightly different, too. It’s already at the previous max attack (331), and requires Ascension in order to hit the new cap. As yet I haven’t found any Etheric Light, but it’ll certainly be one of the first guns I look to upgrade, as its speed and efficiency make it a great little number in both PvE and PvP. The chestpiece, Sanction Six, already matches my best armour sets, ones that took dozens of hours to find, so I very quickly donned my new robes to take on the rest of the new campaign.

Disappointingly, House of Wolves’ story ends all too soon. Its five missions can be completed in just a couple of hours, and although it’s thoroughly entertaining – culminating in a giant shootout with too many enemies to count and one formidable boss – is too brief and, unlike other game types, doesn’t give a reason to return unless the missions take their turn as daily heroics.

What’s really stood out to me thus far, even in just a single run, is the Prison of Elders. The new three-player co-op horde mode is unlike anything else in Destiny. Taking on a series of enemies in waves of increased difficulty is an exciting challenge, especially with the mini-objectives you get in each round, failing to complete any of which results in death for all three competitors. Even on the lowest difficulty (level 28), Prison of Elders’ five stages are challenging enough, thanks to the multi-tiered level design giving enemies plenty of nooks and crannies to hide in, forcing you to come out of hiding and go looking for the kills.

After finally overcoming the Prison’s unruly inmates, I was greeted by an abundance of riches: three separate chests containing more loot than I could ever have expected. And then, it happened, I opened the final, and biggest, loot chest of them all, and from within, came Gjallarhorn. Something I never expected to happen, as someone who has about as much luck as a man who's destroyed a house of mirrors, happened: I got the game’s best rocket launcher. Cheers, House of Wolves.

Although I’ve completed the campaign missions, I’ve still only scratched the surface of House of Wolves, but am very much enjoying my time in the Reef. Having only had a couple of PvP matches (getting crushed in one, barely surviving in the other), I’m yet to get to grips with the new map layouts. But over the coming days, be sure to stay tuned to VideoGamer for guides on what House of Wolves has to offer.