The overarching plot of the current season of "Destiny 2" is that a giant alien spaceship called "Almighty" has been intentionally crash-landed in the Last City on Earth as a final revenge against the Guardians. Little has been mentioned about it since the season began, so we will probably never really know. Meanwhile, there is a meta-narrative behind it, in which a (separate) fleet of alien spacecraft (called Space Doritos because of its pyramid shape) has invaded the solar system and appears to be plotting the extinction of all life forms. Six years after the release of the original game, their appearance marks the official debut of the series' Big Bad, The Darkness, and is therefore of considerable significance.

Or so one would think, but the Guardians' collective response to this traumatic assault is the fact that they organize a fake Olympic tournament to determine which of the three classes is the coolest. Of course they do. Frankly, I wouldn't have much problem with the bizarre tone of this event if it were fun, but having spent most of last night logged in, I am convinced that it is not. It's a celebration of skinny-dipping, of course, with bounties and medals to be won, Triumphs to be unlocked, and ultimately a new exotic machine gun called "Heir Apparent" to be acquired.

Normally, the mere prospect of getting a shiny new gun would motivate me to start all over again on an activity I've completed thousands of times, but in the case of Guardian Games, I felt fatigue as soon as I saw the three weeks of toil spread out before me.Bungie's Community Manager admits that bounty fatigue is currently a clear part of player sentiment and is soliciting feedback. 5]

As we pointed out when covering the announcement, there are a disproportionately large number of hunters in the Guardian population (because people really like cloaks) and medals As for the table, this class has a clear advantage; Bungie foresaw this problem and promised to weight the scoring accordingly, but whatever algorithm they used was not aggressive enough. Not to be a sore loser, but there is little point in competing in a tournament that is effectively already over. However, the Titans seem to be making a comeback on Day 2, so maybe the crayon-eaters will prove me wrong.

I say this with some sympathy, since we are working under a bungie lockdown situation, but I feel that some of these bounties have not been tested. Let me give you an example: the Warlock bounty "Void Feast" requires you to string together 10 kills using the "Devour" ability. As a Void Rock main, I thought it was no problem; 30 minutes later, the counter was still at zero, despite the Thrall's carcass littering the area. I looked online and found that many people were having the same problem. Turns out that you not only have to activate Devour, but you have to kill them with charged melee abilities. Anyway, either the wording is terrible or they don't know how the bounty is supposed to work.

Another example: the Silver Crucible Medal is, conservatively speaking, about three times harder than the Gold. Silver requires 150 laurel points to collect, but laurels only drop from abilities and superkills, and are relatively rare in PvP compared to PvE. As a result, by the time we had played six matches, we had only accumulated 25 laurel points, even though we had long since completed Gold, which does not involve any kills or game clears. I really don't understand why this is not a problem that would be discovered after one game played, rather than after extensive testing. But for anyone who experienced the horror of last season's Iron Banner Quest rocket launcher step, it seems to be happening all too often.

One of my favorites this season is the cool array of builds you can make with the Warmind Cell mod. This spawns glowing red beach balls from defeated enemies, which can be blown up or retrieved depending on the mod's settings, as well as additional effects (damage buffs, overshields, enemy suppression, etc.). Kills from Warmind cell explosions do not count as abilities, so they do not drop laurels and do not earn points for victory. It is puzzling that the "Guardian Game" is designed to be anti-synergistic with the core content of this season. But here we are.

I was actually relieved when I checked out Eva Levante's MTX warehouse. The only thing I got was a cherry blossom transmat effect, which should make a nice weave appearance on my ninja style hunter.

Still, for fans of this look, it's a shame that most of this equipment is available for purchase with silver, the game's real money currency. Yes, you can use Bright Dust to purchase a little bit of it on a daily basis, but that currency is given so stingily that it hardly matters. The outrage over the amount of loot that can be earned in-game and the amount of design work spent on Eververse revenue-generating content is one of the biggest controversies surrounding Destiny 2's current business model, although Bungie is smart enough to absolutely know that people are not happy, It is increasingly clear that this is the financial path that seems best for the studio. How much the players can stomach it remains to be seen.

From a balance standpoint, here are some of my favorite things about Guardian Games Super kills and ability kills cause glimmer, laurel, and warmind cells to erupt from corpses. It's like rolling a grenade into a slot machine in Las Vegas. For those of us who grew up dutifully picking up Mario coins and Sonic rings, running around in the aftermath will scratch a nostalgic itch. Eager to get to the laurels before they disappear, players will hop around like mad magpies, transforming their strikes into even more maniacal speed runs.

It may sound like faint praise, but it is. Guardian Games, like Grinderma in Age of Triumph, is little more than a bounty hunter's hamster wheel, with few new twists on old activities like the Forge, and not worth revisiting. As such, it will do little to quell the growing unease with the way Destiny 2's current season pass model operates. All eyes will be on what Doritos brings to the table this fall, because as it stands, it feels in need of a complete refresh.