Destiny: The Taken King review: finally, the game it should have been

The shine of novelty may have worn off, after Bungie took a year to fix it, but what remains is - at last - a good game

It was a year ago when Destiny hit consoles, promising a new era of super-connected online shooting. The first new series from Halo developer Bungie since 2001, it combined the meaty gunplay and polished exterior of that series with the deeply satisfying loot-gathering of a game like Diablo. On top of all that was a smattering of World of Warcraft-style massively-multiplayer content such as raids and public events.

Those first few weeks flying around in space with your AI "Ghost" buddy in tow were glorious, even if Peter Dinklage's delivery as the sidekick was so bad that simple adjectives like "bored" and "wooden" fail to do it justice. But as the novelty wore off, so too did the shine. For something so clearly standing on the shoulders of giants, there was a bizarre failure to learn the lessons of the past.