Like most people with a PlayStation 4, I’ve been playing the Destiny Beta since July 17th. After a slightly rocky start with trying to redeem the Destiny Beta codes and actually downloading it to my PS4, I was able to get it going that night along with a small group of my friends. After having played the initial Destiny Alpha build, my main goal with the Beta was to see what exactly had been improved and what was new that Bungie had included.

For starters, the Beta still plays very much like the Alpha did, except the controls and the whole gunplay itself has been tightened up. Jumping also seems a bit more accurate, especially the double jumps. Glimmer, the currency used in Destiny, also seems a bit harder to earn now, so you’ll have to keep that in mind when purchasing weapons and armor. There are ways to farm glimmer though, but I won’t mention that here. That’s just something you’ll have to figure out on your own.

Destiny still looks gorgeous as ever and I’m eager to see what else the game will offer when it comes out. There’s only so much of Russia you can explore in the Beta and you know that there is more to see as there are areas you just can’t get to because of unbeatable enemies or barriers that don’t seem like they should be there. The Beta itself really is just a big tease but it does a good job of making you want more.

What I don’t like about the game though is the way the ammo system works, mainly for the secondary and heavy weapons. Let’s say I was using a shotgun that had ammo, but decide to switch to my sniper rifle. You’ll find that the sniper rifle has zero ammo you can use and you’ll have to find some to make use of it. Let’s say I decide to switch back to my shotgun that did have ammo in it before, you’ll find that it too goes back to zero. How does that work? I would be nice if certain weapon classes for instance kept an inventory of shared ammo. For instance, shotguns you keep in inventory share ammo, snipers share ammo, etc. This is similar to the way Borderlands worked. Why should I have to refill ammo each time? That basically means that there isn’t a real advantage to carrying multiple types of weapons to use in the field if they always reset back to zero when you switch to them. This needs to change.

I also really wish Bungie would stop placing these artificial ceilings and walls in the world where we technically aren’t allowed to explore. I remember back in the old Halo and Halo 2 days where you could explore so much, even beyond what you were supposed to, and it made the game fun to the point where even if you beat the game already several times, you’d still kept playing because you’d find another exploit in the environment that allowed you to do things you weren’t supposed to. I wish Destiny was more like that. There are areas in the game that look like I should be able to climb up or jump up, but I can’t because there is an invisible wall there or the game tells you to turn around. Maybe Bungie just doesn’t want us wandering into areas that will be in the full game, that could be the case. Hopefully, Bungie keeps it light on the invisible barriers.

Overall though, I’m still very impressed with what I’ve seen so far with the Destiny Beta. I know that the Beta only scratches the surface of what we’ll be able to do in Destiny and I’m fine with that. Between this and the Alpha, the game already seems very polished despite some of the little issues here and there. I just hope Bungie makes a few more changes to those issues I mentioned above.