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Destiny 2 PC impressions

by: Chuck -
More On: Destiny 2

I'm not going to lie, I was really looking forward to playing Destiny 2 on the PC. As someone who grew up on PC first-person shooters, it always seemed odd that Destiny wasn't available on the PC at launch. 

At the reveal event, I had the opportunity to play the PC version of  the first mission—which was featured during the live stream—as well as one of the new strikes. How was the experience?

The short answer: Good.

The longer answer: Really. Damn. Good.

Playing Destiny 2 with a keyboard and mouse felt weird at first as I struggled to learn the keys. The three types of weapons are accessible via the top row number keys. For some reason, using the mouse wheel will only swap you between primary and special weapons, ignoring heavy weapons, which will hopefully be fixed in the final game. Your powers are mapped to F, G for grenade, and E handles the melee attack. Everything else (reloading, sprinting, and jumping) is where you would expect it to be if you've played a modern shooter.

It was nice to bump up the sensitivity a bit and make it feel like a proper PC FPS. The accuracy of a mouse and keyboard is readily noticeable. Sniping, headshots, and tight shots are all much easier to pull off. If you are worried that the game is going to feel like the PC Port of Halo, you have nothing to worry about. The game plays and feels like any other PC FPS.

The demo ran on high-spec PCs (i7 7700k CPU with a 1080 Ti GPU) showing off the game's 4K beauty at a crisp 60 frames per second. The PC version will be uncapped, while the console version will be limited to 30 FPS. PC is the version to get for the best, but not necessarily cheapest, Destiny 2 experience.

The only negative is that Bungie hasn't committed yet to launching on PC simultaneously with console on September 8. Hopefully we'll get clarification on the final date soon, as the PC version might be the definitive Destiny 2 experience.