Destiny, Activision’s hype-laden first person shooter, delighted and disappointed in equal measure: its perfectly balanced shooting action, created by Halo developer Bungie, was coupled with a humourlessly portentous, sketched-in storyline. House Of Wolves, the game’s second major add-on, won’t assuage any doubts you might be harbouring about the plot: you’re asked by the Queen to destroy the rival House Of Wolves, and you do it. But the action is as gripping as ever, adding tricky new missions and extending the level cap. It also gives you a new hub area in the Asteroid Belt, from which you can do all the equipment-buying, bounty-refreshing and engram-decoding you used to do back on Earth, with a more spectacular purple-hued backdrop. There are also fresh maps for the Crucible, Destiny’s competitive multiplayer area, and a new strike mission, Shadow Thief. It’s not cheap, but if you’re still playing Destiny, chances are you’d pay almost anything for something new to do.
ALSO OUT THIS WEEK
Fossil Fighters: Frontier, 3DS
In Fossil Fighters, the petrified dinosaur bones you unearth get reanimated into “vivosaurs” who fight on your behalf. You drive around in a “bone buggy” using sonar to find new fossils, then hammering and drilling out the bony heads, arms, legs and ribcages you’ve found via the touch screen. One body part is enough to assemble a functioning vivosaur, with each subsequent bit you dig up making it bigger and stronger. Although superficially similar to Pokémon, it’s nowhere near as deep or inventive. And while digging up fossils with the 3DS stylus is an enticing prospect, the reality is instantly dreary. Budding palaeontologists may get a kick out of simulated dino-bone discovery, but Frontier is at least as lacklustre as the first two games in this bafflingly long-lived franchise.
Nintendo, £32.86
Farming Simulator 15, PS3/4, Xbox One/360, PC & Mac
Turning the thankless, repetitious grind of farming into something fun is the sort of task that would send most people running for the hills. Built on the foundation of loans, repayments for which need to be made on time, you gradually build up your farm, adding new crops along with cattle, sheep or poultry. Although there’s something oddly satisfying about driving a combine harvester through a field of swaying wheat, doing the whole field in a series of tediously accurate stripes, pausing occasionally to empty your vehicle’s grain hopper, is more like a job than something you’d pay to do recreationally. When you combine that with the need to cultivate each field first, before moving on to sowing seeds, all with the same slow, precise driving back and forth, over and over again, you’ve got a simulated ordeal rather than a game. It’s prettier than past outings, the machinery shinier and more realistic, but at heart this is about careful budgeting and monotonous routine, neither of which is the cornerstone of a good night in.
Giants Software, £23.83‑£37.99
