I'm getting everything I should be getting from Destiny 2 and Borderlands 4 out of Destiny: Rising

I’m not getting my looter-shooter fix from the places I thought I would be this September.

Destiny 2 is in a bit of a rough spot right now, if you’re not aware. Bungie has been struggling to recapture the attention of fans since ending its ten year saga with The Final Shape (which, despite massive critical acclaim and love from the community, was followed up with mass layoffs at the studio). And with The Edge of Fate expansion from earlier this summer — which is the start of an entirely new era of Destiny — Bungie has overhauled the game into something that many players … aren’t very happy with at the moment.

This has left a bit of a vacuum in the lives of the Destiny sickos out there (like myself) as we wait for Bungie to improve Destiny 2. See, even 10 years later, there isn’t much out there like Destiny. There have been a few brands over the years that lightly tickle that itch, like other looter shooters. But Anthem never got its second chance, and we haven’t seen The Division in a while either.

Luckily, players still have the looter granddaddy: Borderlands. Borderlands 4 has been the shining city on a hill for Destiny fans over the summer. They've been waiting and watching, imagining how it will whisk them away in its big, strong, cell-shaded arms. Even I, who has lost a lot of faith in Borderlands over the years, couldn’t help but get excited for the new game.

On Borderlands launch week, things got even worse for Destiny player sentiment, as Bungie revealed what looks to be a rad Star Wars-themed expansion coming in December, and then an hour later released an update so stale, boring, and broken that even I turned it off after an hour instead of trying to cover it. 

With the Ash and Iron update (dubbed Ass and Iron by D2 players) no longer vying for my attention, I turned fully to Borderlands 4, cranking up that YouTube algorithm to feed me that sweet, sweet content.

I dove in on launch day. I played for like five hours straight. I wrote a fun starter guide. And … I haven’t really gone back. To me, Borderlands 4 is just boring. And while I’ve pushed through many a boring game to get to the good part, I find myself weirdly distracted by something else. 

Destiny: Rising, the mobile gacha game made by NetEase, is that something else. Hey man, I’m as surprised as you are. 

The week Rogue launched, I wrote a more business-focused piece on how the Destiny community was reacting to Destiny: Rising for MobileGamer.biz, in which I said the game was surprisingly good, but Destiny players were surely about to hit that gacha game wall and bounce off.

I was impressed by the game during its alpha last year, and I was enjoying the opening bits of it as I wrote that article. But I was convinced that the gacha wall would come — likely just in time for Ash and Iron and Borderlands 4. And I was right. Well, I was half right.