Destiny: Rising, the new gacha spin-off of Bungie’s sci-fi looter-shooter, is an odd game. While a huge pastiche of the original two games, Rising never feels quite right, but is made infinitely better with the GameSir X5s. A full review of Destiny: Rising over on our sister site, GamesHub, but today, I want to talk about how adding a controller to the game made it more playable. 

A major issue with these controllers for phones is that they’ve just never been particularly good. Mushy d-pads, or just a general lack of comfort from the form factor, have stood in the hardware’s way. GameSir, meanwhile, has made the first one that I genuinely began using over a regular controller with a grip. It just made Destiny: Rising come together.

The Escapist recaps

• Destiny: Rising has been released on mobile and Android emulators, but it’s filled with half-baked ideas.
• The GameSir X5s is one of the first controllers of its kind that feels like a premium option, rather than a flimsy bit of plastic.
• Playing with a controller makes Destiny: Rising much easier and better to play than the touch screen.

Control your Destiny

Destiny: Rising is, once you put it into first-person mode, a genuine port of the game. It feels and controls like Destiny should, even if certain parts of it have been condensed or merged. There’s no third weapon, for instance, just two, the primary and special. It also carves up the player character from the main games into different characters with unique abilities for its gacha feature.

While NetEase has struck a balance with its business practices and not being an invading force during player time, it still requires you to be in the menus. Unlike Bungie, NetEase has an easy option to escape from the dreaded controller-mouse that has infested a good majority of games. Phone touch screens, it turns out, are really good for meandering through the billion menu options and reward the game drizzles on the player.

But playing a first-person shooter on a touch screen is alien to me. It’s genuinely terrifying that there’s an entire swath of humans who will not only be better than I am, even with the GameSir X5s. Player-versus-player multiplayer, for instance, is still an impenetrable wall to finding the fun.

The GameSir X5s makes Destiny: Rising playable

However, that GameSir X5s slid through my letterbox, and it is the saving grace of my entire time with Destiny: Rising. It morphed a mobile port pastiche of Bungie’s live service game into a much more comfortable time, but it is also genuinely a good piece of hardware.

Sometimes, when mobile controllers have come through in the past, I’ve been a little blinded by the fact that some of the games on my phone are now legitimately playable. Here, the GameSir X5s has shown me the light, but it’s taken a good few iterations and competing brands to get here.

The X5s is comfortable, light, and flexible around a number of devices. It stretches and envelopes the phone in a sturdy grip, and can also support the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2. In fact, in a pinch, it could do for hooking up to a PC if needed.

I genuinely think that my time with Destiny: Rising, despite its flaws, was made far better by having the X5s in hand. It turns out that eliminating the controls aspect from the forefront of the player’s mind makes for a better experience. 

Back on the menus briefly, being able to poke at the screen to skip the faffing around with the god-awful Destiny mouse menus, and then immediately switch back to the controller without the game hitching up or having to think about it is applaud-worthy.

It’s such a small thing, but even as good as the X5s is in-game, it still cannot best the dreadful way that Bungie went all-in on how to browse its seemingly endless clickable menus.

Having a GameSir X5s is not critical, like I said, the audience that Rising was probably intended for will be far and away better scooting their fingers around the screen.

Half-baked ideas…

See, Destiny: Rising is a game filled to the gills with different modes and things to do. None of it, if any of it, feels like a concrete and solid idea. It’s all underbaked and half-fulfilled ideas, like the fishing. It’s weirdly limited in what you can do per day, because if they just gave the player the keys to the kingdom, they might never log in again.

There are options pulled from other gacha games, like sending a squad on a mission in the background that takes real time. However, this is also bizarrely limited in what you can do. Rather than say, an energy feature that runs down the more you do it, it’s a currency feature that you can only buy one of per day, with no real way to acquire more. 

Its multiplayer resource gathering mode is a dull time waiting experience that nets rewards but requires you to thumb through possibly the Destiny franchise’s most boring mode.

Where I found a lot of my time going to was its rogue-like mode, which is how the game introduces long-time fan favorite, Xur, the wandering shopkeep. However, as this is a prequel, he’s hosting a rogue-like mode that nets another trickle of rewards and items instead of selling whatever is under his jacket.

… but not a half-baked controller

Here, the GameSir X5s shines through, as the ever-surmounting odds never felt overly difficult with a proper controller in hand. With the controller in hand, a Saturday morning became a huge rush of fending off the alien forces that just want to see you dead. It’s not exactly the best controller in the world, but it’s a damn sight better than what’s come before it.

A lot of these phone-grip-controllers, like the Backbone One, have often felt under par for what they’re offering. GameSir, of course, another repeated offender, but the X5s finally feels like they’ve nailed the middle ground of an inexpensive option (it is priced at $50), and genuinely good quality. 

The sticks won’t drift due to the inclusion of Hall Effect sticks, and everything down to the triggers – which see quite a bit of action in Destiny: Rising – never felt mushy or too stiff. It just constantly feels “right”.

I think it’s too soon to call it on Destiny: Rising properly, and it’s something I’ll keep abreast with even after pinning stars on a review. However, if you are going to dive headfirst into NetEase’s version of the Bungie shooter, I wholly recommend you pick up the GameSir X5s, or something of similar quality, before you do. Seriously, you’ll thank me later.

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References

1. Destiny Rising Review: A Headache Waiting to Happen (Gameshub)

The post I’m still unsure about Destiny Rising, but I’m sure about the Gamesir X5s appeared first on The Escapist.

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