Her name is AN053, and she's a Robot Tank

Firepower comes separately

I've been waiting patiently for a chance at Destiny for a long time now, especially in the week Scott Hyped it up for me while he played the Playstation Beta. It got to the point where I publicly declared on Facebook that I would do anything to get a Beta key for the 360, my one and only console.

Sadly, my cries were ignored. But that doesn't matter since the game became publicly open.

What luck! All I had to do was wait for the download and go on with it, making my characters and classes that I had planned out and testing every inch of the game until it ended on Sunday.

I danced around in excitement as it downloaded, all the while Jenny laughing at me and my giddiness.

But at 11pm, while Jenny was fast asleep, it was done. I put on the headphones and got myself comfortable for the long haul to level up at least 3 characters to the Beta Limit before it ends. And hopefully, they'll rollover if and/or when I get the full game.

So I run through the tutorial and start analysing it. Everything is so very clean and clinical when it comes to the User Interface. Icons and frames with soft colours and clean sillouettes. The rest of the world looks more detailed, the Tower being much more Science Fiction than Old Russia, the playable PvE field in the Beta.

It uses a cursor when interacting with menus, rather than something like a D-pad. It's a very clever move, because there's a heap of stuff to go through. If I were to make a suggestion with the menus, it would be to lose the shaded background when viewing the character. Just use the environment as the background, and the model would just be the toon as it is at the time.

The one thing that has Irked me the most is the Blip-dar. I say Blip-dar because it's not so much a Radar as you would think from a Bungie Developer. It's got a different method of execution than what Halo does. Halo has a Motion Tracker, meaning if anything moves within the radius of your radar, you get a dot of them showing up.

This takes 17 different pieces to show you there are enemies nearby. Friendlies pop up as little triangles as normal, so you know where they actually are. But enemies? Forget about it. They're in one of 8 directions, or on top of you. But be sure to spend a moment spinning around trying to find those last ones.

Otherwise, the game plays very much like Halo. Jumping, hiding, dodging; Needlers are chasing you between dodging light rifle fire; you speed along the terrain on your own personal ghost; and your own sexy robot intelligence is talking to you constantly. The comparisons are very literally endless.

The RPG factor, now that's a corker. Everything levels up. You're gaining experience for your weapons and armour so you can take advantage of their special features down the track, features of which are rarely the same between two weapons. I imagine that'll get tiresome after a while, having to restart levelling your equipment each time you get a new pair of shoes, but it would pay off, surely.

I mean, I have Automatic Rifles that deal additional damage on the second half of the clip. I have Sniper Rifles that have a near-instant reload if I kill with the final round. I have Rocket Launchers that fire three projectiles at the cost of 1 ammunition. Each weapon will always be different, and I can't wait to see higher level weapon shenanigans.

For the time of the Open Beta, I flogged the shit out of Old Russia's Cosmodrome. I played all three classes and though I didn't fully level up their abilities, I had so much fun. Especially the Hunter. The THUNK of his knife backhanding everything (And I mean EVERYTHING) in the face before just chucking it at the next sod in line had me giggling in my sleep deprived state at 3am.

But though I had fun with the Hunter I'm going to stick with my Android, with her busted open forehead and the splash of red paint over her eye. Her and I circled around the Cosmodrome and mowed our way through encounters with Fallen, Hive, and Spider Tanks, laughing our way around town. And I hope to continue doing so when I get the full game.