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Destiny 2: Countdown Impressions

by: Chuck -
More On: Destiny 2

At the end of my first Countdown round, my team and I made a pact: That we would never, ever play together again. Sure, we had the excuse that this was our first time playing Destiny 2's new Crucible mode, but the lack of teamwork and skill was completely inexcusable. I'm not going to name names in this case, because that would be wrong, and because I didn't get the names of the other three people on the team. 

Performance aside, Countdown is an interesting new multiplayer mode. The gist is that there are two bomb locations on the map. One team is responsible for defending the spots while the other team tries to plant the bombs. Once the bomb it set the offensive team must defend it until it explodes. Each round is worth one point and the first one to six points wins. 

Each team is limited to four revives, and power ammo is limited to the person who acquires it. The most important thing to know is that teamwork is a must. You really have to commit to working together as it was easy for the other team to tear us apart once our team got separated. This seems obvious, but watching a few other matches showed that even having a really talented player on the team wasn't enough to stop good teamwork.

The map was really well-designed with multiple paths to the bomb sites. There are a few places where you could try to flank the opposing team, but there weren't any major choke points to block, and the bomb sites weren't super easy to defend. To be honest, the map felt a little bigger than I would have expected for 4v4, but the openness forces teams to fully commit attacking/defending one bomb site or dividing up to attack/defend both. 

Time to kill (TTK) for opponents seemed to be a bit higher than I remember it. I've seen some other people mention it, but as you can see from the gameplay footage below, killing opponents takes a lot of work. Then again it also might be my lack of talent.

I dug my time with Countdown and I'm interested to see what the community does with this game mode when the final game ships.