During the inaugural 2014 PlayStation Experience, Bungie gave me the opportunity to get an early look at The Undying Mind Strike. The Undying Mind is a new Strike mission for Destiny that is exclusive to the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 consoles. However, Xbox 360 and Xbox One console owners should have nothing to fear, because The Undying Mind Strike mission is only a timed exclusive. It will be available for all consoles later on next year.
Bungie recently launched The Dark Below expansion. The Dark Below focuses on the Hive aliens and their ruler Crota. However, The Undying Mind is more like a holdover or epilogue of sorts to The Black Garden mission at the end of the main game storyline for Destiny at launch. Essentially, The Undying Mind mission is a backwards gauntlet run through The Black Garden. The Guardian characters start at the end of The Black Garden, where the main player character destroyed the heart in the last story mission. So, the Guardian Fireteam gets to battle an almost endless army of Vex minions to the very entrance of The Black Garden. There, the Guardians confront a Vex Axis Mind and must destroy it in order to escape.
The story intro has an interesting touch. The Vex are trying to regain control of The Black Garden after the Guardians destroyed its heart. Ikora Rey mentions a schism that the Vex are trying to repair. For the purpose of the Strike, I used a Titan, my chosen Guardian class for Destiny. I used the Defender subclass since the energy shield is very helpful when facing down the legions of the more powerful Vex drones.
Overall, I enjoyed this Strike. It was fairly straightforward, and it has a fun and appealing gauntlet run style. The Undying Mind is a new variation of the Vex Axis Mind robots that players have faced before. He is covered in various foliage and plants like the other ancient Vex seen earlier in The Black Garden. The boss fight is similar to The Nexus Strike on Venus against another Vex Axis Mind, Sekrion. However, The Undying Mind has three energy shields surrounding him, and there is less room in the space to go against him. Therefore, players have to be careful and choose their shots carefully. The space does allow for some good vertical attacks against The Undying Mind, though. In addition, Vex minotaurs continue to spawn and attack players during the boss fight.
The Undying Mind is available to play now for Destiny on the PS4 and PS3. The Strike will hit the Xbox One and Xbox 360 consoles around fall 2015.
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