Tom Clancy's The Division (2016)

I love how 'shooting "looters" during a pandemic' looks even worse nowadays, but somehow Ubisoft managed to come up with something even more reactionary (their new "shoot BLM terrorists" game). Playing this for another 15,5 hours i've also noticed how "looters" destroy supply crates. Weird way to be a looter. It's also pretty disturbing how helping civilians (by giving them food/medicine) is always rewarded with items - clothes and even weapons. The game makes these poor people give you the clothes off their back in exchange for a bottle of water or an energy bar.

It's such a shame that they created this incredibly atmospheric post-pandemic New York and wasted it on a cookie-cutter MMO-ish shooter. The skill system is quite interesting and all the little story elements are solid, but it never feels even remotely real. You can't even permanently restore neighbourhoods or anything, enemies and bombs respawn the moment you turn your back. Such a shame.

Played during a free weekend and got far enough to fight the escaped prisoner enemies. I played solo the entire time and never tried to play with other people. The backstory for the game makes little sense because it implies that the people in the Division are the best of the best to be brought out when everyone else has failed. In reality, they are scrubs with only basic training who work civilian jobs and are only called out as a last resort when the proper people have failed. Seriously, the actual game dialogue must be propaganda.

I did the tutorial mission alone and it was pretty bad. The piece of garbage mp5 you start off with feels more like a BB gun; that seems about right for how many shots its takes to kill enemies. The first boss in his football armor gave me an extremely hard time; after a few deaths I had to resort to kiting him way back through the level. When I see “Tom Clancy” I think about Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six; realistic tactical shooters where a single shot is often death for both you and enemies. The Division is the complete opposite and it annoyed me to no end. Game should not have Tom’s name in it and instead should be called: The Division – Bullet Sponge the game.

Game got a little better once I got past the tutorial and was able to do some sidequests and collectibles to level up and get better loot. I upgraded to an assault rifle but I still struggled to kill anything other than the basic enemies. Later I got a scope which allowed me to fight at a sensible long range. After some time I found a sniper rifle and almost exclusively used that. Fighting at extreme long range against lower level enemies and getting mostly headshots (and air tank shots) actually made the game reasonably fun and helped mitigate the bullet sponge nature. This changed a bit with the prisoner enemies, who were much tougher and had rushers that could easily counter my sniping style.

I used the ballistic shield and healing drone to make a kind of paladin class. I only used the shield once against a boss with a flamethrower when he had me cornered in an elevator. Still can’t believe I survived that.

The game is somewhat interesting but has a lot of gameplay problems. I am not inclined to buy the game unless it is extremely cheap.

Played the PC version with a friend (this is really important in this types of games)

The Division is a TPS with RPG and MMO elements. You are part of a super elite group called "The Division" who are deployed after a virus spread on Black Friday. And you have to restore the peace in Manhattan because the city is a disaster. (In summary)

At first you only have acces to a small part of the city, due to your lvl and guns, (they are not really blocked, but there is no point in going to a lvl 6 area when you are lvl 1 with shitty weapons) so in order to gain xp, loot and money you need to start doing Main mission or just sidequest. There are about 10 zones in Manhattan, each one with its own safe house (with sellers, other players, ammo fills, and used as a respawn point in case you die) and each zone has its own Missions and sidequest.

The Dark Zone:

There is also "The Dark zone" a PVE and PVP area with its own rules. This zone its also separated into areas for the safety of the player. Here you can find really good loot that can't be found outside and the enemies are harder to kill. The problem with the zone its that you have a limited amount of items you can carry with you in order to extract them. (I think it's only 7 at the begginig of the game). And for extract those items you need to go to a "Extraction zone", shoot a flare and wait some time until the helicopter comes for the goods. The thing is ,though, everyone can come to you and kill you and take your stuff and GG items. Since its a zone made for PVP, sometimes you just get involved in fights because someone decided to shoot you and try to take your things. So be really careful if you try to go by your own, (especially in the higher tier zone)

Missions:

The sidequest are enjoyables at first, but then they start to repeat and can be boring by the end of the game. It is always "the hostage rescue" "defend the area" "defend supply drops", etc. With really no variations at all. As for the main missions, they were really fun and challenging, you can choose to do it by your own, with your party or use the matchmaking outside each mission to get some partners and complete it. As you progress in the game the mission are harder and harder, with tougher enemies and bosses. Each one has its own story and objectives to do, some are rather short and others can take over 30 min if you are struggling with it. After you complete a mission you are rewarded with something related to the story (some recording, a note, some audio) and with credits (security,health and tech) What are these credits for? you can spend them in the base of operations.

Base of operations:

This base is you main "safe house" and it is where the story develops in certain way. Here you can upgrade the 3 wings availables (security,health and tech) and doing so grants you acces to new skills, perks, and new stations inside the safe house itself. You can have from a clothes vendor, to some recalibration stations for your gear.

There is a great amount of gear, and you can be very picky with it. You have 3 weapon slots, knee pads, bag, holster, vest, gloves, mask. Each one has a stupid amount of options to choose from. Each weapon can be costumize in various ways, you can change the skin, the mag, the grip, the sight.

You also have tiers, starts in grey, then green, blue, purple, yellow, red, and some one are green water-ish (those belongs to the sets inside the game).

Enemies:

You have several bad guys. At first there are the "basic" enemies, red HP bar, then the purple HP bar (with a shield bar), then the yellow or elite ones. And after that, the yellow guys but with a unique name over their heads. Those are the bosses of each mission. The enemies are bullet sponges, the take a lot of hits to die, but that's a good thing (at least for me) because otherwise you would beat the game in like 5 hours or less.

Endgame:

And one of the greatest thing about the game is that, after you finish the main story, you unlock a lot of content. You unlock some ares of the map, the DLC operations, global events, you are gonna spent probably more hours than in the main story.

Overall:

Great game to play with friends, with a lot of content in the beggining and even more content after you beat the game. If you like it a first, the you are gonna be addicted to "The Division".

If there's one thing that Fallout 4, and previously Oblivion, absolutely messed up it's enemy health. The Division fails in the same way, and it's worse in the context. Unless an enemy is several levels lower, they can shrug off a headshot by a sniper rifle. Bosses are even worse and they can easily take 10+ headshots. In a game where immersion and 'grittiness' are core elements, this really takes you out of it.

On top of that, enemies are master marksmen who can sprint towards a point, stop, instantly know where you are and hit you with a pistol from 20-30 meters away. And they shrug off any hits without a need to stop. And for the most part they only come in 4 variations; Bat-man, gun-man, sniper-man and mg-man. This isn't Borderlands or Skyrim when it comes to enemy variety.

Another problem with combat is that you can't crouch outside of cover. This wouldn't be as much of a problem if at least the cover system worked perfectly. But sometimes you're firing at something (like a wall) that is between you and the thing your cursor is right on top of. In a FPS, this might make sense. In a TPS, the bullets should go where you aim, not against an obstacle you can't see from up top.

The real problem with The Division is repetition. There's only a handful of enemy types (in the first 3,5 hours at least). Combat always plays out in the same way. And outside of combat you're pretty much always following the yellow lines guiding you along waypoints. It's nice that this system exists and you can probably tone it down, but by default the game is very on-rails.

And the game doesn't really invite you to 'venture out' anyway. Exploration seems pointless since most loot is tied to quests. Enemies are sparse and always the same especially in the streets. You know how exciting it is in Bethesda games when you enter a new building not knowing what you might find? That excitement just doesn't exist here.

The truth is that The Division isn't an open-world game in the way most of us would understand it. It's a corridor shooter that let's you pick in what order you do their completely scripted corridor shooting missions. Meh.

Finally, i wanted to share this gem from the dialogue, said to you by you Division boss: "I've trained for this my whole life. And when you finally get activated you want to be in the streets.". Really now, you trained to be a sleeper agent since you were a kid? And what do you mean by when you are activated? Don't you mean if?!

Oh yeah, and the game is a reactionary circlejerk too. In this city where everyone is struggling to survive the baddies are "looters"? Lol.

65 hours played
Level 30

The Division is very Destiny-like. It is a third-person shooter with MMO and RPG-lite qualities. Set in Manhatten NY after a biological terrorist attack. You are a Division agent sent in to help the locals and restore order from the groups that have taken over.

Pros

* Real world setting is cool. I caught myself looking for areas I visited in real life to see how they looked in game. It is also seemless to move between areas and into buildings etc with no loading unless you die or fast travel. The main missions are usually set in one of the main NY landmarks. The first main mission is in Madison Square Garden for example.

* Addictive combat. Having damage numbers and health bars on the enemies totally feeds into the OCD of tweaking your stats so that you can make those numbers higher. I spent a lot of time managing my load out of weapons to twease out the best armour and DPS numbers.

* Co-op with mates is great. Team up on the main missions or just wandering the world. Most of my playtime was played single player which if you level up regularly and do the zones in order of difficulty you find that you are always over each areas recommended level.

* Collection items like phone messages, tactical info, echoes etc provides a lot of atmosphere to the world with individual stories of normal citizens as the virus spread.

* The Dark Zone is the multiplayer section in the middle of the map. Entering here allows you to team up to extract higher level items, but watch if someone turns on the team and steals all your hard earned loot. it was cool for the little I played it.

* Loot, loot and more LOOT. Is this sniper rifle better than the one I have, what if I add these mods how is my DPS (Damage per second). What if I craft this backpack, it increases my DPS, but reduces my Tech score and Health…..decisions decisions. Even better it’s the Diablo colour coded system, I need to get more purple and gold drops.

Cons

* Side missions can get a bit repetitive. A lot of defending supply drops, initiating virus scanners and drug busts.

* Main Story is a bit thin. There are a lot of radio chatter and videos at the end of main missions, but it’s pretty forgettable and doesnt really go anywhere.

* You can still see the UBISOFT open world template shining through. Access Safe houses in each area to Synch your map and highligh where all the missions are.

* Enenies can be very bullet spongy. Given the setting shooting someone in the head multiple times and still seeing them shooting back is a bit distracting.

Overall I had a lot of fun with the game and once you hit the level cap and complete the final mission it opens up the end game, Daily missions are currently live and with the next upgrade the first Incursion mission is unlocked. (Basically Destiny Raids).

It has yet to be seen if it has the legs of Destiny, but regular upgrade and new contect could see me coming back to it in the future.

4/5

Edited: 9/10 (I haven't changed the original review, just the score)

Here's the thing about The Division that I think applies to a lot of people (or I'm just making shit up like I often do): it all depends on your expectations. I am just like a majority of the gaming population who saw the original trailer and thought, "Whoa, what the hell is this? I want it." Some will go into this expecting the greatest thing since Mario, while others will temper their expectations and see The Division for what it is. I'm in the latter group, HOPING for the most amazing game ever while being able to just appreciate what they did with it.The Division is a sandbox third-person shooter with some RPG elements that is better with friends. It's not even really an MMO.

It doesn't do anything real exceptional in the campaign mode but I still enjoy it quite a bit. You just complete missions--a better story would have been welcomed--and get points to upgrade three different stations, which then give you your talents/perks and abilities. I'm not in love with this system because by the end of it everybody has access to all the same abilities, and everyone has the same perks. You can build your character a certain way but they don't feel as unique as they could. Still, the main missions are fun, the shooting feels fine--though there are some bullet sponges that get annoying--and it's great to go through with a buddy or a few buddies.

The side missions and encounters get a little boring as they go on but that's a problem with the genre as a whole. Any game that has compelling quests through and through is the exception to the rule.

The end-game content is thin, but endless MMO grinds don't appeal to me anyway. This is one of the only things that make the game an MMO. That and the Dark Zone, which is a lot of fun and there is an intensity to it when you see other players... even if they usually don't attack you because going rogue doesn't have a lot of benefits. With that said, I'm not sure if giving more incentives for people to go rogue would improve the experience or not. I've put a lot of thought into this, and they may have made a PvP/PvE mode that isn't as frustrating as some. I do wish there were other objectives in there; maybe in the future they'll expand upon it.

So when all is said and done, it isn't the greatest game ever, but it's a damn good one. This could go up to a 9 if they put more into the Dark Zone, if I'm being honest, because that's probably the most thrilling part of it. I wouldn't believe anybody who says this is the worst game ever because most of the mechanics are solid and polished. There are some minor gripes in terms of the UI and other aspects, but to make a HUGE deal out of those would be blowing them out of proportion.