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.