Tom Clancy's The Division 2 (2019)

While I enjoy the odd Tom Clancy “tactical shooter” now and again, I did stay clear of the Division 1 after hearing how it was bullet sponge, loot box mess of a game. I did hear that the Division 2 was supposed to be much better in regards to those issues and I got it on sale for 2 bucks, so my financial stake in this game was not very high. Seeing as it did cost me so little, I did splurge on one premium cosmetic outfit.

• (I liked ths picture the most.)

The first Division was set in New York which didn’t spark much interest in me, but this game is set in Washington DC. DC just seems more fun to run around, because there are the typical “big city” areas, but you also get to explore the museums on the mall, the White House, and other monuments that mix the landscape up a bit. A lot of the first missions are fighting through various Smithsonian museums. I’d take fighting through a dinosaur exhibit over another office building or shopping mall any day.

The story of this game is sorta just there to serve as a reason to explore the map. You are part of a shadowy, super-secret homeland security division that was activated when the world ended thanks to the Dollar Flu. Course, my character looked less like a spec-ops soldier and more like that redneck who’s been prepping for the end times. The agents in DC have been reduced to a skeleton crew, so you come in to retake the capital and recruit new members. You meet 2 bands of friendly survivors and 3 bands of not so friendly survivors. I didn’t get through all the main story, because after awhile the gameplay does get stale. Last thing I did story wise was rescue the Vice President.

This gameplay is what the Division is about. It’s a standard 3rd person cover shooter deal. You have a selection of different guns to pick from. I went old school with an M1A rifle and a shotgun, but as you level up you have to upgrade your guns or switch to the better ones you unlock. It’s the RPG elements that keeps you switching out gear and guns. My level 6 gun carried me for a while, but by level 14 I had to upgrade. That is one thing I never cared for about RPGs, there’s no use finding a favorite gun early on, because you’ll eventually have to upgrade to a gun you may not like, but makes the game playable again. The bullet sponge enemies are still here in Division 2, but they are usually reserved for end of level bosses and they aren’t impossibly spongy. You also have a few special tech skills you can use. I found the turret and shield drone to be the best combo for drawing fire off me during intense firefights. Another big aspect of gameplay is joining a squad. I usually found one person to play with as a sort of commando duo and most people I played with were interested in capturing command points or completing missions, not just dicking around, which is always nice. Very few of us had mics, but the game is simple enough you can manage without them.

For being an always online game, I never had many server problems. The world didn’t lag very often and I rarely got dropped from a game completely. Between this and Fallout 76 working well, I’m starting to think Red Dead Online just has very poor server setups.

All in all, if you get this game cheap enough, it’s worth it. I feel the Tom Clancy game audience ages skew older and this game feels like it’s built to be a weekday evening, get the boys together online after work, and hash out a few missions kind of game. It isn’t giving you an engaging story asking for hours of your life at a time. It’s fun for a bit and that’s all it needs to be.

The shooting and looting feels good. The game looks decent. The multiplayer was fun and the missions seemed interesting most of the time.

I never cared about anyone I was helping and the story is worthless most of the time. Mostly an excuse to get into fun little firefights.

Pretty generic UbiSoft open world design but stuck into a "gritty" looter shooter. I never played the first so I have no idea how to compare it but it was fun until it was not and then I stopped.

So far, this is easily the best looter shooter ever made. That's not a high bar, sure, but it clears it handily before doing a beautiful flip and landing knees-first on Anthem's throat. It's also probably the best open world game of the year so far, mostly because it's one of the few open world games that doesn't give me a migraine. It does have a lot of "hey, what's over here?" side distractions, but they're all super rewarding because they Make Your Dude Stronger in the most direct ways possible. Whether this comes in the form of rewarding you with skill points for side missions and finding random caches in the open world or rewarding you with a big shower of loot simply for stopping in and saying hi to your buddies who are holding down forts at certain points on the map, your time never feels wasted.

The story is unforgivably bad so far, though. It's very low-effort. They don't even try to develop their characters, accurately present the stakes of their central conflict, or even... you know, HAVE ACTUAL VILLAINS. This is made worse by the cutscenes, which are downright laughable. Seriously, Ubisoft. This is the age of God of War, Spider-man, and RDR2... and this choppy, ugly, badly framed, badly lip-synced garbage is the best you can do? Hell, they're a step below the Division 1!

Just started this a few days ago and I'm really enjoying it so far. I loved the first game and played the majority of it solo. The matchmaking is super easy though and was nice for missions I wanted a little help with.

I can't put my finger on why exactly I love this game so much more than Destiny or other similar games, but I think it comes down to the fact that it's perfectly playable solo, and there's so much to do and so many ways to continue to improve my character. The shooting and skill mechanics are very satisfying as well, and the visuals are beautiful.

I'm definitely looking forward to sinking a lot of time into this game for the weeks and months to come.