Tom Clancy’s The Division Review

After a really long wait since E3 2013, I’m glad that The Division has finally been out for almost two months and boy, it has taken me a while to thoroughly play through it and write my review of the game.

The game is set in New York City after a virus outbreak that spreads through banknotes affecting our consumerist population.

Unlike other games that have a virus outbreak as its premise, this one does not include zombies. So what kind of enemies do we have? The enemies in The Division are split into multiple classes, the Rikers, Sweepers, LMB(Last Man Battalion). When there is no food and no law and order, those are the kind of people you get.

The story of the game does take a backseat to the gameplay. There are hardly any cutscenes and you get to find out about most of the story through virus reports, cell phones that you pick up or ECHOS. ECHOS are holographic projections of incidents that had earlier occurred in different areas of the game. They are beautiful to look at and help you dive deeper into the story.

My friend and I, hardly paid any attention to the story, but we still enjoyed playing the game. I do wish it had a better story, but at the same time I don’t think its fun for multiple players to watch cutscenes at the same time. It makes me understand Ubisoft’s decision to not have many of them and have a more passive narrative.

Ubisoft has taken a lot of notes and inspiration from Destiny and implemented certain things much better. For example, when Destiny launched initially it did not have matchmaking for Raids or other things. People had to resort to online communities and find friends.

Ubisoft has taken note of this and put matchmaking in a lot of different locations throughout the game world. You can see the similarities with Destiny spread across everywhere in the game.

While doing my playthrough of the game, I did notice that the game is very boring while playing alone. When I started playing the first few missions, the game seemed super average. Initially it also felt weird to see that enemies would die after multiple shots to the head. Coming to this game after playing Call of Duty, it was really odd to see that. But since Ubisoft was trying to make it like an MMO and had RPG elements, the bullet sponge enemies was something that came from its RPG gameplay style.

After finishing the first mission and going through the training, I found a friend playing online and I joined his party. That was the day my whole experience and opinion changed. It is when you play with a team of players that this game truly shines. While playing with Manas I really started to understand the level design and it is so well done for people playing in teams — they can use flanking tactics to take down enemies and feel like a boss after they’ve annihilated all of them.

The game has a third person view very similar to other Ubisoft titles such as Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell. The cover-to-cover system reminded me a lot Splinter Cell Conviction. Shooting the guns sometimes did not feel as satisfying as a first person shooter, but hunting for different guns while picking up loot drops from enemies makes you really excited for what you’re going to get next. There’s always better gear to get.

Time to talk about the LOOT! This game is a full on lootfest. As I said before, there is just no shortage of better gear. The Division will keep you hooked and keep you coming back for more. Levelling up and reaching the cap of Level 30 is pretty quick. You just keep doing story missions and side missions, it will give you enough XP to swiftly breeze through the levels. Most of the missions are pretty similar, you enter an area, clear all the enemies, proceed to the next area, clear all the enemies and so on.

After you reach the level cap, the only way to get better is to get better gear, and how do you get better gear? By going into the DARK ZONE! The Dark Zone is one of the most interesting multiplayer modes I’ve ever seen in any game. According to the game’s story, the Dark Zone is a heavily contaminated area, so the loot that you get there, can’t be extracted just by walking out, it needs to be done by calling for an extraction. This extraction is marked on the map for everyone currently in the Dark Zone. This is where things start getting crazy.

When a bunch of people are extracting, they become targets for other players to steal their loot. So not only are you being shot at by tough CPU enemies, you are also in the risk of being shot by a human player. If you’re shot by another player, they go “Rogue”. A rogue agent is marked for everyone on the map, and a bounty is put on his head. Its all about the risk and reward which makes this mode really intense. You’ll always be looking over your shoulder while you’re in the Dark Zone.

With the recent update, Ubisoft has added supply drops in the Dark Zone which are only available for a few minutes and are guarded by a pack of really strong enemies that you need to take down before getting the supply drop. This makes it another hot zone on the map for players to gather together and possibly work together or, stab each other in the back!

A big disadvantage in this game is that I’m always waiting to check when my friends are available and then I can play the way its meant to be played. I usually just load up some other game if no one is online. Ubisoft might have to give me something better to do while I’m alone in the game.

Playing The Division has been a very varying experience, so much fun in a group, but hardly any fun while alone. If you want to play regularly with a group of friends, and you’re the kind of person who likes playing games which are loot based, its hard not to recommend this one. But if you are a person who does not have a regular group to play with and is looking for a story, you should look elsewhere.

Authored by Abheyraj Singh. You can check out more of his work here.

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