Tom Clancy's The Division

Visually, What a great looking game

The Division is like three different games in one. The first part of the game comes in the form of a campaign set in an open world shooter where you explore a winterized New York City after a pandemic has devastated the world. The second part of the game comes in the form of PvP interaction, your multiplayer part of the game. The last part and the best part of the game comes from the DLC Survival mode. For me this makes the game and literally raises the game’s rating one whole point just on it’s own. For whatever reason, some might call it innovation (I Don’t) the core of the game is built on a RPG framework. Even though this is a tactical looking shooter, it works like a dungeons & dragons, sword & sorcery model. You can be damage dealer, a tank, or a healer. You run missions (Quests) to randomly receive gear which can then be tweaked with perks and gear enhancements or attachments. I think this makes the game more complicated then it needed to be and for me took away from the fun of the game because I couldn’t be bothered to continually farm. It made the gaming experience one that I both really enjoyed and also strongly disliked as you will see below.

The campaign was fun. The really smart thing they did was to let you play it with friends or other random agents. This is your first taste of the game as it sets up our world as it now exists. The story unfolds as you try to restore your Base of Operations fighting off different gang factions that roam the city. The game is richly detailed in it’s graphics. You can walk around New York City for hours and admire the visuals visiting well known landmarks. These visuals are so well done that they should be acknowledged many times over. The atmosphere alone is half the game. The game’s score and sound effects are also well done. Playing through the story has you finding little pieces of backstory as you rebuild what happened. Throughout the open world you can find all types of field data that you can pick up like phones, reports, and crashed drones. The highly technical world allows you to pull bits of information from everywhere and build echoes through all kinds of data points which can replay events that transpired in certain areas. One of my favorites bits was finding this little nod to the show Breaking Bad:

Multiplayer combat or PVP in the Dark zone is where they lost me with Rogue agents. I think it was a good idea on tackling multiplayer for the game, but the implementation was horrible. The one plus is that you can avoid this part of the game all together if you want by not entering into the Dark Zone at all. Now I experienced the PVP aspect of the game on many occasions, letting time pass, and then coming back to see the improvements. Each and every time I did it was a horrible experience. The first time was in the beta. All agents are cool with each other until they attack you making themselves a Rogue agent. They are then open season for everyone to shot down. Any other multiplayer game has a clear and direct distinction on who your opponent is. Little did the developers know that throwing down a turret to kill some NPCs made you vulnerable, because then an agent could just walk in front of your firing turret, get shot, thusly turning you into the Rogue agent. Or you had groups of Rogue agents just camping zone in points. This was not PvP in any good form, it was just grief. This alone took this game off my day one buy list.

I eventually did pick up the game down the road at the request of a family member as something we can play together for fun. Some of the PvP issues were looked at, of which I can not go into much detail nor do I care to. With all the passing of time. Other players had geared up and would just basically just wipe out new players easily. The only significant change was that they had to make themselves rogue by pressing the D pad. You could see they were going rogue with an indicator on their character. This didn’t help the situation much as they could easily kill you and you could not escape before they actually turned rogue. You could try and avoid these players in the Dark Zone and have some fun killing the NPCs, but then there is the matter of extracting out any gear you may have found. This is where you might get lucky and the Rogue agent might not be close enough to get you. However most often then not they would kill you and take your gear. So in essence you are collecting gear for already better equipped players then you. This just added to the grief.

The absolute worst PvP aspect of the game comes in the Last Stand DLC. This is where you fight it out with other players by capturing and holding zones for points. This is where long time players with ridiculous weapons kill you instantly. They wear armor sets that let them stand out in the open bullet sponging their way to you as if you are using nerf guns. If you don’t have the Exotic weapon called The House and the right gear then you can not be competitive in this multiplayer. This game is completely unbalanced. There is no diversity in equipment, there is only one route for success, that’s it. To gear up and get that gun means hours of gameplay at the hands of RNG. Some people might get a good drop early on while others, it could take them forever. While that is going on you are easily getting crushed by players that are not necessarily better skilled, just better equipped. This makes it one of the worse multiplayer experiences I have ever played.

Survival DLC Mode, is the third and best part of this game. Just when you though the game was utter trash because of PvP and RNG grind in comes the Survival DLC mode to the rescue! You are helicoptered into the game with a random set of players only to have your helicopter crash in a heavy blizzard. You start the game with one basic pistol and not much else. The point of the mode is to make it to the Dark Zone for extraction. Between your starting point and extraction you will have to fight off freezing temperatures, septic shock, and the roving gangs of New York City. Everyone starts on the same level playing field. Everyone has a timer to the extraction point that will tick down quicker then others if you don’t address your needs. You can combat all these obstacles by killing gang members and taking their weapons and gear. You can even make better gear by scavenging an assortment of lootable containers. You can also search for food items for bonuses, med packs for health, and syringes to slow the sepsis. The cold can be combated by picking up weatherized clothing in your scavenging. A warm fire will also thaw out your blood and get your heart pumping again. Knowing your bearings are essential, getting to a burn barrel or a safe house can be life or death.

Travel to the Dark Zone will require you to create a breathing device as the air is unbreathable otherwise. Once you get inside the Dark Zone you will have to search for the antivirals before extraction. Special tech will also let you make a needed flare gun to call in the extracting helicopter plus higher end gear and weapons. The enemies in the Dark Zone are increasingly harder to fight. You can easily get flanked and killed here. You have to choose your battles wisely. Lastly to get out on that chopper you will need to kill a hunter. The toughest opponent in the game mode. If you are not alone then you will be fighting one hunter for every team member. If there are two teams of four, then you will have eight hunter to deal with before you can extract. This is survival mode, the most rewardingly fun aspect of the game hands down.

Now if you want to take Survival up another notch you can certainly do so by entering the PvP lobby. So instead of just fighting other players strictly for resources you will also be fighting other players. In this mode however it will be more of a fair fight since you know they are going to kill you for your stuff and if you die it won’t be at the hands of ridiculously overpowered weapons and gear. This is not to say that players can’t be rat bastards in the standard mode of the game either. In the standard mode you can chose to be helpful towards other plays or you can just let them fall to the many trappings in the game and freeze to death. Then casually go over and loot whatever they managed to acquire in their travels. They can also enter an extraction zone when you fire off your flare gun adding another hunter to the mix as they then turn around and run off leaving you to deal with it. This makes success that much more sweeter. You can have a look at one of my runs here:



In summation, this game looks incredible. The atmosphere is on it’s own level. The gunplay and mechanics work beautifully in PvE and Survival mode. The game is sold in that respect. It’s why I love this game. PvP, Dark Zone Rogue Agents, and RPG RNG grinding ruined the overall experience. It’s not innovative, you can give the developers some credit for trying something different, but it’s not what I want out of a tactical shooter. Now mind you there is a second game out there set in a warmer Washington DC setting. Based on this game I don’t see them making huge changes to address a lot of my problems with the game. I have been in stores where the game sells for as slow as $14.99 and I am not compelled at all to buy it. The second game has no Survival mode. If it had a winterized DC survival mode, I would suffer through the other parts of the game again, but only if there was a Survival mode!