I really can’t think of a time when Ubisoft was more under the microscope in the eyes of players and the gaming press than it is right now. Since ‘Tom Clancy’s The Division’ was first revealed during the 2013 E3 Ubisoft briefing, the hype for it has built up massively for what potentially could be the next big thing for the publisher. But can it deliver on that hype and convince the doubters to give Ubisoft another chance?
The world of The Division is set in Manhattan, a city suffering in the aftermath of a biological attack using a virus transmitted through money executed on Black Friday. With a quarantine put in place by the US Government, the city has fallen prey to chaos and criminals. In an effort to regain order, The Division task force of Sleeper agents is activated and sent into the city with instructions to investigate the outbreak, protect the populace and help the JTF forces fight back and retake Manhattan.
Essentially The Division is an online third person shooter with strong RPG elements and a looting system that enables players to equip skills, weapons and gear in the game. Now this may sound all too familiar if you have been playing Destiny and many comparisons have been made between these two games in the run up to this release. On paper at least they are indeed very similar but after spending over 40 hours in the game since it launched, I am happy to say they are both very different experiences.
The game world is split into two distinct playing areas with one being the main story driven campaign area which surrounds the second area, the Dark Zone. The very first thing you do after completing the opening Brooklyn tutorial area is to establish a base of operations which will serve as your main hub. The base can be upgraded by using supplies Collected from missions to unlock and build each of three wings in the base; medical, security and a tech wing. By unlocking and improving each wing with upgrades, new skills, talents and perks will become available to be selected by the player helping to give the Agent more abilities in the field.
Manhattan itself is broken up into different sections, each with their own safe house to allow for fast travel and a place for agents to restock between the action. Once the safe house has been unlocked, encounters, side missions and main story missions will become available in that area. Encounters are colour coded to show which of the three wings back in the main base of operations the player can earn supplies from to upgrade their facilities and range from hostage rescue, supply drop retrieval or helping JTF soldiers under attack. Side missions are more objective based with some being multipart taking players to various locations. The story based missions will reward in a large amount of supplies for one of the wings and will reveal more about the virus attack. As you clear areas you will be directed to the next safe house and the process repeats.
Naturally as you progress the player will begin to upgrade the skills and loadouts of their agents and this for me is where The Division truly starts to shine and stand apart from its closest rival Destiny. Where it relies on players finding increasingly more powerful loot to increase its players level, The Division allows the player to level up their agent via game progress and then bring weapons and gear up to that level, which for me is a much fairer and balanced method. Each agent can equip three weapons, two main guns and a sidearm. Weapons can be modified to improve their performance as you go along and new weapons and gear can be purchased from vendors across the city and from loot dropped from fallen enemies. Gear provides armour, extra health and can give bonus attributes to skills and weapons effectiveness. Loot, like Destiny, has different tiers where normal is green, blue is special and purple superior. How a player builds their agent with skills, gear and weapons is really up to them rather than being forced to simply use the highest value items in order to elevate their level. The variety of choice is huge and because the loot and equipment for sale reflect your current level, the agent will rarely feel underpowered as the difficulty of the AI enemies will match their level and if the player venture near an area that they are not ready for, the map will show what the recommended level should be before tackling it.
If you prefer to play solo there is no need to worry as with good strategy and loadout you can progress just fine in the story campaign. If you prefer to team up with friends, the game will ramp up the difficulty to balance for the number of agents and with the combat being so fluid, it becomes instinctive to use team tactics especially with skills that can benefit the whole team such as the healing station or offensive aids like the auto turret and seeker mines. I greatly enjoyed playing in a team of agents but also had fun playing solo as well.
All the above is put to the test when you go forward to tackle the second world area in The Division, the Dark Zone, which after playing the better was a concern for me. Story wise, the Dark Zone is the worst affected area hit by the virus, so bad that it is considered so dangerous that the JTF does not enter it. With no authority in the Dark Zone, enemies run rampant and are more dangerous and deadly than in the normal world areas. Only Division Agents are brave enough to enter and therefore the rewards can match the risk making the loot here much higher and sought after. The twist here is that any loot Collected is so contaminated that it must be extracted by helicopter before players can claim and use it which is where the PvP element kicks in as players can literally fight and kill each other in the Dark Zone to steal an agent’s loot before it can be extracted. Once you are full of items to extract, you must head to an extraction zone and call in retrieval where a 90 second countdown until the chopper arrives. This can be a very tense time as not only will you have to defend your position from AI enemies out to get you, but the anticipation that any other player could turn on you to take your loot. If you do choose to turn Rogue and try to kill other players, you will have a wanted bounty placed on you prompting all players to take you out instead.
Going into the Dark Zone as a team is far safer than going in solo and can be more productive as you work together to gain loot to extract. Anything you do extract successfully is placed in the player’s stash chest found in safe houses and base of operations for collection. As a mode I found it to be far less of a troll fest than I expected but the grind to reach level 30 in the zone before you can equip its loot items was frustrating.
Overall I really enjoyed my time with The Division both solo and playing in a team with friends, which is really where the gameplay comes to life. It does have its flaws however with the game crashing straight to the Xbox One dashboard during big fire fights and explosions just breaking the engine. I experienced some mods I applied to my guns suddenly vanishing mid gunfight which was annoying when it was a scope. Some funny moments saw floating rats and dogs literally walking in the air above me on the streets. Audio had issues not playing in cut scenes at times not gunfire audio not playing correctly.
The Division feels like a title that shows Ubisoft has listened to feedback on their previous titles like Watchdogs and criticisms of their online elements to bring this game to release. Using the open world of Watchdogs and the Shooting tactics and strategy of a Rainbow Six game, the gameplay is a combination of so many aspects of Ubisoft titles that blended with a solid levelling up and looting system that always gives the player the sense of always moving forward where every task completed helps improve their agent. Whilst it is easy to compare it to Destiny, I found the gun play and action to have a more grounded feel to it with an almost XCOM use of strategy to the battles that makes The Division such a satisfying shooter to play.
Where Ubisoft takes The Division in its first year with new content will be key to its continued success will be key but it certainly ticks all the right boxes on its release to make enough noise to be taken seriously.
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