The Division

What is It?

A smallpox-like virus, used as a biological weapon, transmitted through Dollar bills sweeps over the city of New York. The dollar flu i.e the disease; causes a widespread chaos forcing Manhattan to be placed under quarantine.

Tom Clancy's The Division is a Third Person Shooter (TPS), RPG, Open world, pseudo-MMO game which takes us through a devastated Manhattan where the Joint Task Force (JTF) is struggling to take back control of the city from the criminal organizations (The Cleaners, Riker's gang, Rioters and Last Man Batallion) running wild, hurting, looting, killing people. We play the game as the protagonist who is a part of a special organization called the Strategic Homeland Division, sent to assist the JTF.

Now that the "What" of the game is established, let's get into our review.

Review:

Visuals and Graphics

The graphics and visuals of the game are stunning and gorgeous. At first look, you just can't miss the snow covered streets and cars, the high rising skyscrapers, the smoke, the fog, the chaos but on the other hand if you pay close attention and play around a little, you can see the level of detail that's going on in there, like the footprints left behind on cars when you climb over them or the surge of air coming out of a car tyre if you shoot it. There are occasional glitches such as this one:

But nothing really annoying except a few, like the background going all dark when you are in the appearance menu even in the Ultra High Settings, resulting in you not being able to see the change in the appearance of your character. The graphics get even more glitchy if you are trying to run the game on minimum requirements. The game keeps resetting to Windowed fullscreen mode every time you run the game after closing (Not a big issue but it can sometimes affect the performance, so, don't forget to change it back to fullscreen when you start up the game). I tweaked a lot of settings to get decent fps during the Co-op sessions with my friends. If you want to know the settings, you can ping me on facebook  https://www.facebook.com/vishu1512

Character Customization

Even though the character customization in the game offers some really good looking options, the number of these options is very less which is kinda bad considering the fact that the game is Co-op multiplayer and no matter what you do, you may just end up creating a character which is similar to a dozen others. Believe or not, my entire Co-op team had ended up with the same base character when we started off.

SFX And BGM

I'm not sure of I paid enough attention to the bgm but whenever I did, it was really good. The sound effects are great and Ubisoft has given a lot of attention to detail in this department as well.

Plot

The plot is probably the weakest link in the game. There is no Campaign like sequential storytelling. The entire plot of the game is revealed through missions which can be done in any order which I didn't find engaging. Not that I don't like this genre of story telling but the plot in itself lacks the flavor, the intensity, the detail required to grab the player's attention. Except for the few video clip evidence elements showing the cruelty of the enemies, the game plot does not bring out any emotion from the player, I didn't feel connected to any character in the game which is essential for an RPG as far as I am concerned. Maybe it's because I'm a big fan of Ubisoft's story telling in other franchises that I expected much more but anyway, the plot of the game could have been better.'

"Not that I don't like this genre of story telling but the plot in itself lacks the flavor, the intensity, the detail required to grab the player's attention."

Gameplay

The Division follows a cover and shoot style of gameplay. Yes, you have to take cover unless otherwise, you want to die and respawn. You can equip 3 weapons; a primary, a secondary, a sidearm and the weapons can be SMGs, LMGs, Assault Rifles or Snipers. You have a range of grenades, flashbang, incendiary, fragmentation etc. And then there are the gadgets and buffs which fall under three categories viz. Tech, Medical, and Security. I guess you can figure out what those represent.

Although, the shooting mechanics, explosive bullets, the turrets, the incendiary seeker mines, the sensors, feel and look amazing, the repetitive nature of the missions and side missions make the gameplay really boring for a solo player. On the other hand, the game is really fun when it comes to the Co-op gameplay. The level of difficulty of the missions increases with each additional group member. For your team to come out successful, requires a good level of strategizing and teamwork.

"Solo lovers might find the game really boring and uneventful" 

I played solo on one character and leveled him up fast to 11 and then just stopped because I was having much more fun on my Co-op character with my team.

The Dark Zone (special pvp zone in the game) brings up a higher level of difficulty as waves of enemies come crashing on to you. It's very difficult to survive if you are playing solo, while it's loads of fun if you are playing Co-op. Killing any other fellow agents turns you into a Rogue and also turns your entire team into rogues, meaning, you become a Celebrity and any player can kick your ass without any loss to him and take all your loot. Oh Yeah!! the loot you get inside Dark Zone gets dropped whenever you die, unless you get it extracted.

Note: I read in forums and heard from my friend that playing Rogue used to be fun but recent updates have made going Rogue really punishing for the players which according to me takes away a really interesting side of pvp from the game.

Verdict

Although the game suffers from glitches, lack of a good plot line and the repetitive gameplay, The Division is a really interesting and fun filled game if you are into pseudo-MMO or Co-op multiplayer  kinda stuff.

My Rating

7/10