PREVIEW – When a group of people is locked together in a closed environment, that features inhumane conditions the question remains: Who will survive? As in the end, we may turn against our comrades and friends, or we may be the victims of being too human in the dread conditions. Is the law of survival something that is prevalent in our modern society. No. Is there a huge chance for it to become relevant again? In The Division YES!

According to the development team they did everything to make New York City and a tense location for the players. According to the story, a virus has killed off most of the human population, the government is no longer active, military units are disbanded, and the civilians are trying to survive on a daily basis. The twist is that the chaos was so big that the official agencies were unable to contain the situation, the sleep agents of „Division” were trained to handle such situations, and try to save what is left of humanity. We are one such agent in the game.

We enter the chaos of the pandemic on the third week. Gangs rule New York’s streets, and we go forward alone to fight for what’s left, plus to figure out who caused the massive pandemic. Well to be quite frank the second half of the previous can be scratched out as you’ll have a hard time going in alone. The game is an open world multiplayer game, similar to Destiny.

Cleaning up New York City will not be an easy task. Especially if you’ll have to look out for food, ammo, and health at the same time in our good old districts. We can roam the streets with friends to go „shopping” in the Big Apple. Bandits will cross our road – or worse – other players that if we are not careful with will take care of us.

It can be considered as a social experiment except it will be online, and allow us to fight against other people. The question though is that do we want to fight or not? The biggest dilemma for the player will be whether to shoot the opposing player or not. Exciting eh?

Fun and deep RPG

For those who were only keeping track of the game very lightly, people would think that this is an Online TPs, but in reality, it is a hardcore RPG. Although there are no classes in the game, we can develop our character in anyway, we want to, and even specialize ourselves. Plus learning is the first rule of survival!

New players will have to be careful on how they distribute their experience points. As those who think they can just assign it randomly and move on shootings … well, they are wrong. We have to treat our leveling up with care, as if we level up the wrong way, in the beginning, we can have a few hours of suffering. We’ll have to know our skills, and use them in the most effective way. If we are unable to do this, then New Year will devour us in one big bite.

The city will be a huge playground for us, and it will have a lot of opportunity for epic loots. The objective is always to get the resupply crates, as these give us food, and the basic materials to rebuild civilization. However it is best to find a group to enter the difficult levels the so-called „Dark Zones.” Once we got what we came for, we need to remember to be near cover as one of our friends can simply turn on us if the loot he got was not enough. Of course, we can also go rogue and get all of their loot if we wish.

Let us rebuild New York

The most spectacular thing is that our decisions have an effect on the entire city, and for every player on the server. We can do a lot of things on the big map: we can defeat bandits, free police units from their captives, and work on getting certain buildings back online. Rebuilding, however, costs money, and fighting over the loot is inevitable. It is best advised to gather up a large group and loot the Dark Zones as these locations have the best items. Furthermore, we also receive main missions that allow us to discover who was the mastermind behind the collapse.

The Division could be 2016s biggest hit, and it will be especially fun for RPG fans exploring the ruins of New York, looting, and killing bandits. The graphics are great, and the gameplay seems phenomenal, plus Tom Clancy is always a seal of quality. The only worrying factor here is the constant delays, after two delays, on E3 2015 they finally nailed a release date that is 2016 March 8th.

Such delays can hint development issues, and especially when Ubisoft scrapped the companion app that would have allowed us to control a drone in the game via a tablet. With the drone, the player could have scouted ahead, and even take down enemies hiding from our team. The decision was made according to Ubisoft because the drone would have cause imbalance to the gameplay…. Too bad.

-Kese-

Publisher: Ubisoft

Developer: Ubisoft

Genre: TPS-multiplayer

Relase date: 2016.Marc.8