In the day and age of video gaming the mere mention that a game has been delayed brings chills to one’s gaming spine. When a game is delayed by a year or so, it makes you wonder what in the hell is going wrong with the development. Tom Clancy’s The Division seemed like it would never make it to retail shelves. When it was announced in 2013 it seemed quite ambitious, even for the newly announced PlayStation 4. Years flew by, The Division became a myth in a way and people naturally assumed the official gameplay that was shown at E3 2013 was nothing more than a project that simply couldn’t be followed through.
Thankfully, that train of thought was derailed in 2016.
Harking back to the 90s when delays actually meant the developers were completing the game to its fullest, and in the best vision possible, Ubisoft Massive has taken that 90s developer attitude and effort and produced one of the best games of 2016. In short, the payoff was worth the wait.
On the surface, the gameplay for The Division is driven by the need to hunt enemies, engage them and eliminate them. Pure action that continually resurfaces over and over again. If I had one complaint about the title, it is the lack of variety with enemy characters for the first 15 levels or so (still playing, hoping for some standouts). You will randomly meet up with enemies on the streets of New York, engage them and attempt to eliminate them. Some of the enemies are tough as nails, as difficulty is indicated by the color of their life bars, as well as their levels, so it’s no cakewalk, especially as you progress and level up in the game. There are an abundant supply of enemies to go around, so you will have no shortage of them. This seems like the main point of interest and the driving motivation to keep going, but the game is more than just hunting and shooting.
Before moving into the nitty-gritty of the game, let me just throw a huge compliment out to Ubisoft Massive for working on the artificial intelligence of the enemies. I’m not sure I have had my patience tested so much with enemy movement. While there is a certain point where the enemies will become idiots and stick their heads out of cover, there are far more incidents where they will identify their advantages or disadvantages during a fight. For example, my group and I hunted down a nasty individual on the rooftop of a building last night and spent a good 20-30 minutes disposing of the individual and his group of bad guys. The main individual, who was armed to the teeth, took down most of the team and hunted me down like a dog when he realized I was alone. It’s a bit stressful, alarming and hauntingly beautiful to see in motion. Opposite of that incident, when it’s 4-on-1, the lone gunman being the enemy, the NPC will run away and hide as much as they can. The A.I. isn’t perfect, but it’s damn good when the situation calls for it. The A.I. helps to relieve some of the repetitive firefights in the game thanks to how impressive it is.
Shifting gears a bit, underneath that simplistic surface of hunting and killing is a meaty, complex interior that proves that the extra time Ubisoft Massive took wasn’t done without reason. The game is essentially broken up into different styles of missions. You can do a bunch of side quests, which unlock as you move from safe house to safe house in the game (places where you can replenish ammo, buy/sell items, etc.). To unlock them, you merely check out the map that is at every safe house, by doing so you unlock portions of your actual game map that open up new opportunities. If you want to stick to the story, there are tons of missions related to the story, which surrounds a deadly virus killing millions. If you want to search the city to see what’s out there, you have that option as well.
The different types of gameplay are broken down into the following:
Main Mission – This includes medical, security and tech-based main missions that relate back to the story.
Encounter – This also includes medical, security and tech. You encounter certain scenarios that aren’t directly related to a main mission. For example, finding and locating specific individuals and possibly eliminating them.
Side Mission – Same trio of categories, but with no solid relationship to the main mission. Dumb fun to pass the time and offers up the opportunity to collect nice items, as well as help to level up the characters.
That may not seem like a lot of things, but it’s quite a bit to do. In addition to the above, you can also do some exploring that will stir up some items that are hidden in the game. This includes finding cellphones, locating missing soldiers that never came back from missions and a variety of other side tasks to complete. Ubisoft Massive has stuffed quite a bit into this package and all of it is interesting. No, I’m not kidding. All of it has been interesting thus far.
Speaking of interesting, let’s discuss the leveling system.
The leveling system is amazingly deep. If you push the options button several things will appear (Maps, group management, etc.) and one of those things is ‘abilities’. Under the ‘abilities’ category, you can upgrade attributes such as medical (helps you and your teammates out during battle), tech (rolling bomb balls to mini-turrets that you can throw out for enemies) and security (ways to keep a team or individual safe during battle). There are a lot of things packed into the abilities tree. In addition to the skills just mentioned, you also have a category called talents (which provide you extra advantages in the medical/tech/security categories) and perks, which are just unlockable, but not selectable items like the previous two mentioned.
Outside of abilities and leveling, the customization system for The Division is a point of interest during gameplay. Every weapon you have can be customized, upgraded and improved for battle. For example, I obtained a nice sniper rifle through one of the missions. By itself, the rifle had a lot of kickback to it, was tough to steady, had no scope and didn’t pack a lot of ammo. As I progressed in the game and disposed of enemies, I picked up (or you can purchase them) add-ons to the weapons and improved almost every aspect I just listed. Once I had a scope, I had accuracy. Once I added a better muzzle, it helped to keep the aiming steady. Once I added a bigger clip, I could fire more often without sopping and reloading. Adding and improving upon equipment is easy as pie. This method also applies to backpacks, gear and a variety of other categories offered in the game. Hell, you can even change out your pants, shirt, jacket, shoes, scarf (fashionable killers) and other attributes. There is a lot of customization.
Related, you can also breakdown gear in the game, which you’ll have to so that you can keep your inventory in check, and use the broken down items to craft new gear or weapon add-ons for yourself. If this isn’t enough, you can also obtain blueprints during the game to produce your own weapons/whatever at the crafting station. It’s not Skyrim level of crafting, but it’s complicated enough to keep your interest going and motivate you to keep taking care of business.
Before we move on, I have to give a solid shoutout to Ubisoft Massive’s efforts on the UI and HUD in the game. It makes sense structurally and visually. It’s easy to navigate from point to point, easy to get around in the game and identify points of interest, as well as just a really nice experience with a well thought out design. Kudos to them for implementing solid navigation and easily identifiable ways to communicate and work. It may not look like the 2013 version of their vision, but it’s nonetheless good.
All in all, I’m still uncovering more about the gameplay as I continue playing, but I’m confident enough to say that the overall gameplay is as solid as one would expected in 2013 with Tom Clancy’s The Division. It’s living up to the hype that it created years ago. It has enough content, enough shape to be among the best in 2016. Ubisoft certainly delivered on the promise of solid gameplay, so bravo to them.
In terms of presentation Ubisoft Massive nearly accomplished what they intended in their original gameplay video in 2013. Things obviously were ambitious with details in that original showing, including snow effects, environment movements and depth of field when you look down the streets of any road in New York. UM seemed to do their best to retain those elements, if not only the essence of them. Ultimately, sacrifices were made, but nothing incredibly disappointing. The environments are still enormous in both X and Y directions.
Having said that, and equally as impressive, the loading times are nearly non-existent with exception of front and backend loading times. Once you get the initial load done, the game doesn’t need loading again until you do fast travel or quit. Essentially, gameplay loading times don’t exist. Why mention this with presentation? Well, when you see the levels, the active elements in said levels, you’re going to be enormously impressed that loading times are kept to a minimum. ENORMOUSLY impressed. That doesn’t mean things are perfect, though. The game still does have some pop ups here and there during gameplay. You will find texture rendering occurring and the occasional enemies popping up out of nowhere right where you stand (only happened once — irritating, though). I suspect there will be a patch in the near future, but as the game stands it’s pretty stable visually as is.
Speaking of stability, while I know there were some minor hiccups at the beginning, the launch and initial week or so after has been very good in the stability department. I have experienced no drops, no failures at login and nothing that would make me think ‘here we go again with a new online title’ that most games these days have made standard (and an unacceptable standard). Ubisoft Massive seemed to really have tested out server loads and did their homework before launching this game. Again, it wasn’t perfect, but I haven’t experienced any issues since my review period began last week.
With all the above said, is this game fun? Yes. While the game doesn’t require you to band together with friends to garnish enjoyment from it, the game encourages you to do so to get the maximum amount of fun from it. Tom Clancy’s The Division offers the most fun when you’re playing with friends online. The MP experience requires quite a bit communication from group members and at one point you will really start to depend on your friends to talk during a firefight. It’s brilliant. This alone brings the fun to an entirely new level and makes this truly a team sport…err…video game experience. If you fail to talk to your teammates, you will fail in the game. Again, it’s brilliant. It adds a new layer of fun to the giant experience The Division offers.
Now that I’ve talked your head off, let’s wrap this thing up. Onto the summary.
