The Division Review
This game had a lot of promise. The open world apocalyptic New York was cool and reminded me of the movie I am Legend a little bit. The atmosphere was great and the dark zone, essentially the PVP area of the game was very creative.
It reminded me of Runescape’s Wilderness funny enough. The MMORPG idea wrapped around a 3rd person shooter in a modern setting is an interesting idea and innovative.
There are some moments in this game that I have never experienced in another video game before, and I really applaud what this game gets right. This is another game that had some very creative and unique core foundations. Maybe this is why both this game and No Mans Sky didn’t deliver but still sold remarkably well. The original core idea of the game is what sold it.
The Division is a typical Ubisoft game that just didn’t deliver. The idea was great but it was executed in such a generic way. The game became extremely repetitive and grindy, even more so than Destiny at times. Not only that, most of the actual content like the missions were very uncreative.
The gameplay was very cheap and bland. Rather than actual gunplay and tactical cover based shooting, the game was just about sitting behind cover whilst your enemies were behind cover, and then just popping up and unloading as much lead into them as possible until they dropped.
With the RPG element kicking in, you were essentially unloading more bullets into “tougher enemies”. Higher level enemies dealt more damage, and took more damage, that’s it. There was nothing different on how they actually played.
It reminded me of Runescape’s Wilderness funny enough. The MMORPG idea wrapped around a 3rd person shooter in a modern setting is an interesting idea and innovative.
There are some moments in this game that I have never experienced in another video game before, and I really applaud what this game gets right. This is another game that had some very creative and unique core foundations. Maybe this is why both this game and No Mans Sky didn’t deliver but still sold remarkably well. The original core idea of the game is what sold it.
The Division is a typical Ubisoft game that just didn’t deliver. The idea was great but it was executed in such a generic way. The game became extremely repetitive and grindy, even more so than Destiny at times. Not only that, most of the actual content like the missions were very uncreative.
The gameplay was very cheap and bland. Rather than actual gunplay and tactical cover based shooting, the game was just about sitting behind cover whilst your enemies were behind cover, and then just popping up and unloading as much lead into them as possible until they dropped.
With the RPG element kicking in, you were essentially unloading more bullets into “tougher enemies”. Higher level enemies dealt more damage, and took more damage, that’s it. There was nothing different on how they actually played.
The average gameplay wasn’t actually a huge problem for me in the end, it was the extremely repetitive nature of the content and boring content that was scattered across the game world. The Division has that typical Ubisoft open world syndrome. Just like Assassins Creed Syndicate and The Crew, great open world aesthetically, but with generic uncreative repetitive content scattered around the dull and lifeless open world.
The travel time to places because of the dull lifeless world was so boring. It was cool to look at and had an authentic atmosphere to it, but you spent so long doing nothing. Maybe the apocalypse was too authentic in this case.
Something that also does not sit well with me is that the game world that was shown at E3, was not the same as what we saw at release with the map and playable areas being significantly smaller than what we was supposed to have. Later on DLC was added to fix that problem, and straight away I felt like we were being nickelled and dimed.
The base game story also had a lot of potential but wasn’t executed properly. Some of the cutscenes were very interesting. Understanding why the apocalypse happened was intriguing and the collectables and unlockable videos were interesting to watch. It’s a real shame the actual storyline doesn’t go anywhere, with very generic characters and a story campaign that I learnt absolutely nothing from. The story could have pushed the boring content forward, but instead the story ended up feeling just as bland as the missions.
I don’t know what they have done to the story now with the DLC, but they really could of built on the foundations of the story, because it had some promising elements. The story isn’t actually bad, it’s more that they didn’t really tell the story properly.
The travel time to places because of the dull lifeless world was so boring. It was cool to look at and had an authentic atmosphere to it, but you spent so long doing nothing. Maybe the apocalypse was too authentic in this case.
Something that also does not sit well with me is that the game world that was shown at E3, was not the same as what we saw at release with the map and playable areas being significantly smaller than what we was supposed to have. Later on DLC was added to fix that problem, and straight away I felt like we were being nickelled and dimed.
The base game story also had a lot of potential but wasn’t executed properly. Some of the cutscenes were very interesting. Understanding why the apocalypse happened was intriguing and the collectables and unlockable videos were interesting to watch. It’s a real shame the actual storyline doesn’t go anywhere, with very generic characters and a story campaign that I learnt absolutely nothing from. The story could have pushed the boring content forward, but instead the story ended up feeling just as bland as the missions.
I don’t know what they have done to the story now with the DLC, but they really could of built on the foundations of the story, because it had some promising elements. The story isn’t actually bad, it’s more that they didn’t really tell the story properly.
Conclusion
The Division overall is a disappointing game. It’s an original idea that’s executed generically. It had some good things about it, but overall the game is a pretty bland and average game.
The Division overall is a disappointing game. It’s an original idea that’s executed generically. It had some good things about it, but overall the game is a pretty bland and average game.
Pros:
The Darkzone plays well Concept is Original |
Cons:
Tedious grindy gameplay Uncreative generic missions |