Reviews// Tom Clancy's The Division

As you progress through the story you'll bump into different enemy factions and each have their own tactics to try and take you out. The cleaners are keen to burn you to a crisp without worrying too much about return fire while the Rikers are more organised, trying to flank you at every opportunity and taking advantage of your reloading or static movement.

As varied as the enemies you fight are, they don't detract from the disappointing lack of variety in the missions themselves. The story missions consist of you and your team battling through waves of enemies before fighting a boss who happens to be the same as everyone else but with a larger health bar.

I'd have liked to have seen a few set-piece moments where you all come together to take down a tank by doing something other than simply unloading clips into someone until they drop.

Hopefully this will change once the raids are added in the near future, but as it stands if your main complaint with Destiny is that you repeat the same things over and over, then The Division won't do anything to win you over. That is unless you take a wrong turn while walking down Times Square and stumble into The Dark Zone.

You've probably heard of the Dark Zone by now. It's the only area in the game where player characters can battle it out against each other, but it's a place where that rarely actually happens.

Explaining what The Dark Zone is is pretty straight forward but doesn't get across what actually happens there. In short it's an area of the map where you fight harder enemies to get better loot. Once you feel you've filled you bag enough you can call in an extraction, defend the area for 90 seconds and, if you survive, you get your items sent to your base.

The twist here is that the area is completely open to all and other players can decide whether to help you out or kill you and take your loot for themselves. The rules are simple but the drama it creates is unreal.

The other night I was attempting to extract a full backpack of gear. We'd tried several times and failed but always managed to get back to our dropped items. It was too much for my friend who decided to give up on his goodies. Before logging off myself, I decided to give it one last go.

As I approached the extraction zone I could still see my bag on the floor waiting to be picked up by anyone who was lucky enough to walk past. To my surprised an extraction had already been called and a team of higher levelled players were holding back a viscous mob.

They hadn't noticed my loot and I managed to run in and grab it before it was lost for good. I helped them in their battle and just before the extraction helicopter arrived they turned as a group and aimed their gun at me.

I had no chance. A few ideas quickly flashed into my head. If I was going down one of these guys were too. But I hesitated and soon thought of ways I could talk them out of my execution. With my headset across the room I had no other option. I stoop up and using the in-game emotes, clapped them.

There I was, standing in the worlds most famous city, with several guns pointed at my head, clapping my hands and praying that this bunch of strangers would take pity on me. They did. Their guns dropped as a rope from the sky did. I attached my bag, saluted them and dashed out of the Dark Zone as quickly as I could.

God only knows what they were saying to each other as the event unfolded. I can get a fair idea though as I've been on the other end.

“Fuck it, shall we just kill him?”
“Nah, he's on his own, that's out of order”
“Yeah but he might have some cool stuff”

We rarely betray other players. Partly because we feel sorry for them and partly because doing so will mark you as a renegade to everyone within the Dark Zone. A bounty is put on your head for a short period and you'll lose lots of XP if you're taken out.

It's a problem that Ubisoft are currently looking into. Renegades are rare. The punishment is too high and they're looking to address that, but even with that in mind as I stood slapping my palms together I still felt the fear that maybe this confrontation wouldn't be the norm.

If I had a choice I'd rather it be like this than be constantly screwed over by high levelled players. At the moment, most of the drama is in your head, drop the punishment and you'll end up just avoiding the Dark Zone altogether which would be denying yourself some of the best moments in the game.

I'd still like to see some proper PvP in the future, but for now this alternative offers something different. It's a genius idea that has been attempted elsewhere but without the execution The Division has, and if anything I'd have like to have seen elements of it in the normal game. Maybe the odd traitors at the end of the story missions or something.

As it stands it's unclear whether The Division will have the same legs that Destiny has had. Without the raids and any idea of how the game will be expanded it's hard to judge whether all the time you put into it will be justified with an end game that can hold your attention.

However, as I type this, I've invested 30 hours and there is still much for me to learn. I'm far from a complete character and even further from fully understanding all of the game's systems and processes to become a noteworthy member of The Division's community.

It may not be able to capture the average shooter fan and turn them onto the world of online RPGs but it's deep enough to convince console owners that like this sort of thing that there's a world outside of [i]Destiny[i] that's worth spending time with, and the fact that I'm still getting to grips with it after all this time is enough to convince me that I'll be playing it for a long time yet.

And to think, after two hours of play, I thought I knew what it was all about.

Pros:
+ The Dark Zone
+ Various ways to build your characters
+ Excellent co-op gaming with great matchmaking

Cons:
- Solo play can be dull
- Shooting does just enough to keep you interested, but nothing more

SPOnG Score: 8/10