Snow flutters gently to the ground through the still air. A distant speaker plays a soft and forgotten song through an empty plaza. A pile of bodies burns in a park across the street. My carefully placed bullet pierces the fuel tank on the back of a “Cleaner,” and his screams sound as an alarm that he knows he’s only got fleeting moments left for this world. The fiery explosion brings back the quiet peace of the increasing snowfall, but I know it won’t last long. There’s another threat waiting on every block of this lawless, virus infested world. This is New York City now, and this is my life as a Division agent.
I’ve had my boots — or suede shoes, rather — on the ground for 45 hours, which means I have played a lot of The Division in the five days since release. As a newly activated (and painfully silent and emotionless) second wave agent, my task is to help clean up and bring order to the quarantined streets of New York City. A virus with an exceptionally high mortality rate known only as the Green Poison has been spreading faster than officials know how to handle it. Add to that the rampant lawlessness of certain factions of civilians, and you’ve got a boiling pot of disaster located within just a handful of square miles that threatens the future of the entire human race.
The Melting Pot
A boiling pot of its own, The Division aptly combines elements of many other games while managing to retain an identity for itself. I’ve seen the Destiny comparison come up a lot, and I’ve even made it myself in regards to the beta, but the more I play, the more I distance it from that correlation. I find more similarities with games like Diablo III, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, The Elder Scrolls Online, or even Borderlands than I do with Bungie’s shooter.
The Division blends the familiarity of cover based third-person shooters with a deep and intricate MMO styling, complete with class customization, loot drops, and level ups. Better yet, it does so in such a way that alienates neither group, but makes the game accessible to play no matter which side you’re coming in from. If it leans more towards one side than the other, I would say that there are certain MMO elements about it that I took for granted which more casual players may never pick up on. The solid cover shooter base helps make this a non-issue though.
Don’t expect to make headshots and get one-hit kills. Sure, it will be doing critical damage, and aiming means far more in this than in something without traditional aiming mechanics like Diablo or XCOM, but there is a certain tactical level that each player must approach The Division with. Enemy health will drop similar to Borderlands, with numbers indicating precise damage being done to the health bar. It takes some getting used to, but ultimately makes the game really focus on communication and group combat, which comfortably scales to manageable but difficult levels as you add more people. Some of the best moments I had in The Division were times when I was in a group taking on missions that were far too hard for us, and yet we deftly overcame the challenge.
