Tom Clancy's The Division Reviews
Tom Clancy's The Division is overwhelmingly okay. It will drown you in its abundant okayness, so okay is it in terms of playability and content.
The Division takes a stab at the Destiny formula with new strengths and weaknesses, as well as some familiar ones. Try it.
The Division isn't a bad game, it just lacks character. With little to no real customisation in the early game you often feel hard pushed to really invest in your character and by the time you reach the end game, there is nothing really left to do. It feels poorly thought out and the delivery of the story is really lacking and uninteresting.
By and large, The Division lives up to the years of hype and high expectations. At its core, it marries solid cover-based shooting with a loot heavy RPG and an enticingly beautiful setting, but it really comes together when you can team up with friends and take on enemies, whether rebellious AI factions or other agents in the fraught and tense Dark Zone.
Like Destiny, The Division ruthlessly exploits the pleasures of the RPG, MMO and shooter to create one hideously addictive feedback loop. Combine that with the excitement of demanding co-op play and it can be an unstoppably thrilling game.
Repetitive by design, and at heart a fairly pedestrian third person shooter, but the online co-op and promise of never-ending rewards is hard to resist.
The Division delivers on its promise to provide an open-world shooter that scales well enough to play like a single-player campaign or a challenging four player co-op MMO.
The Division is something special that's never really been done before in games, and while I don't expect perfection from such a bold experiment, I'm impressed with what they have been able to pull off so far. We're just one week post-pandemic. Imagine what's in store for us going forward.
The Division is more fun with friends, but lets face it, what game isn't? After my group logged off and I was left alone in the world, the veneer started to wear off, and I was left facing the blemishes all on my own. The long term plan is to pump out more content. I'm unsure of its efficacy but for now there's more than enough there, especially with the organic PVP.
The side content is too repetitive, but The Division's main content and exciting multiplayer component stand out and make this thing worth seeing, provided you've got some like-minded friends around.
Tom Clancy's The Division has plenty of polish and engaging gun fights but we're not quite sold on the latest shooter from Ubisoft.
Ubisoft's online shooter will be familiar to Destiny veterans, but its gritty take on New York amps up the misery and leaves us powerless to care
Featuring one of the most remarkable and realistic video game environments ever created, The Division offers a disturbingly dystopian take on a ruined Manhattan. Its action is similarly brutal. Although much of it boils down to firefights and shoot-outs, most are very well executed to deliver truly exciting and thrilling gameplay. Add layers of RPG-like complexity and a really solid storyline, and you have a game that, while occasionally flawed, really does deliver the goods.
The Division doesn't have enough of a story to carry it as a shooter, let alone an RPG, but what is here is good. Each firefight is different due to the importance of weapon classes, and mix-and-matching skills when in a group adds a small depth. The Dark Zone is the freshest idea in The Division, but I don't see it carrying the game for months to come. A standard Ubisoft AAA game that may not live as long as intended.
I may wish a plague of locusts on Ubisoft support, but I tip my hat to the masters over at Massive Entertainment.
The spongy, fantastical gunplay stands at odds with the Tom Clancy brand, but The Division features some great combat arenas and a well designed loot system that keeps you coming back for better gear
When The Division fires on all cylinders, it's really something; a solid loot-shooter, with engaging mechanics and the perfect set-up for co-op online. What bogs it down, between a lack of variety and a mix of technical hitches, keeps it from reaching those heights. For now, it's a serviceable squad-based shooter effective at eating up a couple hours a night with friends.
With all of the content packed in at launch, the solid gameplay mechanics, tactical co-op experience, and gorgeous open world, it was more than a great idea for Ubisoft to delay Tom Clancy's Division as long as they did. Everything about this game was far more than I could have expected, and it's definitely worth the wait. And this is only the beginning, as we still have a year of post-launch content, both free and paid, to keep players diving back in for that looter-shooter glory.
At level 26, I'm enjoying The Division. At level 30, I'm worried it'll get repetitive.
Post-pandemic New York City is a terrifying vision, but it's not one that you'll likely want to leave for some time.