This past weekend the Division beta finally gave us a glimpse into the long-gestating title that Massive has been working on. The hype train for The Division has been a long and strange one and it felt good to finally get my hands on the game.
While the beta was fairly limited to one mission and the Dark Zone, I had an awesome time taking on the gangs throughout New York and going rogue against others agents to steal their loot. I played on PC and the game was fairly well optimized for a Ubisoft-published title. While there was some concerns about the “bullet-sponge” nature of the enemies from pre-beta impressions, I didn’t really notice it too much at the time.
The only problem with the beta is it was way too short to get a good impression. I can tell you the shooting felt tight and the co-op with other players was well realized, but beyond that there isn’t much I can say. With only one mission to judge it by, The Division looks like it is light on story content and the meat of the game will be in the Dark Zone. Again, that’s just the impression I got from an hour and thirty minutes of play, so it’s hard to tell how it will shake out when The Division launches on March 8.
I did stream some of it but unfortunately forgot to check the “stretch to fit screen” option on OBS, and as such I won’t embed it. If you want to experience my shenanigans, you can view the video here (warning: strong language, immature humor and not-ironic usage of the term “PC master race”).
Did anyone else check out The Division this past weekend? What were your thoughts?
I really enjoyed it! Eddy and I spent a decent amount of time in The Dark Zone and had a number of exhilarating experiences dealing with troublemakers and also causing some ourselves. The game is gorgeous on all platforms.
The bullet sponge complaint seems misplaced. This is an RPG and behaves like one even more than most other games with RPG-elements. No one enemy had enough health that they felt like a chore to bring down.
I think it’s premature to say the game is short on story content simply because they only gave us one mission in the beta. Destiny had the opposite problem, where they gave us TOO MUCH in the beta and and worried everyone about story content. I would hope (!) Ubisoft is erring on the side of caution and giving us too little story because they want to keep the game fresh, as opposed to there not being a lot of content. If not, then they will face the same problem Destiny did.
Personally, I would rather have less content like that in the beta. I mainly wanted to see how the game felt and played. And it played great, super enjoyable. I still want to read the reviews to address the structure and aforementioned content issues, but The Division was very impressive.
I surprisingly had a super enjoyable experience in the beta. It turned out to be a lot of fun and I think I’m sold on getting this game, but I think I may wait until launch happens and see how it reviews to gauge if some of my concerns might have been addressed by Massive.
I found that both console and PC versions handled very well and I haven’t played a TPS in quite a while that had such quick, solid, and responsive controls.
I also agree that the PC version was well optimized and seeing as I could handle the highest settings the visuals were quite gorgeous. The snowstorms that would occur in this virtual rendition of NYC really made it feel like a cold and desolate place after such catacalysmic events. The way the visibility just cuts down to mere feet made playing in the Dark Zone very tense and ominous. I was was slow to move about in such conditions.
All in all I’m impressed with what Massive has created and hope that this game succeeds. I know have a really good idea of what their game will be like.
Sorry we didn’t end up playing together in the Beta! The stuff I streamed was pretty much 100% of what I ended up doing with it, so I only got a very brief time in with it. I’ll add you and any other PC Sushians who want to pillage the Dark Zone for the full release, though.
No worries! I ended up a bit busy during the Beta time window so most of my play time was at start and then at the end of my work day for a couple hours or so with some other friends. Definitely feel free to add me! I had a lot of fun in the Dark Zone solo on PC, so having a group to take it on with with only be more enjoyable!