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Reviews, Previews & First Looks / The Division: Should you buy it?
« on: March 25, 2016, 10:16:06 AM »
Tom Clancy's: The Division launched about 2 weeks now and has a a world of pros and cons. This post is by no means a full or critical review but just a heads up for those who were interested in playing it in the near future.
There are a few things before I list it out for you. If you've played Assassin's Creed, any Splinter Cell game, Watch Dogs and Borderlands... you've already played The Division. Note the first 3 are all Ubisoft titles. Why would I make such a comparison? Because they more or less fused all those games into one which was a good and bad thing...no parkour =(. The concept of a Cover Based 3rd Person MMO RPG Loot Shooter is "unique" in a raw sense but the game itself is definitely not any special. Once you've played for an hour. You've more or less experienced the majority of the game minus the Dark Zone.
Most of these points will probably apply across all Platforms (PC, PS4, XB1), but I will have points that don't affect the consoles or PC and vice versa.
The Pros:
- Beautiful game. Visuals are great even on medium settings. On High and Ultra it's downright beautiful.
- Optimized for PC
^ See... PC points
- Enjoyable... with friends
- Different yet familiar
- Rewarding. Loot drops all around.
- Story line concept is terrifying if it ever came true. Not the best RPG'ing ever but it wasn't bad.
- You can change the language for the Audio to Japanese and it feels like you're in an anime XD
- Cover system works (for the most part)
The Cons:
- VERY repetitive. Level 1 to 30 is more or less the same mission.. over.. and over... and over..
- DELTA ERRORS.... This actually seems to be ISP specific from preliminary investigations. A Delta Error in this game is supposed to signify that there's an issue connecting to Ubisoft's servers. I play with a group of 12+ friends on PC. Since Tuesday's Patch, everyone on Flow will take anywhere from 10 minutes to 10 hours to get into the game due to connection issues. That ONE friend with Blink as his ISP has seen the Delta Error...once... It could just be coincidence that Flow decided to mess up since Tuesday or it does indeed have something to do with the patch
- BUGS! BUGS everywhere! From falling through the ground to gear disappearing to missions stalling at one point because the door cannot be opened. Ubisoft has a shit ton of work to do with this game. If I had to list out all the bugs currently affecting proper gameplay, it'll be a forum website on it's own.
- Hackers in the DZ. The Dark Zone is supposed to be the highlight of this game. The PVP zone where you'll always be on edge of someone going Rogue and trying to take your nice things. It makes for an interesting dynamic in the game and they still have some work to do on it to balance it BUT when you have Rogues one shotting you with an SMG from 30+ meters away with the Security Link active (80% damage reduction buff)... something is wrong.. Currently there's no "punkbuster" to detect hackers so they're just running the DZ to shit. I'm staying away from it for now.
- End Game Content? - Currently their idea of this is doing "daily" missions in the same missions you've done just at a higher difficulty.. There's one Challenging Mode to be done and 2 Hard Modes to be done that reset every day at 8:00 PM our time. Again.. Rinse and repeat. And as stated above for the DZ.. well... Yea..
They're set to launch an "Operation" which is supposed to be raid type encounter but judging by the rest of the game, I won't speculate until I actually get to play it in April. I fear it may be like the other 15 missions that were a rinse and repeat expect harder.
- Threat System.. So if you've played any other MMO you'd know about "threat" or "aggro". It's a players ability to have the enemy units target you instead of your teammates so that your teammates could kill them without being shot at. It doesn't quite work... There is a "tank" build that is supposed to attract fire but you could not shoot a single round of over a minute and the second you put your head out.. *BANG*.. you're bleeding out or even dead because that one NPC decided he didn't like you.
Verdict:
Yes I'm aware that the cons overshadow the pros at this point in time but that's how I feel about the game. If it looks like i nitpicked it's because I did. As an avid PC gamer and long time MMO player (played WoW for 8 years or so), this game fails to reproduce what studios like Blizzard have almost perfected and set the bar for. Ubisoft has a lot of work to do on this game over the next few months. Especially before their paid DLC launches. Which I hope is different to the base game in terms of rinse and repeat. In fact. Once all the things above are fixed then the game will be pretty damn good.
I do find they paid TOO MUCH attention to the level of detail in the game with the environments when they could have been working on the gameplay...
Don't get me wrong. I enjoy the game. Despite all the negatives. Biggest peeve is waiting to see if I can actually play. Delta is my new best friend... I'm very inclined to say that it's actually Flow causing the grief because their service has been terrible lately. Even DOTA 2 we're all experiencing massive random lag spikes.
I advise if you do want to pick it up, like Destiny, it'll hopefully be gtg in a few months after several patches. Biggest tip is that if you want to purchase it on PC I advise you use EA's Origin Client. There you can get the base game and season pass for $65 USD ($40 USD Base Game, $25 USD Season Pass) opposed to Steam which is $60 USD and $40 USD respectively. Go EA?
https://www.origin.com/en-mx/store/buy/tom-clancys-the-division/pc-download/base-game/gold-edition
There are a few things before I list it out for you. If you've played Assassin's Creed, any Splinter Cell game, Watch Dogs and Borderlands... you've already played The Division. Note the first 3 are all Ubisoft titles. Why would I make such a comparison? Because they more or less fused all those games into one which was a good and bad thing...no parkour =(. The concept of a Cover Based 3rd Person MMO RPG Loot Shooter is "unique" in a raw sense but the game itself is definitely not any special. Once you've played for an hour. You've more or less experienced the majority of the game minus the Dark Zone.
Most of these points will probably apply across all Platforms (PC, PS4, XB1), but I will have points that don't affect the consoles or PC and vice versa.
The Pros:
- Beautiful game. Visuals are great even on medium settings. On High and Ultra it's downright beautiful.
- Optimized for PC
^ See... PC points
- Enjoyable... with friends
- Different yet familiar
- Rewarding. Loot drops all around.
- Story line concept is terrifying if it ever came true. Not the best RPG'ing ever but it wasn't bad.
- You can change the language for the Audio to Japanese and it feels like you're in an anime XD
- Cover system works (for the most part)
The Cons:
- VERY repetitive. Level 1 to 30 is more or less the same mission.. over.. and over... and over..
- DELTA ERRORS.... This actually seems to be ISP specific from preliminary investigations. A Delta Error in this game is supposed to signify that there's an issue connecting to Ubisoft's servers. I play with a group of 12+ friends on PC. Since Tuesday's Patch, everyone on Flow will take anywhere from 10 minutes to 10 hours to get into the game due to connection issues. That ONE friend with Blink as his ISP has seen the Delta Error...once... It could just be coincidence that Flow decided to mess up since Tuesday or it does indeed have something to do with the patch
- BUGS! BUGS everywhere! From falling through the ground to gear disappearing to missions stalling at one point because the door cannot be opened. Ubisoft has a shit ton of work to do with this game. If I had to list out all the bugs currently affecting proper gameplay, it'll be a forum website on it's own.
- Hackers in the DZ. The Dark Zone is supposed to be the highlight of this game. The PVP zone where you'll always be on edge of someone going Rogue and trying to take your nice things. It makes for an interesting dynamic in the game and they still have some work to do on it to balance it BUT when you have Rogues one shotting you with an SMG from 30+ meters away with the Security Link active (80% damage reduction buff)... something is wrong.. Currently there's no "punkbuster" to detect hackers so they're just running the DZ to shit. I'm staying away from it for now.
- End Game Content? - Currently their idea of this is doing "daily" missions in the same missions you've done just at a higher difficulty.. There's one Challenging Mode to be done and 2 Hard Modes to be done that reset every day at 8:00 PM our time. Again.. Rinse and repeat. And as stated above for the DZ.. well... Yea..
They're set to launch an "Operation" which is supposed to be raid type encounter but judging by the rest of the game, I won't speculate until I actually get to play it in April. I fear it may be like the other 15 missions that were a rinse and repeat expect harder.
- Threat System.. So if you've played any other MMO you'd know about "threat" or "aggro". It's a players ability to have the enemy units target you instead of your teammates so that your teammates could kill them without being shot at. It doesn't quite work... There is a "tank" build that is supposed to attract fire but you could not shoot a single round of over a minute and the second you put your head out.. *BANG*.. you're bleeding out or even dead because that one NPC decided he didn't like you.
Verdict:
Yes I'm aware that the cons overshadow the pros at this point in time but that's how I feel about the game. If it looks like i nitpicked it's because I did. As an avid PC gamer and long time MMO player (played WoW for 8 years or so), this game fails to reproduce what studios like Blizzard have almost perfected and set the bar for. Ubisoft has a lot of work to do on this game over the next few months. Especially before their paid DLC launches. Which I hope is different to the base game in terms of rinse and repeat. In fact. Once all the things above are fixed then the game will be pretty damn good.
I do find they paid TOO MUCH attention to the level of detail in the game with the environments when they could have been working on the gameplay...
Don't get me wrong. I enjoy the game. Despite all the negatives. Biggest peeve is waiting to see if I can actually play. Delta is my new best friend... I'm very inclined to say that it's actually Flow causing the grief because their service has been terrible lately. Even DOTA 2 we're all experiencing massive random lag spikes.
I advise if you do want to pick it up, like Destiny, it'll hopefully be gtg in a few months after several patches. Biggest tip is that if you want to purchase it on PC I advise you use EA's Origin Client. There you can get the base game and season pass for $65 USD ($40 USD Base Game, $25 USD Season Pass) opposed to Steam which is $60 USD and $40 USD respectively. Go EA?
https://www.origin.com/en-mx/store/buy/tom-clancys-the-division/pc-download/base-game/gold-edition
