Tom Clancy’s: The Division Beta First impressions
Language: English
Developer: Ubisoft Massive
Publisher: Ubisoft
Format: PC/PS4/XBox One
Type: Cover Shooter
Synopsis: A devastating pandemic sweeps through New York City, and one by one, basic services fail. In only days, without food or water, society collapses into chaos. The Division, a classified unit of self-supported tactical agents, is activated. Leading seemingly ordinary lives among us, Division agents are trained to operate independently in order to save society. When society falls, your mission begins.
Over the past weekend i’ve been playing Tom Clancy’s The Division, one of the most anticipated games of the year. Below the cut are my thoughts and concerns about where the game is headed. However please note, and keep in mind that these are based on the beta, and may not represent the end product….which I do hope!
I was anticipating this game for a single reason, the name: Tom Clancy. I grew up on dis novels, and the movies, and actually enjoyed a few of the games, despite sucking at stealth games! So when i heard he was involved in this game I was really interested because a lot of his games generally tend to be more realistic than fantastical; Rainbow Six Siege for example.
However as more and more information became available I became more and more concerned when I” heard things like, ‘RPG’ and “loot based’. These are pretty much the antithesis of what Tom Clancy is about.
As you can imagine I was very worried going into the beta, and by the end of the first day my heart was broken, this was not a Tom Clancy game, all that Ubisoft has done is slapped his name on the game. Probably to cash in on the hype wave from Rainbow Six Siege.
The beta, and you can’t really call it a beta, more of a limited demo, covers a very small area of the game. Yet i do have to admit despite it being small in comparison to the game, it was decent sized area. In the area we have access to one mission, and a couple of side missions, which for the most part are garbage.
Before we get into that though lets talk about the game and how it runs, it runs like arse. While my machine isn’t a ‘beast’ it is a pretty solid gaming machine:
- i5 4670 3.8Ghz
- GTX 770 OC 4GB
- 16 GB RAM
So it’s not a bad machine, and was actually able to play the new Tomb Raider game really well, all settings on high, with Nvidia Hair turned off, and easily maintaining around 70fps with only very few drops below 60fps. Though thanks to Synch i never noticed! Yet in this game it runs terrible, barely being able to run over 30fps. In the end i was turning down a lot of settings to low and even reducing the game to 720p and end even then it was barely hitting 50fps.
After checking around I found this was a common issue, even a few colleagues who have beast machines with Titan X’s and i7 6xxx series of processors were struggling with the game. So Ubisoft really need to get this resolved before launch, because this beta, on a technical aspect alone, failed to win over a lot of gamers.
Story wise, I really can’t say to much about it, since we were barely given any. However the little story mission we got really felt like it was nothing more than a ‘reason’ to go shoot a load of guys. I did however like one of the side missions which involved me looking for someone and didn’t involve any shooting at all. Which has me worried, if your none shooting content is more satisfying than your shooting content, in a shooter; there’s something wrong!
What about the shooting mechanics, they’ve got to be good right? Well……not for me, i actually found it unsatisfying. Part of this is due to it being a third person shooter, these i’ve found are intrinsically not as satisfying as first person shooters. However in the case of this game it’s also coupled with the fact that the enemies are complete bullet sponges, to obnoxious levels. At one point in the beta i was fighting the boss of the first mission, and after putting like 5 clips from an AK into the guys face he was still going strong. However it didn’t work in reverse, you’re so weak that after a few hits you’re down.
Admittedly this is a personal thing, but for me, given the theme and setting, and the weapons, seeing guys taking 100’s of bullets and not even flinching, wasn’t a lot of fun; especially given how vulnerable you, the player are.
The argument being offered by Ubisoft is that the game is an RPG, and that this is part of what an RPG is; which I don’t agree with. Frankly they could have done an RPG with a more thematically appropriate damage system.
I also don’t really agree that the game is an RPG, rather i’d say it’s an RPGlite, based on what was seen in the beta. One of the things an RPG has is skills, what you get in the Division is…..two skills. Yup, you can only have two skills equipped any time, and the skills are rather pathetic. Now as i said this was the beta, and things may be different in the full game, but so far the skills we had access to were once again unsatisfying.
Loot drops are in, and beyond them not being thematic, they’re pretty much what you’d expect. However they also chose to do an interesting thing, no instanced loot. So this means you could spend a while taking down a boss, who drops some high levelled loot; only to have it stollen by someone else. On the one hand i liked this, but on the other hand this is going to be abused to hell and back.
Graphically the game isn’t that bad looking, and frankly i was impressed with setting and the amount of detail in the city. In fact, the city is the best looking part of the game and easily where a huge chunk of the budget went.
The beta had very few people (NPC’s) in it, and this apparently was because Ubisoft disabled a lot of the gangs. Apparently in the full release of the game there’ll be more gang warfare going on. Which i’m not really sure I like the sounds of, given my views on the shooting mechanics.
The area that had the most fun in was the Dark Zone, this is the PvP area and frankly was a lot of fun, until it was ruined by the hackers!
So in the Dark Zone it’s no holds bared, but it’s also where you’ll find some of the best weapons in the game. There was no story reason for being there (or none revealed in the beta), it’s purely about getting the best loot. But frankly, if you’re playing with friends in a group, it’s a hell of a lot of fun.
The Dark Zone is the heavy contamination area, so nothing you recover in there can just be brought out. You have to extract it by setting up an extraction point and having your gear ‘extracted’. The gear then gets detoxified and added to your stash at home base. However when you set up an extraction point it’s the best time for mayhem, you’ll get a lot of people arriving to extract their gear in a very confined space; and this is a PvP area……
However there are consequences to doing things like that. Once you attack someone you’re classed as going roque, and become fair game to everyone else. Once you’re rogue you get a rogue timer which counts down. The more you attack people the longer the timer gets, and if it gets to big it triggers a manhunt. Where you’re essentially marked for death and have a bounty on your head. The upside of this though is that if you can survive through it you’ll get a lot of xp and credits that are only useable in the Dark Zone.
Sadly though, the Dark Zone was already full of hackers. Because of the way the game handles data it’s very easy to hack the game using software like cheat engine. You can give yourself unlimited ammo, grenades and health. This is due to the data all being held client side and the server not verifying it. Throughout the beta I encountered people shooting through walls, being bullet proof, having unlimited clips. The worst of the hacks was invisible people, you can’t shoot what you cant see, literally. You know where they are and spray at them, but as far as the game is concerned they aren’t there so don’t get hit. But they can shoot you.
Another frustrating cheat, which thankfully was only be in the beta, was people going rogue, grabbing loot and then running out of the beta zone. Leaving the beta zone teleported you to safety, meaning you just got away with murder…literally.
Time for my conclusions, based off of this beta, i’m glad i didn’t pre-order the game. It has nothing going for it other than it’s theme, and frankly I don’t think that’s enough. It’s got a lot of issues with performance and the hacking issues need to be addressed before i’d even consider buying it.
That said if you can get past the problems i had with the shooting mechanics and bullet sponging, it could be a fun game. And honestly, I do see myself playing for the Dark Zone, which is unusual since i tend to hate PvP.
If you’re still interested in this game you’re in luck, there’s another beta event planned, this time it’s an open beta. So you can just download the client through UPlay and give it a whirl, which if you’re thinking of buying the game; i highly recommend you do. The event is scheduled to run from February 16th through to the 21st, with Xbox one getting it’s access from the 15th through to the 21st.
