Now that the beta for The Division has ended, Ubisoft will continue to tinker away at their latest game before the March 8 release. So, was the beta any fun? There’s potential there, but I wasn’t overly impressed.
Taking place in New York City right after a massive outbreak of disease, The Division puts players in charge of a member of an elite secret government organization. It’s your job to get order restored in the lawless world Manhattan has devolved into.
While gamers were presented with the start of an epic story, we were only given one main mission to play. I get it, this is just a beta afterall. It’s really more of a way for the developers to test out the multiplayer and make sure everything is running as it should. That being said, I really wanted to continue playing through the story, and was bummed that I couldn’t.
So if there’s only one story quest, what else is there to do? The Dark Zone. This is the player versus player section of The Division . The coolest part of The Dark Zone is that it is right in the middle of Manhattan.
That means that while playing The Division, if you want to go do some pvp gaming, simply walk over to that part of the map to blast away. There are no loading screens, no lobbies, none of that traditional stuff. It’s all very seamless, and integrated well both from a gameplay and story perspective.
Gameplay is very reminiscent of Destiny. While it is a shooter, The Division plays more like an RPG game. Players have loads of equipment and weapons to unlock, buy or craft. They can equip skills and earn perks. There’s an emphasis on teaming up to tackle missions and challenges. You better believe there are cosmetic items and weapon skins as well.
The gunplay feels solid, if unoriginal. Featuring a third-person perspective, The Division heavily emphasizes cover when shooting. Because The Division is more of an RPG than a shooter, lining up a headshot will only work so well. Combat comes down to stats, so shooting enemies causes numbers to fly out instead of blood.
Movement around the map felt fine, with getting into and out of cover an easy process. The climbing mechanic works well, and is pretty fun to abuse. Let’s just say you will almost definitely end up doing jumping jacks on the top of a truck in the middle of the street at some point while playing.
As for how the game handled on a technical side, things are going pretty smoothly outside of the cheating epidemic plaguing the PC version of the game. It should be noted that I was playing on a PS4. There were no major connection issues or lag that I noticed, and never had any trouble connecting to the servers.
Overall, I see glimmers of promise with The Division. This beta teases that there’s something epic for gamers to discover here. Unfortunately, the beta doesn’t deliver nearly enough content to make me get on the hype train one hundred percent. We’ll just have to wait and see what The Division is like when we get to experience the full game.
So what do you think? Did you get to play any of the beta for The Division? What were your thoughts on it? Let us know in the comments section below.
