I use the term old loosely here. In the gaming world a few months can make a game part of the elderly, due to developers pushing the boundaries of game visual capabilities. This also happens to be why I can't get myself to play games on PC, every few months you need to upgrade your machine in order to play the latest games at maximum settings. I'm getting carried away here, let's get back to the game at hand.
The Division feels pretty much exactly like that movie with Will Smith, I Am Legend, only a lot more people survived and there are no skinless zombie creatures. The game is a third person shooter and is set within a mid-crisis Manhattan, with an open world environment. If you're asking what the hell does that all mean, well the perspective from which you view everything, is from behind the person you control. It's almost your typical action movie plot, where the world is turned upside down and the government is here to save us.
A terrorist organization is believed to have planted a virus on banknotes, and on Black Friday a catastrophic smallpox pandemic breaks out across New York. The disease which is called "Green Poison" or "The Dollar Flu", causes widespread chaos and the government has to step in and placed the city under quarantine. The Strategic Homeland Division of the American government then activates their sleeper agents, who need to assist emergency responders in restoring order. Our main character, one of these agents, known only as "The Division" finds himself in Brooklyn and about to evacuate the area with fellow agent Faye Lau. Just as they are about to board, a vertical take-off aircraft is destroyed in an explosion, killing the Division Commander and seriously injuring your partner. You commandeer a news helicopter along with Faye and regroup with the other Division agents to reclaim the Post Office, where they establish a base of operation. From here the agents undertake assignments to rescue important people and combat criminal groups in an effort the reclaim the city.
Visually the world is beautiful, but at the same time the winter cold with snow everywhere creates an added survival feel to it. The streets and surroundings creates a memorial to all those who have died combating this epidemic, I could feel the similarity between this and the real life events of some actual terrorist disasters in our historical past. Though everything is stunning to look at, the world does really feel rather deserted, I found myself doing quiet a bit of walking with almost no interactions taking place at times.
Your character is able to carry a maximum of three main weapons which are easily cycled through, along with arsenal of explosives and other needed gear. This is very much your standard cover and fire game, where they try make it as real as possible when it comes to tactical assaults. I think this is one of those games where they brought in a real life military expert to advise on tactics used.
"What we need to do is assess our resources and define our mission statement. The statement is clear: we must retake control, and with the resources we have left it's also clear that we can't afford any half-measures. Every soldier counts. Every soldier is a critical resource. There are no reinforcements being deployed. There is no air support. We work slow and steady. We secure the city sector by sector, and we hold them for dear life. I need you all to be on your feet, ready to make some quick decisions. It's better to shoot someone innocent than to let someone guilty get away, and it's better to shoot first than to risk getting shot, even if you're not a hundred percent sure. That's how we will win this war. That's how we will save this city. Collateral damage is to be expected." - Charles Bliss
I originally got the game a few months after the launch date and it was pretty fun to play, because there were many other people online playing it. So just to refresh my memory I popped it in a few days ago, and it was pretty lonely in there. It took almost forever to join a game due to very few people still playing this.
Another little sore point I had was that enemies were like bullet sponges, you would need to unload an entire clip before they go down. The character progression is pretty standard and you need to spend your experience point to upgrade. The only big down side to this, was having to be at a base to upgrade anything, and the fast travel loading time sucks. I did however enjoy that the smallest alteration to your gear could be felt immediately in the next gun fight. The best place to get gear was the Dark Zone, which is a separate player versus player as well as player versus everything, all mixed into one area.
This was developed by Massive Entertainment, who recently created "South Park: The Fractured but Whole" and the 2012 game "Far Cry 3" to name but a few. They announced last year that their next big title will be based on James Cameron's Avatar movie. Published by Ubisoft for the PlayStation 4, Windows and Xbox One. The game now almost 2 years old, and that means you will definitely pick this up for next to nothing, just a few loose SBD you might have lying around.
As I have said before, due to this being a very co-op orientated multiplayer game, and the fact that not so many people have moved on to other newer titles, the Dead Zones are pretty empty.
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