Tom Clancy’s The Division
A small army of Ubisoft DEVELOPERS craft a fun ye tim memorable shooter in the Destiny vein
£ 39.99; PC, PS4, Xbox One (version tested)
The Division doesn’t want you to enjoy yourself. Well, it does technically – this is a game, after all – but with its bullet-sponge enemies, psychologically brutal PvP Dark Zone and endlessly bleak setting, it’s ready to grind you to dust under the weight of its Atlas-esque heart.
There’s an odd war at the core of The Division, a third-person MMO shooter that plays like a cross between Destiny and Ubisoft’s Ghost Recon series. On the one hand, there’s a clear desire by the cabal of developers involved in the game to bring new ideas to a group of genres that’s already overcrowded. On the other, there’s the crushing reality that we’ve seen most of these ideas before, which makes the prospect of spending 50-100 hours in the game’s post-pandemic world a potentially unappealing prospect. You can feel this conflict bubbling away at every turn of its take on New York; here is a city that’s gone into meltdown after a virus carried on US dollars struck down most of the population. As an activated agent of The Division, a governmentfunded sleeper unit trained to keep civilisation from crumbling under such circumstances, you’ll find yourself partying up with other players to take back territory, drive off looters and restore normality one street at a time.
The mission-based environments are perfectly designed for group tactics, with cover strategically placed to promote player agency in a variety of tactics; yet most of the exterior ones feel starved of creativity as you pass your umpteenth abandoned yellow cab. The game engine creates a striking lighting system that feels almost filmic, but it’s brought down by a largely unappealing visual design that’s been watered down by the likes of post-apocalyptic urban affairs such as The Last Of Us.
The gunplay mechanics are solid, and there are plenty of weapons, gear and abilities to unlock that offer depth for those willing to grind for it, but that creeping sense of familiarity dulls the edges of its armoury. In Destiny, Bungie wisely turned everything, including its weapons, into instantly desirable loot that was worth waging hundreds of hours of war for, but The Division’s collectible, customisable fare feels somewhat lacking in comparison.
Enemies, even of the lowliest cast, are real bullet-sponges; and while some might see this as a frustrating difficulty hike, it fits perfectly with the team-focused aspect bristling at the The Division’s heart. These are