I didn’t want to like The Division Beta. Actually, I think it’s fairly accurate to say that I wanted it to suck and see it crash and burn. For me The Division was another example of hyping a game way too early, releasing nothing for a couple of years and delivering a half caked game that had been dumbed down. Early impressions of the game made it look like something out of a Hollywood blockbuster. A few years down the line and the game had appeared to have been downscaled somewhat.

Not wanting to draw from previous experiences *cough* Watch_Dogs *cough*, but it wasn’t looking too great for Ubisoft. However a few hours into the beta and I realised… I was being too harsh. I was coming at this from the wrong angle. I was comparing it to previous mistakes, instead of looking at The Division as a fresh attempt by Ubisoft. Once I got past this, boy… did I have some fun with what is shaping up to be a fantastic online RPG.

So let’s break down what made an impact on me from my time with the Beta. First things first, the graphics. Everyone who has been following The Division from day one has already noticed the big downscale in graphics. No longer are we presented with a super crisp, gleaming New York but more of a dumbed down version. That being said, it still looks great. Sometimes it takes a little longer for buildings or characters to render, but when they do it’s a great sight. And that takes me onto Ubisoft’s new Snowdrop engine.

It’s easy to overlook simple things such as glass damage, mist/fog pouring over a road or shooting a hole in a bit of fabric, but there are very little games that can actually pull these minor features off with such class. The Division carves it’s way to the near top of this list. Shooting a car window – you’ll see each bullet leave its mark. Shoot a hole in a fabric tent with a shotgun – you’ll see the spread of each shot. It’s hard to explain how well this is presented in The Division by words, but check out the video by |Fusion x Pro| above. It’s one of my favourite Snowdrop Engine breakdown videos on YouTube at the moment and well worth a watch.

So when you put the graphical side of the game to the side, what are you left with. The Division is an online only, open world third person shooter. The best way I can explain the combat in The Division is by comparing it to Destiny and Gears of War. The Division utilises the same cover tactics as Gears Of War and the same shooter elements of Destiny. The cover system, in my opinion works really really well. It’s so easy to not only get in cover and shoot, but also transition between cover. The shooting however, well I have my gripes.

It’s important to remember that every enemy you face while playing The Division (well certainly in the Beta) is human. They aren’t genetically altered, packed in armour. They are just looters looking to make a quick buck. So why does it take so much effort to take them down? If they are just human, surely I could take them down with one headshot, two maximum? I found a lot of the enemies I faced when playing the Beta just to be massive bullet sponges. I mean, I get it to a certain extent – it’s an RPG after all. But I think Ubisoft have somehow lost the “reality” to the world by making normal, low armoured enemies such a chore to take down. It’s really easy to forget that these are just normal people sometimes, especially when you’ve emptied two magazines into them and they are still running around without any obvious issues.

Should you be finding yourselves getting fed up with the spongey AI, there is always the Dark Zone to explore, where The Division really comes into it’s own. The Dark Zone is essentially a heavily contaminated area of the map populated by more fierce AI and of course, other online players. What makes the Dark Zone so brilliant though, is the trust issues that follow. Each player has the same goal here – collect more valuable loot. But to be able to use this loot, you must first extract it so it can be de-contaminated. Extracting loot has never been such a tense endeavour! The problem (in a good way) with extracting loot is not knowing if you can trust those around you.

If a player kills another player in the Dark Zone, they go rouge and their status bar turns red to let you know this is the case. So thats easy – you can spot and avoid (or attempt to take out) the rogue agent. This, however, doesn’t make it easy to spot those thinking of going rogue. You may wonder into an extraction point, wait for the helicopter to come and and another player joins you. And then another. OK so they aren’t in a rogue state, but theres nothing to stop them from killing you, stealing all your hard earned loot and extracting it for themselves. So what do you do? Take pre-emptive action and take them out first? Or hope that they are just here to watch your back and want to be friends? It’s this mind game that makes the Dark Zone such an amazing yet frustrating place to explore. I’ve been both the vicim and the protagonist and it’s amazing. It takes around two minutes to extract your gear. Two long minutes.

While I did enjoy my time in the Dark Zone, it would be great to see some sort of morality system. If I knew a bunch or players had bad rep for taking out other players, even if they weren’t rogue at that point in time, it would certainly help me make better decisions as to whether I stick around or not. I don think it would “rob” anything away from the experience of the Dark Zone, but it would certainly provide a helping hand to those just joining and aren’t really sure whats going on. I would also like to see a morality system rolled into the single player part of The Division.

Every now and then, when playing solo, you’ll come across someone who is in obvious need of help. And by help I mean a medkit, food or soda to re-hydrate. I usually try and play a nice guy in open world games so I have no problem in helping people out. My problem comes when you’ve helped out the person in need, they drop some low level loot and then they start running away like you’re some sort of criminal. I mean c’mon, that was my last medkit and you still think I’m a bad guy! No matter how many good deeds I did in the Beta, I was always feared by the AI population and was generally thought of as some sort of criminal. It would be great to see a morality meter such as the one we saw in the first Infamous where people either cheered you in the streets or ran away from you. It’s not going to add anything massive to the game, but it would be nice to have a feeling that you’re actually doing a good (or bad) job.

I haven’t touched too much in the story for The Division because I didn’t really get to play too much of it in the Beta. Apart from taking my first base of operations and rescuing a doctor from a convention arena turned hospital, there wasn’t too many story orientated tasks in the Beta. However from what I have seen from trailers, Ubisoft blog posts etc, the story looks set to be a good one. I just hope there is enough variety in the story and side missions to keep players enticed.

All in all, The Division is set to be a hit in my eyes. If Ubisoft can tweak how players tackle AI opponents, somehow implement a morality meter and ensure missions are too tedious or repetitive – I think we could be onto a winner. There has yet to be a third person Tom Clancy game that I dislike… I’m hoping The Division doesn’t fall into this catagory.

The Division is set to extract onto PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on March 8th 2016 (EU).

Did you get a chance to play the Beta? What are your thoughts of The Division so far? Let me know in the comments section below!