Well fought? - A Few Hours With The Division Beta

New games are awesome! Being some of the first to play new games is even more awesome! Beta testing has been around ever since cavemen were trying to decide what materials burned too hot, and the internet has given us the privilege to warm hands all over the world in this metaphor. Today we fight with the feeling of "meh".

Full disclosure, I indirectly paid to join The Division. I bought the Tom Clancy bundle on Humble Bundle because I really wanted to jump on some Splintercell action and I was in an impulse buying mood. Since the bundle came with a beta key I figured I would download the 26 gig (holy crap!) file through uPlay and check it out.

First off, this is a beta and for the most part it works. There is a warning stating that the servers may be going in and out etc. I was disconnected quite a bit, and that's probably a good thing, hopefully they are working on their netcode and managing all the stress the servers can take. I had some occasional issues with graphical artifact that seemed to be connected to lighting that would obstruct 80% of the game screen if I moved the camera into a certain angle. These are beta issues that will likely be fixed in the retail release. I'm sure Ubisoft will do what it can to make sure there isn't another Assassin's Creed: Unity.

When you start up the beta, one of the developers voice over plays and tells you it's a cover based shooter. And that's what we have here. It's a cover based shooter, you've played them before. This one has loot. I am not impressed. The game is functional, running around an epidemic overridden New York City looks great. The enemies are rioters that shoot first and ask questions later with sub par AI. At one point one of my NPC allies yelled out "They don't have a plan, keep shooting!" and I laughed in agreement.

The Division looks like it could be a huge, immersive world to get lost in. It's screaming for more interesting enemy design (with the epidemic theme we'll probably get zombies...meh). If this was a demo, I would not be buying the final product based on the gameplay. There's a ton of potential here to be more than a cover based shooter with RPG elements, but I'd wait for the initial flood of reviews to come out. Back to Splintercell I guess.