I’ve been looking forward to playing Tom Clancy’s The Division since it was first announced during E3 2013. I missed out on the Alpha, due to it being dropped during the busy holiday season and I knew that the Beta was coming soon. I got my code a day early and was able to pre-load the game, so that I would be able to jump in right at launch.  While I waited for it to go live I kept imagining a game that learned from the mistakes Bungie made with Destiny. A game that would bring together aspects from Ubisoft’s stellar third person shooter history and the popular loot grind that today’s gamers are growing a larger apatite for. After spending a couple of days trying out the game, I think that it has promise.

I think that this generation is going to be the one that brings the MMO style game to the console masses. When Modern Warfare introduced RPG mechanics to the FPS genre, I never thought that we would eventually see companies mixing in the addictive aspects of the MMO loot grind to more action based game styles as well. I think that adding these elements give the player a good reason to continue to play the game for a much longer amount of time than they normally would. It also allows the developer to add things, like customizable appearance options, and give the player a better sense of identity in their universe.

When I first booted it up I was surprised at the amount of detail, considering the scope of the game at hand. Generally speaking big open world games, with the type of online connectivity that this game has, suffer in the visuals department. You can see it a bit in the actual character models, but the world is impressive. With the story taking place shortly after Black Friday, it gives the developers the chance to have a beautifully snowy and wet environment. I have always been a big fan of the reflections and the bump mapping on an environment when it is wet, and this game looks like it will deliver on that visual aspect.

Going into the game we had seen the demonstrations at E3 where you could shoot out the different parts of objects in the environments. This comes into play a lot due to the cover based mechanics that are used in the game. Most of the time when I was shooting at an enemy on the street, I was shooting through the windows of the cars that conveniently littered the streets. You also run into situations where the cover you are behind is taking a lot of damage and you have to find more suitable cover. This is a great trick to keep people from just sitting in one spot and mowing down the droves street thugs that want to take you out. It also means that you have to constantly be aware of your surroundings and reassess the situation in the heat of battle.

One of the big things that I am most excited about with this game is the way you spec your character is directly related to the way you build your main base of operations. Instead of just gaining enough experience points to level up and earn different skills, you actually have to go on missions and find loot that will let you upgrade parts of your home base. The beta only had one mission chain that you could do to grow your base, securing your medical wing, but it’s easy to see how going out to find supplies or staff is going to be a fun part of the game. I could see this becoming an issue if you are in a group and not everyone wants to go on a bunch of medical missions, but I would assume everyone will have the whole base built out by the end of the game’s storyline anyways.

The last main aspect of the beta, and the one I spent most of my time in, is the Dark Zone. This is an area that is so contaminated with the virus that wiped everyone out, it’s under martial law and anything goes. Theoretically, the best loot will be in the Dark Zone, and since it is contaminated with the virus you have to call in an extraction for it to be cleaned and used. When you call in for your gear to be extracted it lets everyone in the area know and you have no idea who is going to show up. One of my favorite aspects of the MMO scene is open world PVP. Not knowing if the player characters around you are going to go rogue and try to kill you for your collected loot makes the game so much more exciting. If someone does go rogue, and kill another player, they are marked for a short amount of time. Once this happens everyone goes into chase mode and tries to kill the marked agent.

It took me a while to get used to the user interface, I would occasionally have issues reading what the loot was when I went to pick it up and at first I was confused when I would auto loot something or have to hold a button to do so. I love the way the display your path for your waypoints and overall it does have a very clean and modern look. The gunplay was satisfying and if they are able to make sure that the game has enough content at launch I think it will go a long way to keep it’s user base playing for a while. All in all I had a good time with the game and I look forward to it’s eventual release on March 8th.