Notes: This entire piece may appear a bit scatter brained but I was writing this out as each thought came to my mind and it will lack the 'polish' I normally put into my reviews. It's been lightly edited but only in the loosest sense of the word. Sections will be put in spoilers though, so if you want to jump to a specific topic I covered, you can do so. I also lumped the graphical and controller options in together as they're both on the technical side of things, in my eyes.
The Division was played on an i5-4690, GTX970 with 8gigs of RAM at tweaked high settings.
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So, The Division. I remember being quietly interested in this game back when they first announced it at E3 2013 I believe. A co-op third person shooter, set in apocalyptic New York? With shuttable car doors? I was on a survival game kick back then, so this game peaked my interest and placed itself on my radar. Then, it was delayed for a couple of years after being slated for a 2014 release. It slid off my radar as I got more interested and hyped about other games. Then come later in 2015, when I heard about The Division more often. Then came the sign ups for the closed beta. I signed up, got an email from Ubisoft saying ?Congratulations, you're not in the beta!?[footnote]Seriously, the emails title was ?Tom Clancy The Division Beta ? Congrats!? and the body was ?Sadly due to demand, we cannot give you beta access at this time.?.[/footnote], I snuck in on the final day of the closed beta, then I downloaded the open beta which ended fairly recently and put a good 10 hours into it. So, with The Division heading towards its March 8th release date, I thought it'd be a good time to put out my thoughts about the beta.
First up, lets talk about how The Division handles. The system specs will be below in the spoiler box if you wish to peruse them yourself.
Now on my rig with an i5-4690, GTX970 and 8gigs of RAM, The Division ran really nicely tweaked max settings. I had the shadows turned down to normal, as where some of the more intensive options, and I also lowered the AA a little as well. The frame rate itself was very stable, hitting 60FPS most of the time. It did drop however on a few occasions, but I never saw it dip lower than 50FPS, even in hectic moments. I'm sure for some, this won't be acceptable but in my eyes, as long as it isn't juddering back and forth, a frame rate of 45 to 60 is perfectly fine with me and it felt perfectly playable. I honestly wouldn't have noticed the majority of the drops if I didn't have three FPS counters running, just to make sure I could keep an eye on things. Obviously, your mileage may vary with how the game handles on your own rig/console, but my experience was a rather smooth one with nothing noticeable to mention on the settings I had, except how smoothly it handled things.
Graphically speaking, The Division is a damn good looking game. Yes, it has been downgraded from what we've seen, but it's not an ugly game, far from it. The snow storm and the various weather effects that limit your visibility help you feel like you're actually in New York in the middle of winter. There's enough colour variation to make it easy on the eye to look at, so you're not just wondering through a bland grey city. There was no pop in as far as I noticed, aside from a few textures on some signs being a little blurry until you got closer to them. Overall, it's a pretty game, despite the fact you'll spend the majority of your time in the streets of New York and it's many streets, alleys, sewers and subway stations.
As for the graphical and control options of The Division beta, most people would think as this is a Ubisoft PC game, they'd be fairly poor. However, I was quite surprised with the amount of tweaking you could do on both. Every command seems to be rebindable and there's a boatload of graphical options you can fiddle around with to make the game look as pretty as it can be, or so you can run it on a poorer PC setup. Admittedly I did not fiddle around with the rebindable keys as I played both betas on a controller as, in the closed beta, the mouse and keyboard wasn't working properly and I just carried on through the open beta with the controller. I did briefly test out the mouse and keyboard to see if the old issue remained and thankfully, it seems Ubisoft have fixed it so that the game won't magically stop recognising the mouse is connected just after you've booted up the game. The Division also handles fairly well on a controller as well, with only the option to voice chat being removed from the controller scheme. I never felt at a disadvantage when I came up against people using a mouse and keyboard in the PVP zone.. Unfortunately, I couldn't seem to find a controller scheme option in the menus so I'm not sure if there's different control options for people using a gamepad or not.
Minimum requirements
OS: Windows 7, 8 or 10 (64 bit version only)
Processor: Intel Core i5-2400 or AMD FX-6100 (Or better)
RAM: 6GB
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX560 with 2GB VRAM (Current equivalent NVIDIA GeForce GTX760)/AMD Radeon HD 7770 with 2GB VRAM (Or better)
DirectX: 11.
HDD Space: 40GB
Supported peripherals: Windows-compatible keyboard, mouse, headset, optional controller.
Multiplayer: Broadband connection with 256kbps upstream, or faster.
Recommended requirements
OS: Windows 7, 8 or 10 (64 bit version only)
Processor: Intel Core i7-3770 or AMD FX-8350.
RAM: 8GB
Video card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX970 or AMD Radeon R9 290
DirectX: 11.
HDD Space: 40GB
Supported peripherals: Windows-compatible keyboard, mouse, headset, optional controller.
Multiplayer: Broadband connection with 512kbps upstream, or faster.
OS: Windows 7, 8 or 10 (64 bit version only)
Processor: Intel Core i5-2400 or AMD FX-6100 (Or better)
RAM: 6GB
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX560 with 2GB VRAM (Current equivalent NVIDIA GeForce GTX760)/AMD Radeon HD 7770 with 2GB VRAM (Or better)
DirectX: 11.
HDD Space: 40GB
Supported peripherals: Windows-compatible keyboard, mouse, headset, optional controller.
Multiplayer: Broadband connection with 256kbps upstream, or faster.
Recommended requirements
OS: Windows 7, 8 or 10 (64 bit version only)
Processor: Intel Core i7-3770 or AMD FX-8350.
RAM: 8GB
Video card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX970 or AMD Radeon R9 290
DirectX: 11.
HDD Space: 40GB
Supported peripherals: Windows-compatible keyboard, mouse, headset, optional controller.
Multiplayer: Broadband connection with 512kbps upstream, or faster.
Now on my rig with an i5-4690, GTX970 and 8gigs of RAM, The Division ran really nicely tweaked max settings. I had the shadows turned down to normal, as where some of the more intensive options, and I also lowered the AA a little as well. The frame rate itself was very stable, hitting 60FPS most of the time. It did drop however on a few occasions, but I never saw it dip lower than 50FPS, even in hectic moments. I'm sure for some, this won't be acceptable but in my eyes, as long as it isn't juddering back and forth, a frame rate of 45 to 60 is perfectly fine with me and it felt perfectly playable. I honestly wouldn't have noticed the majority of the drops if I didn't have three FPS counters running, just to make sure I could keep an eye on things. Obviously, your mileage may vary with how the game handles on your own rig/console, but my experience was a rather smooth one with nothing noticeable to mention on the settings I had, except how smoothly it handled things.
Graphically speaking, The Division is a damn good looking game. Yes, it has been downgraded from what we've seen, but it's not an ugly game, far from it. The snow storm and the various weather effects that limit your visibility help you feel like you're actually in New York in the middle of winter. There's enough colour variation to make it easy on the eye to look at, so you're not just wondering through a bland grey city. There was no pop in as far as I noticed, aside from a few textures on some signs being a little blurry until you got closer to them. Overall, it's a pretty game, despite the fact you'll spend the majority of your time in the streets of New York and it's many streets, alleys, sewers and subway stations.
As for the graphical and control options of The Division beta, most people would think as this is a Ubisoft PC game, they'd be fairly poor. However, I was quite surprised with the amount of tweaking you could do on both. Every command seems to be rebindable and there's a boatload of graphical options you can fiddle around with to make the game look as pretty as it can be, or so you can run it on a poorer PC setup. Admittedly I did not fiddle around with the rebindable keys as I played both betas on a controller as, in the closed beta, the mouse and keyboard wasn't working properly and I just carried on through the open beta with the controller. I did briefly test out the mouse and keyboard to see if the old issue remained and thankfully, it seems Ubisoft have fixed it so that the game won't magically stop recognising the mouse is connected just after you've booted up the game. The Division also handles fairly well on a controller as well, with only the option to voice chat being removed from the controller scheme. I never felt at a disadvantage when I came up against people using a mouse and keyboard in the PVP zone.. Unfortunately, I couldn't seem to find a controller scheme option in the menus so I'm not sure if there's different control options for people using a gamepad or not.
Now lets talk about the Dark Zone, the PVP centric part of The Division. In the beta we had access to two out of the confirmed 6 zones, so it meant things were always going to be a little bit crowded. Each zone will be separately levelled as well, meaning it's unlikely anyone who's a lower level is going to run into the higher level guys with their far superior equipment. To get said equipment however, it seems there is a few ways to do so in the Dark Zone. One is by killing the AI that also roams the Dark Zone and picking up any loot they may possibly drop. The second way is by opening containers found scattered around the Dark Zone. I'm not entirely sure of how these work but it seems once one is opened, you have to wait a while for it to respawn and become lootable again. Some containers were also locked out behind a certain level requirement as well, so this is not always the best way to get your loot. Thirdly, you can open certain locked containers with 'Dark Zone keys'. I'm not 100% sure on how to get these keys myself; I know you can be given them and they do drop from other players if you kill them but I'm not sure if there are other ways to pick them up or they're just given to you randomly.
The containers you unlock with keys are different from the normal containers however, yielding rarer loot for you to play with. There seems to be at least one or two crates per area and you will have to search pretty thoroughly for them inside of buildings and contest them with other players; however the possible rewards make this well worth the time and effort. Fourthly, you could always just murder someone for their loot. Every time you pick up some loot, a little yellow container is attached to your character, which is used to extract the loot via chopper, and is visible to everyone else. As someone who spent a good majority of the betas running solo, this makes extractions and other player interactions incredibly tense if you have some loot on you. Extractions are tense as you fire off a flare to signal a chopper, then have to wait 90 seconds for the chopper to arrive before you can put your gear on the rope it drops for you. And in those 90 seconds, anything can happen.
A group of people could arrive to also extract their loot. You could be ambushed by players or AI alike. You may spot a group of players circling the edge of the extraction zone, which just raises the tension even more. It's fantastic, not knowing what's possibly going to happen when you meet a player at the extraction zones. I will admit that a good majority of my extractions passed without incident, but there was a handful that were devolved into gunfights and chases through New York's streets and subway systems. I myself was chased through a subway system for a good 10 minutes by a group of six people and it was incredibly tense as, even if you don't have loot, you can still lose some Dark Zone credits, money exclusive for the Dark Zone and used to buy gear from the vendors there, Dark Zone Experience and a key if you happen to have one. Thankfully, you don't lose any gear you've got equipped, which could negate any griefing opportunities and doesn't really give people a meaning to go rouge on people without loot too often.
By default, all agents who go into the DZ are non-hostile to begin with. However, open fire on another player and hurt them enough, you'll eventually go ?rouge? up to a full blown manhunt, along with any group members. There's 5 stages to going rouge and the sixth makes it so you're THE target of peoples attention, making you have to survive 5 minutes to claim your own bounty. While you are rouge, you'll have a timer above your head, indicating how long you've got left of your rouge status and you'll also appear on peoples mini-maps, making you a more obvious target. Killing a rouge grants you a small DZ credit boost, some experience and, of course, any loot they may have. Surviving your rouge agent status grants you a bit of experience and I believe a small credit reward as well; I'm not sure as I was playing solo and felt going rouge alone was a bad idea. This adds a bit of risk and reward gameplay to the PVP side; do you risk gunning down that guy over there for his loot and risk people coming after you, or do you let him go?
The containers you unlock with keys are different from the normal containers however, yielding rarer loot for you to play with. There seems to be at least one or two crates per area and you will have to search pretty thoroughly for them inside of buildings and contest them with other players; however the possible rewards make this well worth the time and effort. Fourthly, you could always just murder someone for their loot. Every time you pick up some loot, a little yellow container is attached to your character, which is used to extract the loot via chopper, and is visible to everyone else. As someone who spent a good majority of the betas running solo, this makes extractions and other player interactions incredibly tense if you have some loot on you. Extractions are tense as you fire off a flare to signal a chopper, then have to wait 90 seconds for the chopper to arrive before you can put your gear on the rope it drops for you. And in those 90 seconds, anything can happen.
A group of people could arrive to also extract their loot. You could be ambushed by players or AI alike. You may spot a group of players circling the edge of the extraction zone, which just raises the tension even more. It's fantastic, not knowing what's possibly going to happen when you meet a player at the extraction zones. I will admit that a good majority of my extractions passed without incident, but there was a handful that were devolved into gunfights and chases through New York's streets and subway systems. I myself was chased through a subway system for a good 10 minutes by a group of six people and it was incredibly tense as, even if you don't have loot, you can still lose some Dark Zone credits, money exclusive for the Dark Zone and used to buy gear from the vendors there, Dark Zone Experience and a key if you happen to have one. Thankfully, you don't lose any gear you've got equipped, which could negate any griefing opportunities and doesn't really give people a meaning to go rouge on people without loot too often.
By default, all agents who go into the DZ are non-hostile to begin with. However, open fire on another player and hurt them enough, you'll eventually go ?rouge? up to a full blown manhunt, along with any group members. There's 5 stages to going rouge and the sixth makes it so you're THE target of peoples attention, making you have to survive 5 minutes to claim your own bounty. While you are rouge, you'll have a timer above your head, indicating how long you've got left of your rouge status and you'll also appear on peoples mini-maps, making you a more obvious target. Killing a rouge grants you a small DZ credit boost, some experience and, of course, any loot they may have. Surviving your rouge agent status grants you a bit of experience and I believe a small credit reward as well; I'm not sure as I was playing solo and felt going rouge alone was a bad idea. This adds a bit of risk and reward gameplay to the PVP side; do you risk gunning down that guy over there for his loot and risk people coming after you, or do you let him go?
The first issue I noticed is that the sound could sometimes drop in and out, so you're left with just pure silence for a couple of seconds. It's nothing major but it can be a little grating at times to hear sound then it just drops out for a few seconds. It never happened during cutscenes or story related missions however, so hopefully this is just a minor beta related issue. Another issue I had is that on a couple of occasions, my controller[footnote]Was playing on an Xbox pad as it felt more comfortable for me at the time. Will probably use M&K for launch[/footnote] locked up and wouldn't allow me to do anything, leaving me in a forward running animation and unable to take cover, change weapons or reload. While this only happened twice and I'm not sure what exactly caused it, I hope this isn't going to be a serious problem when The Division does release.
Another problem that many people have also brought up, although unrelated to the beta, is the fact there may be a severe lack of end game content and things to do when you finish the game. Now doing a little research doesn't reveal much, apart from some old interviews promising 8 man raids and a few other things. Now having spoken to a handful of people who are more up to date on The Division than I am, it seems Ubisoft are at least adding a New Game+ type mode, where at level 30, you can get to replay everything at the highest level, so you can make sure you'll never be out of quality loot to hoard, extract and betray others for, but apart from that, the appeal of replaying missions on harder difficulties feels like it wouldn't be enough to bring people back into the game and carry on playing. Personally, as I love me some loot, I'll probably play the story again and dabble in the high level PVP stuff when I hit max level but for some people, doing it all again and partaking in a couple of raids/dungeons may not be enough content to make them come back to it.
While in the beta there was a smattering of side missions and encounters, which are like mini-skirmishes to rescue a hostage or clear an area, to do, there is also a concern I have over the main story line. It's been confirmed that there's going to be 10 missions per the commander centres 3 wings, helping you rebuild a command centre to fight the virus. However, if that's the main story line, just rebuilding the command centre, it's going to leave a lot of people feeling very disappointed. I'm not worried about the open world encounters though, the beta was jammed with them and they dropped in a sprinkling of side missions as well, so I have no doubt the world will always have something for you to do when you're out roaming New York. However, the lack of information regarding the main story is kind of worrying. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what we get when The Divsion launches and if it's going to be a bit more complex than restarting a base.
Another problem that many people have also brought up, although unrelated to the beta, is the fact there may be a severe lack of end game content and things to do when you finish the game. Now doing a little research doesn't reveal much, apart from some old interviews promising 8 man raids and a few other things. Now having spoken to a handful of people who are more up to date on The Division than I am, it seems Ubisoft are at least adding a New Game+ type mode, where at level 30, you can get to replay everything at the highest level, so you can make sure you'll never be out of quality loot to hoard, extract and betray others for, but apart from that, the appeal of replaying missions on harder difficulties feels like it wouldn't be enough to bring people back into the game and carry on playing. Personally, as I love me some loot, I'll probably play the story again and dabble in the high level PVP stuff when I hit max level but for some people, doing it all again and partaking in a couple of raids/dungeons may not be enough content to make them come back to it.
While in the beta there was a smattering of side missions and encounters, which are like mini-skirmishes to rescue a hostage or clear an area, to do, there is also a concern I have over the main story line. It's been confirmed that there's going to be 10 missions per the commander centres 3 wings, helping you rebuild a command centre to fight the virus. However, if that's the main story line, just rebuilding the command centre, it's going to leave a lot of people feeling very disappointed. I'm not worried about the open world encounters though, the beta was jammed with them and they dropped in a sprinkling of side missions as well, so I have no doubt the world will always have something for you to do when you're out roaming New York. However, the lack of information regarding the main story is kind of worrying. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what we get when The Divsion launches and if it's going to be a bit more complex than restarting a base.
Overall, I get the feeling that The Division isn't going to be winning many Game of the Year awards, but it's not going to disappoint too many people. The gameplay feels solid, the loot is intriguing despite being based on modern weapons and attachments, and the Dark Zone is incredibly tense, almost like an smaller, urban version of DayZ at times. Personally, I'm looking forward to this game and I'm looking forward to exploring an apocalyptic New York solo or with a group and a game based on an apocalyptic future without the addition of zombies to drive home the point an apocalypse has happened. I look forward to playing my copy, which I've pre-ordered much to the chagrin of pretty much everyone I know and probably at least 75% of the internet, when it launches on March 8th.
[small]For a list of all my previous reviews, check out my user group here [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/groups/view/Sassafrass-Reviews].[/small]