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Review in Progress One - Streets of New YorkTD The Division News - MMORPG.com
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Review in Progress One - Streets of New YorkTD The Division News - MMORPG.com
Rob checks in from the streets of New York after his first few days on duty. Find out what he thinks of Tom Clancy's the Division so far.
Comments
Manhattan feels more open at this point than the early part of the city but I still wish you could actually go into buildings. There are invisible walls everywhere. "
- this was my deal breaker for this game. spot on.
The character creator is ridiculous... nobody needs neck tattoos... and why only neck and no face tattoos if you want to go trashy -- just go full out face tattoos. I think they should have given everyone more opportunities to add accessories too. I have to choose between an earring and sunglasses? Why can't I have both?
There are also some walls and such that you can't take cover on for some reason. Not sure why that is. It seems like the majority of the problems you had were PC related though.. while I had about 10 minutes of issues when I started, and then a queue of about 6 K and then 11K when I got to manhattan, those were relatively the only issues I had on XB1. I did get a couple delta errors last night, but one was because it was down for maintenance.
As for the rest of the stuff... I guess it is a tactic to sell us more DLC. It is UBISoft after all.
This have been a good conversation
This have been a good conversation
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
To each his on their reviews. My opinion, best game i've ever played. Has it's problems, but it's different and it's not a sci-fi or fantasy game. Story is amazing.
First of , for parents (im old). THis game is vulgar, and has some pretty disturbing scenes randomly through the game (people getting mugged to death, victims dying etc. F bombs dropped regularly)
Important things to note. Outside of the hub, and safe houses. Unless you are in a group, pve is solo.
One of my biggest concerns in the beta was the amount blocked off. All those houses, buildings, etc..
It has a lot more entry places, and a lot of places to explore. Once i got going, i didn't really pay attention. I have been doing a bunch of side quests, which take you to a lot of the open buildings and what not. There are also a lot of areas that have puzzle ways to get there. You have to get to a point within a time limit. requires going to a different building via rooftops, down, back up, over a fence, through a room out a window etc..
I also thought the fights would just be more health bullet sponges. THey kinda are, but not in a bad way. The main missions are very dynamic and through my leveling, none was boring or the same. Roaming mobs in the open world are pretty predictable, but no different than any other rpg. I was really impressed with the way they handled the tactics for final bosses and fights. On hard and challenge , they really are challenging.
Base of operations, skills, talents, perks. there are some utterly useless talents and skills but overall there are a ton of very viable ways to build and play. I am currently running a dps, with seeker mines.
A lot of my takeaway was positive. Some of the side missions, will get incredibly repetitive and i refused to do some by the end of the game. Ran across an agent tracker, 1/10 agent intel found. No thanks. Side missions also take on a very copy and paste role. Some of the later side missions are just repeats of earlier ones. Some of them harder and longer and more boring than others. Some are fast combat related. There are patterns and repetition you'll notice as you hit end game.
End game, really about challenge modes and the Dark Zone. THe dark zone is much tougher than before and find myself ammo starved more than in beta.
The game is great but it's not for everyone.
Summary, it's not a MMO. It's online but in pve think of something like guild wars 1. The dark zone is end game. Basically, you farm for better gear and people can take it. I was messing around and decided to test my electronics build with sticky bomb on some poor soul trying to extract loot. I killed him and looted his high end SMG. THe excitement in the dark zone is why im playing.
There is no arena pvp, battlegrounds, or TDM style matches in game.
Crafting is okay. It's not really in depth, you find fabric for armor, tools for mods, weapon parts for weapons etc..
I play on ps4. If you have any specific questions feel free to ask. Reviews vary by person. I'll try to answer any questions you have objectively.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
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Story is a lot like the TV series The Last Ship
I like Hellgate London.. Not anything like it...
I really like the game. It isn't perfect. Controls take getting used to. (I'm playing the X-Box Version which is new.. I'm usually a PC guy)
The dialog and environment are gritty and I like that. I think they did a good job with that.
I find a lot of mission solo are fairly easy and then suddenly ramp up and become pretty challenging. I actually haven't grouped up yet. The game looks like it would really be fun in a group so we'll try that this weekend.
Seaspite
Playing ESO on my X-Box
Been playing for like 4-5 hours on PS4 now, been just doing side missions, and I still haven't gotten my base unlocked. lol
I believe I just got to the mission to unlock it, though.
From first looking in, after these 4-5 hours, and not rushing through the main story in any way, this game seems littered with side objectives, and it should keep me busy for quite a while.
It's obviously flawed, but so far, it's really fun. The matchmaking is quick, and I'm playing through all matchmaking games on hard, and generally we all just barely make it through, and it takes a lot of team work to actually get it done.
I imagine it's much harder to get a game's performance perfect on PC, as Grakulen noted in this article, but on PS4 at least, it's working fine for me, and no lag or anything that I can notice.
After having played since Tuesday, done a lot of solo exploring, side missions and Main missions With other players (damn difficulty ramps up fast when teamed up), I am completely sold on the game and came around 180 degrees with my view on this game.
I personally have not noticed this false boxed in / Limited freedom movement. All fences, that made sense to me to be able to Climb over, where climable to me.
I have managed to Reach Secret roof tops, Secret sub way entrances deep underground with hidden loot, phone and exploration records, etc.
Some exciting side missions have you fight deep underground on the sub tracks in a hectic environment.
The game is suprisingly open and vast.
Not being able to get into every single house, this is a discussion that has raged in many games before this one and will continue to rage on into the future.
It's highly Developer intenstive, time consuming and thus extremely expensive, to make it possible to get into every single house and building. Not to mention, how you going to do this in an interesting way? It will also tax on resources heavily, unless you want every single interior look the exact same.
So it's really pointless, unless there is an actual purpose to be able to get into every single house!
There are a lot of buildings and houses you can get into. And all these serve a purpose. Either for a mission, Collection, Resources or a passthrough to Reach other Places, like roof tops and/or other buildings.
The houses that are not enterable are all boxed up with Wood, making it believable in the setting of this game.
Yesterday I went into the Darkzone and it was totally insane. Had a total blast. People were suprisingly civil and it I quickly had People joining my open Group and helping eachother out fighting strong and difficult NPC oponents, who try to ambush you when you try to extract Your gathered loot (causing some incredibly intense and also frustrating moments of dying and trying recover Your loot).
So we ironically died more of griefing NPC oponents than ocasional rogue players.
We even had NPC oponents spawn camping the exits of safe locations! LOL.
So far this is a suprisingly good and deep game (haven't even talked about skills, perks, weapon and gear customisation, crafting) that is going to entertain me for quite some time to come.
I hope they going to expand other parts of Manhattan through future DLC! Can't wait to, for example, explore Central Park.
I really like Hellgate, too. I still have it on my hard drive and fire it up every once in awhile.
I was referring to the author's comments that the streets were just props, that you couldn't go into the buildings and couldn't climb fences. In other words, on rails through the streets. The only buildings you can go into are ones containing quest or kill stuff. That is exactly how Hellgate was designed.
The picture included in the article could be right out of Hellgate.
As for difficulty, IIRC Hellgate was the same. Quest areas were easy early on and scaled dramatically.
So all and all, it really does sound like Hellgate London to me with a slightly different casus belli.
I've not encountered nearly the problems you describe in the review. The launch was not nearly has bad as people made out. The parkour is good enough for me, ( i don't know why they have to call it parkour (sp?), guess it sounds better ) its an agent running through a city, not a kid on you tube trying to crack his skull. I'm glad I can't access every single roach motel and waste my time going through trash. We can access enough to point us in the direction of usable items. ( anyone remember City of Heroes? How many of those could we enter?)
The game is good. The game is fun for me anyway.
These days, everyone has their own preferences. A lot of niche games out there now.
Agreed. Reviews are just someone's personal baggage (heuristic driven perception). I saw one review out after only 10 hrs of gameplay. The reviewer had only played solo campaign, was level 10, and had done nothing else. What a joke. Everyone thinks the games they love to play are good and the games that just don't "click" with them are bad. It's human nature. This game is by no means perfect, but there is no way they could put everything that people are crying about into this game.
Parkour?!! Have you ever climbed a fence with razor wire on it? There's a reason people use it. There are some places I feel like my character should be able to climb, but all in all I think they did a pretty good job. Personally I'm glad my toon can't fly like peter pan.
As far as headshots..... well I look at it this way, If every bullet that struck the head killed instantly, this game would suck. Solution: Snipe with a hunting rifle (high damage not DPS) and stack weapons stats on your gear. You can get one shot headshot kills this way.
Finally, bitching about this roll out is like complaining that your ice cream was too creamy. I was around for AOC. That was the shittiest launch ever. Spending a few hours fixing shit is nothing.
I noticed that recently you guys take a more critical approach in your articles in general, unlike some time ago when just "all games were just so great" and every written piece on mmorpg.com was more of an ad instead of a critical take on.
Due to that, at some point i only skipped over most of the reviews, features, "opinions" which for the most part have been too shy to point out flaws and tell about issues.
So to me this new drift -although probably unintended on your end- makes reviews on this site much more readable and reasonable again and i find myself agreeing to the author(s) more often than i used to in years.
Only 20 hours of story content followed by forced PvP grinding for the higher end items because you know you won't get the really good stuff doing PvE.
This game was shiny out the gate but I can tell I'll be bored out of my mind in a month. Ubish*t/Greed will kill it in its infancy.
My only gripe with the game is that you dont see other players outside of the Dark Zone unless you group up. Each area should have had up to 10 Agents or so running around to keep the feeling of an abandoned NY / few Division Agents.
There are some story missions where they require you to be out in the world completing objectives. If other agents were allowed in these areas, you basically wouldn't be able to scale these missions properly, or at all, for say, 2 or 3 agent groups that just happen to be in the same area.
I think this will change though. I think as new areas become available they'll likely open up the world a bit.
You cant have the player going around changing the story which is why you have to limit their interactive options which kills game play
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
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