Three days with The Division’s beta, and I’m already eager for its full release

As of Thursday, I have already played through everything The Division beta has to offer; the single story mission on both difficulties, all of the side content (including encounters) and side-missions. I've even ventured into the Dark Zone, a PvP-enabled zone, to eliminate those pesky Rogue agents. And when The Division's beta launched on PS4, I accomplished the same things all over again; in part because I wanted to see how the two versions compare, but honestly I found the content so fun the first time around, I wanted to do it all again. I'm currently working through the PC version.

If my intro hasn't already made it clear, I like what the folks at Ubisoft Massive with Tom Clancy's The Division. However, as the closed beta isn't under NDA, that means folks are pouring in with their impressions, and they're certainly divisive. Those looking for a more traditional shooter with one-hit kill headshots are sure to be disappointed with The Division's premise, as its focus is primarily on delivering a solid RPG shooter. Much like Borderlands and Destiny, enemies spew numbers as you unload clip after clip, ever growing as you find more potent gear and weapons.

For gamers like me, seeing those numbers pop up is pure bliss, with the occasional sense of joy as you see a critical number pop up from all the standard damage numbers. Sure, at face value, it's easy for me to understand why people would dismiss this based on the fact that you're shooting regular humans. It's unrealistic for them to withstand 5 full clips from your M4 until they die; but, given the RPG nature of the game, Massive honestly couldn't do it any other way.

When Borderlands introduced the shoot and loot formula, I was hooked. Borderlands 2, Destiny, The Taken King, all have been timesinks for me because the games presented themselves as a playground for continually improving your character. And despite the content shortage that Destiny seems to have, which I'll get to later, I can't deny that it was my nightly ritual for a few months to log on with my buddies, complete dailies, run raids, complete strikes. To me, this is what I'm already seeing hints of in The Division, which has me very excited.

Now on to my experience with what the Beta actually had to offer. Surprisingly, even though the Story Mission was cool, it was probably my least favorite part of the game. Not that I disliked it, but the rest of the content was much more engaging to me. For instance, running off to an encounter where I had to activate virus scanners before time depleted, and then send off the sample to the base of operations all while under fire proved to be very tense. And even though I never felt like I didn't have enough time to complete them, knowing the timer was there made the situation feel much more urgent. Then there were the random ECHOs scattered throughout which served as storytelling devices to see what was happening during the viral outbreak.

These minute-to-minute situations are what excited me about playing the game in the first place, and experiencing this all with three other friends was just the icing on the cake. The fact that the entirety of the game can be played co-op is a big selling point, especially since the number of supported players is 4. Destiny's fireteams of 3 proved to be problematic a lot of the times since there were almost always 4 of us who wanted to play, meaning we had to then further divide into groups of two. But even if you don't have a full group of 4, the game scales the experience to make it challenging but fair. Playing a mission on hard solo versus playing with a full group is an entirely different experience.

The gunplay definitely took some time getting used to. It was tough going from something so tight like Destiny to The Division's third-person, over-the-shoulder shooting, but I'll wager a lot of that also had to do with the guns themselves. By my second day though, headshots were increasingly easier, and even though I'm not primarily a PC player, mouse aiming definitely felt the best out of the three configurations.

The guns themselves also have a bit of recoil, meaning you'll have to fire in concentrated bursts instead of unloading full-auto. The enemies are pretty mobile and use cover to their advantage fairly well, so you don't want to be wasting your ammo unless you have the perfect shot.

While I wouldn't say the enemy AI is anything special, as there are some enemies that will outright run at you with a melee weapon even though you have a fully-automatic gun point at their face, I wouldn't call it dumb either. So far I've noticed that besides using cover effectively, they'll often try to flank you from the sides.

But if it's real players you want to go up against, then the Dark Zone is a place you'll probably spend a bulk of your time in. Massive has smartly split up regular leveling from the Dark Zone by giving it its own progression, which means players won't be able to simply go into the Dark Zone and ignore the single player campaign. The Dark Zone is pretty much always tense. Seemingly nice players could wait until you turn around and shoot you down. Then there is the Dark Zone loot which is signified by a yellow bag underneath your backpack. It's pretty much a yellow target on your back, letting everyone know you're carrying loot that they could take. So what then? You have to call in a chopper in a designated spot to extract all the gear. However, as soon as you call in for the chopper, it alerts everyone on the map, which means they can either piggy-back off of your chopper to secure their gear, or to gun you down before you get to extract.

So what are the red flags thus far? Well, as far as the game is considered in its current state, I can't say that I love the inventory system. It feels a bit clunky, and there are a lot of windows to go through to get to what I want. Not that I would know how to simplify this, given the amount of gear options, mods, and vanity items you can equip, but I certainly feel a bit overwhelmed when I open my Inventory screen.

There is also a weird way the game handles progresssion when playing with others. Normally in games that allow a fully co-operative story in an open world, the host's progression will be the one the game uses as the baseline for the others. That means usually you'll want the player who made the least progress to host the game, so you can help them finish whatever you've already completed. The Division doesn't really work that way, and instead, from what I've seen, it favors the player who has completed the most. Basically the opposite. It is nice though that once you start playing solo, the game asks you whether you want to revert back to your progression, and everything you haven't done in your game becomes available again. Regardless, the former issue needs to be addressed.

The biggest red flag, which Ubisoft or Massive has yet not talked about, is end-game content. Will end-game be all about the Dark Zone and the hunt after the best loot there? Will we see raids or ultra hard missions? The end-game is honestly the one missing piece of the puzzle that will guarantee longevity. Despite knowing that Massive has a Season Pass with three large content drops scheduled for it — unless the end-game is fun and worth investing time into, I have a feeling players will drop off sooner rather than later.

But even despite my concerns regarding the end-game content, I can't wait to fully dive into The Division. I wish there was more stuff to do in the beta because I simply want to keep playing it. And while the Dark Zone stuff is enticing, I couldn't find myself enjoying it as much without a dedicated group.