After three years of waiting, the highly anticipated Tom Clancy’s The Division is finally set to be released on March 8. Originally, this game was introduced during Ubisoft’s E3 press conference in 2013, but was delayed time after time due to the fact that the game simply wasn’t ready. Preordering the game allowed guaranteed access to the BETA, which began on Jan. 28 for Xbox users and Jan. 29 for PC and Playstation users, and it ran through Feb. 2 allowing players to get a first-hand look at the game and possibly identify any potential bugs needing to be fixed before the official launch.

This online third-person cover based RPG takes place in New York City after a smallpox virus was released and spread on Black Friday causing the U.S. government to shut down within five days depriving survivors of food and water. The player is an agent of the Strategic Homeland Division, or the Division for short, whose ultimate goal is to control the erupting chaos and bring back order to society. The player is tasked with locating the source of the virus and working with other Division agents to combat the threat caused by the virus outbreak. The Division reminds me of games like Uncharted or The Last of Us with its core mechanics. Taking cover is a big part of the game allowing the player to avoid taking heavy fire and losing health, and the shooting mechanics are very realistic like in those other games mentioned above because of the severe recoil to most weapons and ammo that must be found and looted.

Progression in this game grants experience points and money, allowing the player to customize their character’s appearance, learn new skills, and upgrade weapons and gear. The skill system in this game is comprised of three skill specs – Medical, Security and Tech . These are the healing, tank, and damage classes of the game. Each of these specs has unique skills that are unlocked via missions located in the Medical, Tech, and Security wings in the player’s Base of Operations.

This game, along with having huge PVE elements apart of it, has an equally if not larger PVP element – The Dark Zone. The Dark Zone is the evacuated area of New York City that was hit hardest with the virus. This area is a competitive player versus player zone with high-tier weapons and gear and other valuable items able to be obtained. These items are contaminated and the player can only keep them by extracting them through a helicopter transport. This is where the competitive element comes into play. After discovering contaminated gear, that gear is able to be taken by other players should they decide to kill you, and to extract the contaminated gear, the player must shoot off a flare notifying every other player in the Dark Zone that the helicopter is inbound. Players in the Dark Zone can work together in a group or even remain neutral, but if they decide to attack another player to steal their gear they become a Rogue agent for a certain amount of time. This means that any other players can see that they are Rogue and decide to take them down denying them of the gear they stole.

I did pre order this game and got to try out the BETA, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The game seemed well crafted with great graphics and smooth gameplay and left me wanting to continue playing it. Granted there was only one playable mission along with  the PVP Dark Zone area, I thought the Division was very fun, and I’m really looking forward to the full game being released in about a month.