TheDivision 2 presentsamuch
stronger campaign experience than
the first game, with fewer filler
missions, and better open world side
activities. Its endgame, too, is a
satisfyingly different offering to the
preceding hours,
remixing levels, making
the world feel more
alive, and escalating the
difficulty of side
activities to keep you
playing. I will say this,
if The Division didn’t
grab you at any point
during the past two
years of well-considered updates, I
don’t think this will necessarily be
the right game for you now.
It’s largely a superior version
of the same thing – tough third-
person co-op shootouts, interlocking
player skills, incremental loot
rewards, and a familiarly dry Tom
Clancy military tone.
Where it improves is in the
cadence of its rewards, pelting you
with loot and experience points fromvarioussources,andmakingthenext
upgrade feel like a natural result of
your journey through the game
rather than being arduously earned.
If you’re looking for a strong looter
shooter you can enjoy with friends in
the wake of Anthem’s
troubled launch, or you
want a mid-season
break from Destiny 2,
this will likely be a
strong fit.
It helps that the
main mission design is
mostly terrific, taking
you through a variety
of real-world tourist spots for
shootouts with the game’s three
enemy factions: the Hyenas, True
Sons and Outcasts, all of which
behave a bit differently in combat.
Enemies don’t feel as bullet-
hungry as they did in the first game,
and some of the elite enemies –
whose armour is peeled off with
gunfire – are genuinely fun to fight.
It’s a mostly great shooter, let down
by the occasional AI issue, where anenemy will get stuck on the spot, or
spend so long climbing around that
you can easily pick them off.
Each main campaign mission feels
like a real event. Given that no one
really makes linear third-person
shooter games now – here they’re
isolated parts of a massive open
world looter game – it’s easy to forget
what these kind of levels feel like
when they’re designed well.Exploding history
There’s an amazing excursion into
the American History Museum,
where there’s a (probably tasteless)
firefight in the midst of a Vietnam
recreation exhibit, complete with
royalty-free version of The End by
The Doors playing in the background.
And then there’s a gunfight in the Air
& Space Museum’s planetarium and
Mars exhibits, which for a few
minutes make you feel like you’re
playing a sci-fi shooter.
The choices of setting for the
main missions give them a lot of
flavour. The longer strongholds that
bookend the campaign, with one for
each of the three factions, offer the
biggest and most exhilarating set
pieces in the game.
As someone who’s never visited
the city in real life, Washington DC
isn’t as immediately recognisable as
the first game’s New York, barring a
few obvious landmarks.
It undoubtedly feels more alive
than the first game’s world, though,
with plenty of friendly NPCs
breaking into firefights with the
various enemy factions. It can be
exciting to arrive halfway through
a battle to turn the cause in your
side’s favour, bravely shooting
enemies in the back while they’re
distracted by your allies.
DC is also beautiful in places. The
weather effects and day/night cycles
contribute so much to the game’s
atmosphere, with the world looking
almost entirely different when
covered in rainfall, and the odd
thunderstorm making firefights
particularly dramatic.NeedtoKNow
What is it?
Co-op looter shooter
set in an open world
WashingtonDC
EXPECttOPaY
£50
DEvElOPEr
UbisoftMassive
PublishEr
Ubisoft
rEviEWEDOn
i5 8600K, 16GB DDR4,
GTX1080Ti
MultiPlaYEr
Four-playerco-op,PvP
link
http://www.tomclancy-
thedivision.ubisoft.comThemain
mission
design is
mostly
terrificA
fter 25 hours of wrestling with BioWare’s looter shooter
Anthem, it’s funny how grateful I am for the little things in
The Division 2 – stuff like being able to switch my loadout on
the fly, without exiting a mission or sitting through a loading
screen. No one’s tried to make me and three other players sit
through a boring mid-mission cutscene, either. In fact, The Division 2
barely makes me pay attention to its barely-there story at all. Great!CapiTol Thrill
thedivisioN 2 is an hour-eating and frequently
thrilling excursion into Washington DC. By Samuel Roberts
tomClaNCy’s tour Bus
Shootyourwayaround DC’s finest abandoned locations
1
whitehouse
Your base of
operations, and a
strangely boring space
to be in. Being president
is overrated.2
air&spaCe
museum
Thehighlightofthegame,
withfirefightssetina
planetariumthat’s
inexplicablybeenlefton.3
theliNColN
memorial
I’m not sure why there’s a
level set here, but it’s
surrounded by the nicest
area on the map.4
ameriCaN
history
museum
The Vietnam exhibit is the
highlight, but it’s another
level full of nice details.3142TheDivision 2
rEviEW