The Division 2
I LOVED The Division, I LOVED Ghost Recon, but for some strange reason I’m only LIKING The Division 2. Don’t get me wrong it is a visually, stunning game, something which I have not seen in over 36 years of being a gamer (yes I’m old….skool) But there is something about it, that it just hasn’t sunk it’s claws into me yet, TD1 & GRW did that from Day Zero, but something is missing from TD2, and me and my gamer friends cannot put our finger on it….yet.
The game itself is influenced by lots of others in the loot / shoot genre, you can see references to these games in certain menu’s activities etc. It’s very good but it’s not unique.
The game itself is like I said previously, visually stunning, but like TD1, it has launched with a slew of bugs and issues, that were present in TD1. We know that TD2 was in production at the same time as TD1, so it is obvious that the core code for TD1 was used for TD2, hence why said bugs are present and are exactly the same as TD1.
These bugs should never have been present in TD2, surely somebody, somewhere should have been aware of this? The bugs are being patched, and the dev teams are working very hard to deploy the patches as quickly as possible, these take time to be tested and checked through Quality Control methods and practices before deployment to the gaming public.
I have come across many, many glitches and issues, and have posted these on the Ubisoft Forums, and Ubisoft staff have acknowledged these and responded, this is why I love Ubisoft as a games company, they are superb (no matter how I feel about TD2) at interacting with the community. Julian Gerighty, Terry Spier, Hamish Bode, Yannick B., Petter M, Frederik Thylander & countless others all take time out of their working time and personal time to respond to as many question’s/comments via social media as possible, like Julian said recently on Twitter, they do it in their own time, so be nice. They cannot answer all the questions we all have, the best place to log an issue is the Ubisoft forums, trust me, when I say they do look at each post and respond when necessary.
Visually stunning, controls can feel a bit clunky at times but you get used to it, a la GRW. Washington in game is amazing, some of the detail is out of this world, some of it not. The new factions are all great as well, although I am really hoping that one day, they put the hunters in as a faction, that roam at night, just imagine running round a corner, HUD goes disrupted and BANG, a group of hunters to fight in the dark streets of Washington? Alas, I can dream I would like to believe that the Hunters will make an re-appearance in Pentagon: The Last Castle, and all those tunnels that are under the Pentagon, if you’ve seen TD2 launch trailer you’ll know how many km’s of tunnels are under The Pentagon!!
The mods have been reworked with the Tidal Basin patch, and one big bug bear that my whole clan (DirtSquadUnity) is talking about at the moment is the nerfing of the Extended Mag by 66%, that’s not a typo either, this has in our opinion made assault rifles pretty much redundant in the game, due to the constant cover, reload, fire, which you didn’t do so much of in TD1. But LMG’s still have the Large Pouch mag attachment……What I cannot understand is this, if certain weapons are overpowered i.e. the AUG in this instance, nerf the weapon, NOT the mod. No game should make you have to choose a certain weapon to take advantage of extra ammunition, they have over 100 weapons to use and none of those compatible with the Extended Mag will be used, just to have 10 extra rounds, that’s all you get, but if you run an LMG, which is the go to type of weapon, you have no issues.
The armour and health system still need’s to be worked on imo, you can run 6 firearms, 10 stamina, 4 electronic and still get taken down by a red enemy in no time at all. The enemy health and armour balancing needs adjusting, as you have different levels of Red, Purple & Yellow enemies dependent on what activity you are doing, Open World enemies have different levels compared to Dark Zone based on there bar colour, as with control points Threat Level 4 enemies, they are like super soldiers on steroids health wise.
One thing that has irked me about TD2 is you have different activities in different world tiers for example, World Tier 1 you got settlement blockades, which was a nice addition to the game, albeit a very short activity, something new is ALWAYS good, the aerial drone was another great addition, both of these activities could have been put into WT5, but so far, no sign of them, which is a shame.
The menu’s are great, completely redesigned, although some sub menu’s have been added that were not present in TD1, that seem pointless and redundant, there are lots of bugs, but again these should be fixed and patched over the coming months.
Now, the recalibration station in the BOO, where do I begin, man that is confusing as hell, certain weapons can be recalibrated, certain ones can’t, an example, when calibrating a Model 700 Sniper, every single sniper that I have in my backpack, when I go to transfer the talents or attributes, they ALL have the exact talents that are currently on my Model 700, so I cannot transfer any talents or perks to it, as it already has the talents that 7 different sniper rifles has??!! Really, I’m hoping this is a glitch / bug, it’s as if the recalibration station is just mirroring what the Model 700 has on it and a potential bug is not showing the correct talents from the 7 different snipers, I don’t know but we will see. In my opinion the recalibration table needs to be simplified as it makes no sense at the moment to me. Make it like Destiny, you have to have a higher weapon or gear piece before you can transfer stats etc.
The story is great albeit a little short in terms of hours, but I have a feeling they may follow Destiny’s route and release more story emphasis in the Episodes that are upcoming.
Yes, we are getting 8 man Raids, ask anyone in the gaming community, “what’s the first thing you think of, when I say Raids?” I’m quietly confident 80%+ will say Destiny. So, I don’t understand why they are not called Incursions, like in TD1.
The game itself is a great game, it can go on to be an amazing game, you must remember it is in its infancy stage, and no piece of software has EVER launched with no issues…..name me one LOL!
Finally, TD2 can go on to be as good as TD1 1.8.xx, I just hope we don’t have to wait nearly 2 ½ years to get it there…..
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