Tom Clancy's The Division: Review

Hello fellow gamers, today i will be doing reviewing Ubisoft's Tom Clancy's The Division Beta and my experiences over the short time the beta was open.

I will  admit I got a bit caught up in the buzz for Tom Clancy's The Division since its astonishing premiere trailer at E3, so much so that I put the game on mine most anticipated games of 2016 list. After I played a few hours of the open beta for the game on Play station, my anticipation isn't gone, but it has been dulled quite a bit.

That's not to say there weren't things I loved . The beta shows off the same kind of detailed environmental design as those initial trailers, rendering a disease-ruined and fallen world where hauntingly beautiful signs of decaying civilization are everywhere you look. I also like the game's augmented-reality style interface, which overlays paths and information neatly over the "real world," including map projections that make it easy to figure out where you are and which way to go. The mix of high-end, near-future technology and crumbling urban infrastructure is certainly visually striking

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 The online party integration also seems pretty solid so far. While you can see a whole server full of players running around and buying items in central "safe zones," individual missions are split off into smaller team-based instances. It's relatively easy to join up with friends or strangers to take on those missions in small groups and coordinate your goals on a shared map. The only quibble is that voice communication seems to be the only reliable way to communicate; there are no in-game tools to quickly highlight nearby points of interest or send quick commands and information to your team (if there are, I didn't find them).

Past those surface niceties, though, the game-play on offer in The Division beta is uninspiring to say the least. The shooting action seems to draw direct inspiration from the Gears of War series, particularly in the way you can snap behind cover and move between safe points with the press of a button. That's a fine idea in theory. In execution, though, the controls are quite a bit clunkier than Epic's high-octane shooters.

Where the Gears of War games thrive on smooth animations and transitions that keep the action fluid and fast-moving, in The Division beta I found the protagonist moved much more clunkily. Stepping out of cover, climbing onto a high surface, and rolling out of the way of bullets all felt slow and awkward, with animations that focused too long on the hero just standing there without much purpose. Even something as simple as sprinting down an empty street felt awkward since even the slightest sidestep to the left or right seems to break the sprint.

The controls are only a minor quibble, though, compared to the enemy AI on display in the beta. In just a few hours of play, I ran out of fingers and toes to count the number of bat wielding enemies who simply ran straight at me at full speed, seemingly eager to be gunned down. Armed enemies were obviously more common, but they'd often pause while dodging between pieces of cover to stand in the open and shoot back at me, relatively defenseless.

One particularly stupid "boss" encounter, at the end of a side-mission line, saw the antagonist simply bouncing back and forth like a ping-pong ball across the edge of a nearby roof, putting herself in the open with predictable frequency you could set your watch to. Sure, these are supposed to be the earliest and easiest missions in the game, and encounters may get more difficult as you go. But it's not a strong start.

Even a couple of hours in, the shooting action is already starting to feel incredibly repetitive. Every single mission so far has boiled down to "go to this point, clear the area of waves of enemies, then move on to another point," with none of the twists or high-action set pieces that keep better shooters interesting. There has been precious little variety in the enemies, almost all of which seem to be thug-like, scowling black men in ratty hoodies who are given precious little motivation by some forgettable, overly expository story scenes and voice overs. A few "named" enemies are supposed to stand out for their intelligence and toughness, but in practice they just end up being sponges that absorb more bullets before going down.

The game's RPG-like leveling and abilities structure hasn't impressed me yet either. You can scrounge downed enemies for items, weaponry, accessories, and armor, and even use scrap materials to build up a central base. So far, though, all these features feel very transnational and perfunctory, with little of the personality that makes customization fun in shooters like Fallout or even Borderlands.

The special abilities on offer in the beta so far are kind of boring, too. There's a reusable sticky explosive that's pretty easy to shoot with pinpoint accuracy, but its detonation barely fazes even normal grunt enemies. A riot shield ability is nice for moving between cover, but it limits you to a pistol when hiding behind it and was awkward to put away in the middle of a firefight. The abilities that send out radar pings to highlight nearby enemies and heal nearby party members are at least useful, if not especially novel. The menu system hints at a bevy of additional abilities, talents, perks, and upgrades that are unlock-able as you play, but none of them are available in the beta.

Those locked bits of content and the hints of a much larger world outside the city's downtown hub give me hope that The Division can grow a bit more interesting outside of this short, limited beta test. After almost three years of anticipation, though, I'm quite a bit less excited about the game's upcoming March 8 release.

Rainbow Six Siege: Review

Hello fellow gamers, If you enjoy charging aimlessly around a map, blasting away at anything that looks remotely like an enemy with the security of knowing you'll end up re-spawning about 15 more times, then Rainbow Six Siege may not be the first-person shooter for you.

But if, like myself, you're ready for a change from the usual pray-and-spray methods that feature in the likes of Black Ops 3 and Star Wars Battlefront, Ubisoft's latest offering could be for you.

Requiring patience, coordination and methodical execution, Siege is nothing short of a revelation in today's gun-ho gaming market.

Sure, it might not have a single-player campaign while the graphics aren't as polished as some of its rivals, but Ubisoft have delivered a unique game which continues to surprise and astound despite being released over a month ago.

Multiplayer is the go-to game mode, although the tutorials are very handy for introducing new players to the, ahem, Siege mentality, while Terrorist Hunt provides some fun against AI enemies.

Ten players are split into two separate teams, one attacking the objective and the other defending it.

What that objective is depends on the game mode, but whether it be a bomb or a hostage, a good time is had by all (maybe not the hostage).

First thing to know is that there are no respawns. Zero. So tact and precision is the order of the day, which is a breath of fresh air.

At the start of each round, Defenders must set up barricades, booby traps and reinforcements to make the Attackers' job as difficult as possible.

Indeed, it's a glorious ode to the much-maligned art of camping, which I was partial to on Call of Duty when I had suffered eight deaths on the trot from various overpowered Kill-streaks.

In these same 30 seconds, Attackers are able to control remote ground drones in order to locate the objective, while also having the ability to mark enemy players and reveal which special operators are in play.

Both teams have their pick of fictional characters from special forces across the globe, each one of them bringing unique weapons and special abilities to the table.

For example, Attacker Fuze can fire a barrage of grenades through walls while Defender Castle is able to replace regular wooden panels with a metal bulletproof cover.

But it's when preparations are over that the real fun begins.

Attackers must link up to find the most effective way to the objective, whether it be setting a breach charge on the ceiling of the room or rappelling through a narrow window.

The element of surprise is key to Siege – unless the objective happens to be in a very remote part of the map, there is always a way in.

But due to the time limit in each round, sometimes the best approach is an all-out assault through a main entrance, which is where team-play and communication really becomes a major decider.

A coordinated attack with other gamers can make for a thrilling firefight, but it can take just one Leroy Jenkins-type maverick to bring the operation to a crunching halt.

The action itself is great fun – every bullet counts, and just one well-placed headshot can turn a round on its head.

There is a real sense of realism, not to mention the joy of blasting apart an almost fully-destructible map.

There are 11 different maps on rotation, and the fact that each round spawns the objective in a different area keeps Siege feeling fresh despite the end-game being the same each time.

However, because a round can become a full-blown firefight at the drop of a hat, it usually makes the objective of the game irrelevant – almost every round ends up with one team completely wiped out, meaning it's pretty much just team death-match with a slight distraction. 

And like pretty much every single video game in existence, Siege does have some flaws which could drive a sane man to smash his controller on the ground.

My first thought is that there needs to be a more effective way to kick team-killers out of a match – these sociopaths seem to crop up way too much for my liking, and although a vote to kick can be initiated, the brutal and ever-changing dynamic of the game means that others on the team don't want to pause and take the time to endorse the proposal.

There is also an issue where the game can freeze for no reason at all – loading a match, reading the post-match results or finding a team to join, there appears to be no other way of fixing this other than closing the application and starting again.

I also have a habit of getting stuck on various things during a match, most notably barbed wire (which I've usually deployed) and roof-tops after a cheeky rappel up the walls.

The old Call of Duty trick which involves chucking a grenade at your feet is of no use in a game with zero re-spawns, so the only solution I've found is to go into prone mode and crawl away, which can be particularly unhelpful if you are being bombarded by enemy players. 

It also takes an annoyingly long time to earn renown, which is used to unlock new operators and gun additions as well as leveling up.

In fact, ranked matches – which I now find more infuriating than casual ones because these experienced players know every trick in the book (including firing out of windows before you've even decided how you're getting into the building) – cannot be unlocked until you reach level 20, which took around 12 hours of game-time.

However, the fact remains that the good times on Siege easily outweigh the bad ones. 

The smooth blend of stealth tactics and furious firefights keeps players on their toes, with the various operators offering unique ways to experience each map and game-mode.

Different options for Attackers and Defenders helps keep Siege's play-ability levels high, and I personally can't wait to see what plans Ubisoft has for this game in the future.