So I've finally gotten around to playing it. Dumped several hours into just roaming about until I nearly reached level 7. Real happy that I didn't take part in the Beta because having to re-do all that stuff would have been a real bummer. So far impressions are positive. Much like Jeff in the live Quick Look from today, I find myself enjoying it but not really having anything spectacular to say about it. "Competent" is the word that most often comes to mind and it feels like a slight in a way. The shooting is alright, but nothing special and neither is the world. Some of the main story missions had really nicely crafted level design, but the city itself (even as a New Yorker) isn't spectacular. Manhattan is built on a grid pattern, and while this is incredibly convenient in real life, it makes for rather bland videogame map design. As per Ubisoft standards there are tons of collectibles and icons aplenty dotting your screen. Robust crafting that incentivizes scavenging that promotes side content, and so on and so forth.

It's a well made game that feels good for the most part. Shooting is a little uninspired. Movement is sometimes a little clunky. Overall there is a bigger net positive than negative here, but like Austin said, it's hard to tell at times if you're enjoying the game or simply enjoying seeing numbers go up. I know that after 5 hrs of gaming, I couldn't care less about the story, what little I've seen of it anyway. My enjoyment of the game has become a mechanical one, of opening boxes and downing baddies. Playing the game even with mute strangers is also a heck of a lot more fun than by yourself in my experience.

So what say ye? Those of you who played it, was it fun? Was it different than the beta? Did you come in with really low expectations? Did it meet our expectations? Do you see yourself playing this for a long time?

I played the beta though I haven't played the full release, I wanted to wait and hear peoples opinions on it to. Whilst I had fun in the beta, it did feel like a slightly less thrilling Destiny and from what I'm reading it sounds like that's what it is.

Still, I'm interested to know what folks think.

Playing on PC, have it flipped to Ultra and it runs smooth as butter. Shooting feels good, you get a ton of loot, and I found that I would consistently find something at least slightly better than what I have equipped. I was probably driving my buddy nuts by constantly stopping and changing gear. So far (not in very far) none of the gear you can get in shops is really worth dropping money on, everything you find out in the field is better.

The world feels pretty vacant, and I guess that's sorta the point considering the plot of the game, but I would like to see other players more. I haven't messed around in "dark zones" or anything like that yet, only level 5, but the world is pretty lifeless outside of the safe zone areas.

I'm liking it so far.

Played for about 3hours yesterday, time absolutely flew. Came away very impressed looking forward to playing some more when I have some spare time over the weekend.

Even if I don't end up playing it for months on end its a really fun game and it looks amazing on PC, I put in 4 hours tonight and I am still 3 levels away from what I was in the Beta there feels like there is more going on, the progression seems tight. They also made the game harder, like significantly so and its a positive change doing the first 2 "missions" on hard threw enemies at you that offer a little challenge in spots, in the Beta all bad guys felt like pushovers.

How quickly are you going through the campaign missions?

Gamespot said data miners found x amount of them, which could total around 11 - 13 hours.

I'm probably play some this afternoon.

I mean, the side quests all have narrative components but they're not really designed for group replays (the campaign missions are definitely MMO dungeons - LFG tools and several difficulty tiers with scaling, designed for a party, about an hour long, contain at least a final boss battle) so it depends if you count those into the solo game. If you want to get all the perks from levelling then you also need to do the Ubisoft open-world generic (filler) quests that are dotted all over the map too and don't have unique story content. It's probably around an Assassin's Creed scope of game in terms of PvE-only solo content in there, maybe larger, but it's far more of an RPG with character progression & specialisation plus the loot game.

And on top of that there is this large PvP-enabled area including dozens of different small encounter-scale battles (in buildings that go from a couple of large rooms to several dense floors) with elite NPCs you can fight (landmarks in the DZ) that is more PvE content and potential for grouping, only it's with the background rules of a PvP server so watching for humans trying to gank you and take your new loot before you can post it home to secure it.

And even beyond that stuff, there are lots of mobs (with an elite who should drop some interesting loot) who do roaming patterns and guard crates (both in the PvE and PvP sections of the world) that aren't counted even as a just generic filled quests. All the while you'll also be collection hundreds of different into drops if you're into collectibles that have some narrative payload (and look to have a narrative conclusion if you collect a complete set of any intel type) and so are a bit more engaging than something like an inFamous shard hunt.

I bet you could polish off every dungeon in not that long and so get to the end of the story. But this would be a bit like asking what's the likely speed-running time going to be for the game: it doesn't really tell you how much interesting stuff there is to do in the world. Hell, I'm quite happy wandering around taking screenshots of the game running on my modest PC.

@shivoa: What system are you running it on? Curious because I ran the beta with my Matrix HD5970 and wasn't all to pleased with the performance on PC so will probably get it on PS4 if I do pick it up.

I played the Beta and enjoyed it once I figured out the Dark Zone and got a group together to terrorize the Dark Zone.

I'm currently lv 5 on the PS4 and the loot loop is real. I need more loot.

Is this the Freedom Fighters sequel everyone has I've secretly hoped for?

@golguin: I'm on a GTX760 (modest oc - after 3 years it's no longer that stable with a decent overclock and I'm waiting for Pascal/Polaris cards to replace it) + i5-2500K (locked @4.5GHz - Hyper 212 EVO making sure that's both cool and quiet) and can push most things just a bit above where they are for the medium default (1080p). Which seems to be slightly above the PS4 for visuals (and allowing me to make the trade-offs I want like sacrificing reflection quality for better shadow detail or longer draw-in distance) while still making most of the game approach 60fps (worst case some outdoor areas drop into a solid 35-40fps zone but they also are rarely the place where I'm in a firefight and want the extra precision of 60fps).

I also found (using the betas on both platforms) that I prefer the mouse (because I like to use the DMR so it's all about those headshots) which made it a lot easier to choose. Also this game looks real nice on max settings - unplayable on my current PC with those settings but possibly not when I grab a nice new GPU later in the year. I mean, it already looks pretty nice on these tweaked medium settings which is good enough for me to spend a lot of time wandering around this compressed slice of NY.

@grulet: I think this is an entirely different type of game from everything I've seen. Also as much love as Freedom Fighters gets around these parts, I dunno, it always seemed kind of bland to me. Bland enough where I never finished it. Either way I guess if instead of controlling AI you swap in real people and pretend the hoarders and such are Ruskies, then in a way, it's a very evolved form of Freedom Fighters?

Thanks duder, appreciate it. I have to admit the 60fps is a real temptation so it might be worth checking out the PC version. I'd probably use an Xbox One controller though as I'm not a big fan of playing these sorts of games with mouse and keyboard.

Just to let you know the Xbox controller works perfectly on PC, I even use it in the Dark Zone with no issues going against M+K users.

Still exactly my feelings since the open Beta. Very different games but both with a similar flow & energy on them. I would not be at all surprised if there were people who had worked on both. Still waiting for reviews but like Freedom Fighters this game looks like it could be worth more than the sum of it's parts to me.

Freedom Fighters comparison sounds odd if the only lines they cross is that it takes place in a city environment and is a third person shooter. I'd like clarification on that if its actually much more comparable...

Ha! Just noticed I said HD5970 when I actually meant HD 7970.

@machofantastico: It had me thinking, man.. AMD can really make those cards last can't they..

I've played for a few hours, done one of the beta missions and a few of the encounter filler misusing and side missions. I'm actually liking it a lot more than I would have thought. I feel like the mechanics are really sound, the loot drip is good, abilities and perks seems cool and best of all, there seems to be a genuine effort at world building here. I've never lived not visited New York before, but I guess in my head this is how it would look like if this kind of outbreak happened.

I've also found the enemies to be smarter than I thought they would be, issuing grenades to flush you out while someone moves to flank you, it's basic but better than most Ai enemies that just stay in one spot and shoot at you.

My first drop was a blue quality Cool Pom Pom Beanie and I decided that this games alright.

Something I'm really enjoying is how the RPG aspects are well designed to push you towards builds & combos and there are no locks so you're not being forced to build a spec for one character - you're slowly making it so your character can choose what she currently specs as. The order you unlock things is how your progress is gated, not forcing you to pick something and then making that the permanent bind for that slot. Don't like that weapon mod or applied a mod you do like to a weapon you're not liking? Take it back off again, remix. That ability not doing it for you? Switch up from the pool of what you've got unlocked whenever. Have on all damage gear but you're too fragile? You could move to full tank and health gear in seconds if you've brought along a spare set.

The design of the perks and abilities and talents and even the item bonuses all make me think "oh, with this bonus I could combo the crit chance with the crit stacking of that SMG I'm not using yet" or "talent for pulse on headshot plus DMG = win". It asks you in what order you want to unlock a lot of things and then makes so many of the options appealing (and while you permanently unlock perks, you're starting out with only one active talent slot to fill when you've not unlocked so many and only later will it expand out and give you more space to mix it up with several talents all enabled at once).

It all feels really well designed to not lock you down and make it a character progression about how you feel you want to explore the various things you can do. And if you get a random really cool weapon drop with certain stats then maybe you think, "hey, might as well do a quick test of rebuilding my gear/spec around this and see how that feels; experimentation isn't penalised so why not!"

It's an interesting thing. Almost RPG stuff meeting the "loadout" concept of something like CoD. I've been noticing it in a few games. Witcher 3 is actually a game that does this in a low key way. I didn't realize until very far into the game that it kind of seemed set up to swap in and out abilities this way. Before that I was super frustrated with how few slots there were for abilities.

Now that being said, I actually didn't like that choice for W3 but it was there. I think it makes more sense here.

It's a different choice but it makes a lot of sense for a MMO shooter.

Played until just past the first mission past getting access to the main base of operations. I found out by accident that mission areas are open to be explored after the mission is over without there being enemies around. Which is good when you find doors locked you want to come back to without necessarily wanting to run a mission over again.

One of the small touches I have liked is their effort to make your enemies seem human. Between audio logs of rioters disagreeing on their actions from a moral standpoint (but desperate times and all that) to enemies calling out when their friends go down. One sticks out so well in my head because it was two rioters I rolles up on. Fire fight started and I took one of them down and the other reacted with a surprisingly sad voice screaming; "NO! Why don't you just leave us alone?!"

@ravenx302: Long story short, the visual & narrative overlap between Division & 'Fighters is pretty hefty (snow, New York, common man hero, small band of fighters etc.) but it also shares a similar feel in movement, enemy type, fire arms & general bullet spongy-ness. Freedom Fighters also had a pretty MMO-ish structure in hindsight, having to revisit areas multiple times to progress in others & unlock weapons etc.

My only complaint after many hours is that the ambient dialogue from vendors and enemies repeats in the most awful way I could imagine, if I hear one more bad guy say "They got Alex" I may just scream, same with standing around a vendor they will repeat themselves 9 times in 2 minutes.

I got a question for people. Does anyone know what governs your filter level? Yesterday I unlocked a perk that gave me +1 which brought mine up to 2. I was able to explore and do a short mission in a contaminated area with a filter 2 requirement. But now my level is back at 1 and I don't know why. Any guesses?

@pezen: The stance I am taking on just.. random looters is a little disconcerting sometimes. Like yeah they would open fire on me when I got close but I'm still rolling up two dudes poking at some garbage on the side of the street brandishing multiple types of assault weaponry.

I've been playing for some hours now. About to hit level 10. So here's some random thoughts so far.

I'm really enjoying it. I'm generally a lonewolf but in this game I've found myself constantly using the match making tool to join random groups for the story missions, and putting the difficulty on hard. It 's a really challenging and fun experience. And you get much more and better loot. And the mission length is so far perfect. But please, put your mic on push to talk. It's on "always on" by default.

I've been using a marksman rifle and a shotgun and I've found it really enjoyable. The combat is satisfying, it feels great to land a bunch headshots in a row with the marksman rifle, just destroying elite enemies. somewhat like destiny in that aspect, the gameplay is what kept me playing that game, And I think it will be the same thing here. Though that brings me to one aspect I'm not enjoying as much. The side missions. They are okayish, but I feel I've seen all the different types already. Defend this package, decontaminate this area, rescue that hostage, protect this dude from some baseball bat wielding thugs. And that's about it, so far at least. But at least they are quick to finish and you know what rewards you will get from completing them beforehand (mainly resources, schematics and parts) . And as I said, I find the shooting really satisfying so I don't really mind.

The enemy/vendor dialogue repeats A LOT. It can get a bit annoying. But it's already become somewhat of white noise to me already.

I really want to like the main story, but so far it have not really grabbed me. I just don't feel that connected or involved in it. The story progression flow breaks constantly, as everything story related is so instanced. It's really jarring.

But overall I would say that so far my expectations have been met and surpassed on occasions.

The game runs really well on my 5 year old PC (expect I've upgraded the graphics card to a 770).

If you got any questions, feel free to ask!

Edit: Oh, and if you want, feel free to add me I'm Bonino_NOR on Uplay. I play on the European servers. (I'm Norwegian.)

Seems like nobody is having any server issues, I didn't preorder because I was bracing for Diablo 3 style outages have they been OK so far?

@zudthespud:

I've played for about 7 hours on the EU servers and I've not had any problems so far at least.

Played a bit this morning on PS4, it looked fine. Ton of people milling around in teh first safe area just poking around.

Impressions
- Make a character is limited. I wanted to be female, but all the female avatars where not interesting for me, so in teh end I went male...still disappointed but a beard fixed most faces. The scars and tattoos didn't impress me. Some of the Māori-style neck tattoos were interesting, but not my thing or part of my character's look.

- You start out with two serviceable weapons. Or, they work well enough, the SMG kicks a bit which will catch newbie off guard. I guess the upgrade path for weapons looks more interesting if your first weapon is too kicky.

- Pickings are slim in the world which is probably good. Yet, I managed to pick up some stuff even in the first three or four missions. I'm probably scouring for gear too much, but I like to poke around in open world games even if there isn't much to find.

- The map is neat and I like it for moving from mission to mission, a very serviceable way to have an in game map that I think we will see in a ton of game in the next five years.

- The first missions are a cake-walk which is nice since out of cover you are very vulnerable at the beginning. For me re-finding the in game menus to my character was a pain. They showed me then I forgot, so I spent 3 min just pressing buttons till I found it again. "X" being stick to cover is weird, I would have liked a shoulder button or "O"...I'm sure you can switch that. To be honest, I was pressed for time so I didn't play with the controls as much as I typically like to before playing.

Overall, I'm impressed and happy with this game in a way Destiny never could satisfy me on some level.

@monkeyking1969: This just reminded me of something:

The map: oh the map!

So the way the overworld is represented and everything is made to be a single continuous reality is kinda cool (even if some of the stuff does involve loads because their matchmaking can't merge worlds perfectly - I wonder if that's always going to be there or one of the patches will make that seamless - noted that the crew got really thrown about by this on the Unfinished) and the way I can look at Manhattan and all the icons or zoom all the way in to look at the floor plan of the single building I'm currently missioning in is good, if not the most detailed at the zoomed in level (but we do have a much better representation on the minimap for actual navigation an the GPS line, if you have that twitched on). But...

When you've just done a mission or explored some underground areas or something (I think anything but it's most noticeable when you've been milling around walking around every limit of an enclosed space) and you jump into the map and every step you've taken is represented by this thin line on the map: LOVE! That trail you leave on the map just looks really cool. It's nothing technically that hard to pull off, but I've also not really seen it done before. And it kinda looks like you're a snail who has been crawling all over a little point-cloud section of this big city map. :D

@sackmanjones: Masks that you can equip have their own level, on which the perk would stack. So, if you were wearing one that had a filter level of one, the perk would have bumped up you to two. Did you equip a different one after having unlocked that perk? If you did, it's possible that the one you equipped was a level zero, making your overall filter level return to one. I don't know how high the filter levels on the masks go on their own. I only ever found a level one version in the beta, and haven't had a chance to play more than about an hour yet in the full game.

Any word if GB going to do a review on this one?

I had a great time during the Beta and love loot games. Initial impressions seems to be matching what I expected so good chance this will be a purchase for me.

I've been enjoying it quite a bit. The world can seem a little dead/empty/hollow, but that would probably change if you were playing in a group.

I am just about finished with the first bits of the story mode (2 out of 3 sections of my base unlocked, just have security to go).

Leveling is just about perfect, not too soon, but seems to hit right when you have a new weapon or bit of gear you really want to use.

Loot is great, and I only see the need to buy something if you have bad luck and end up with an under powered shotgun for a long stretch or something. I really want the flame thrower the cleaners have, not sure its out there, but I want!

Enemy AI is surprisingly competent. Lots of grenades to prevent me from bunkering in too much and some decent flanking by some of the enemies.

Best thing I can say is I am itching to get home and play a lot more!

Jeff just said in the QL that he'll be doing the review.

The feeling seems to be that its neat but pretty meh too.

Personally, have not played much games like it, the hook of those other games not doing it for me, The Division looks like my kind of game. I have to wait til Thursday for when my copy arrives.

I have to say I love this design (and am slightly confused how this seems to be the main critical consensus so far: critics say they love the look but it's so empty).

There are places you can go to see people (endless queues of people!) but this post-apocalyptic world is pretty empty. It's got enough people to always have lots of shooting when you need it (to use those guns and feel the loot loop), but it's pretty "lots of people used to live here, now they don't, many of them are in the bags half covered by snow on the streets; also have I mentioned how much snow there is?".

I'd compare it to the Last of Us. The Division is packed full of people compared to that game. But both are pretty clearly set in a world with some order and lots of the lack of it and a whole lot of people not being alive to make a place feel busy. The intro video shows them digging up central park so they have somewhere to pile all the bodies. I really wasn't expecting there to be a vibrant street life in the game. The non-hostile NPCs who wander the streets and shout support from the windows is actually pretty high on my scale of "wow, so immunity and lack of ways to get out have stranded quite a lot of people here to survive".

One thing I've noticed in my first four to five hours is the map design, specifically the mission areas. They are clearly all carefully crafted specifically for up to four people while also giving numerous flanking opportunities. There always seems to be just the right spot to move up to, or if you need to change positions to get a shot on a guy behind cover then there is usually somewhere for you to go. There is a nice mix of small enclosed office and residential buildings as well as areas like open courtyards, construction sites with scaffolding, and a variety of other locations. The enemies, while all human, also present a decent amount of variety and different tactics that they often use against players. All of that combined with the loot aspect of the game, and I'm having a ton of fun with it. I haven't even touched the Dark Zone yet either, at least not since beta. That was even more fun than the PVE.

I started it last night and got up to level 7 today. Having a really great time playing it. The graphics are awesome. I feel like I'm getting just enough loot to be consistantly changing armor and weapons. I don't really have any problems with the game so far. Also I really don't get the comparisons to Destiny. I mean if you really wanted to compare the two I don't think it's fair to compare what Destiny is now to what Division is at launch (and the fact that these are two totally different playing games). I hear a lot of people kind of crapping on the story and honestly I like how it's been told and I'm glad there are collectibles that fill out that world. But yeah really enjoying my time with the game and can't wait to jump back on tonight.

@mike: Rather enjoyed the bit in the QL live where they entered the DZ and Jeff engaged with some of the roaming mobs and gets overwhelmed by one advancing on his position while the others in the pack held back. "Gah, this guy's running right at me!" (or words to those effect) as the advancing guy (with a shotgun or SMG, short range) takes Jeff out. "Killed by lvl 12 NPC: RUNNER."

Yep, they named those classes just right!

I played it for 6 hours today, the game seems completely fine to solo which I'm very happy about. My biggest complaint is the size of the text. It's tiny! I do not understand why games do this.

@pompouspizza:PC? There is definitely a slider for the UI text scale on PC to push it bigger. Not sure if they kept it for consoles (they seemed to keep a lot more options on consoles than many games so maybe it is still there).

@pompouspizza: There is UI scaling in the options, at least on PC. I'm playing in my living room on a giant TV and it's fine.

It's a fun video game.

@shivoa: I'm playing on Xbox One and I couldn't find any text options. I have a 40 inch TV, I don't sit that far away from it and I'm struggling.

Liking it so far. Smooth shooting, quick match making, slick interface, and nice look.

@pompouspizza: Here's what the text looks like on PC. I haven't changed any of the custom resizing options, though.

I am surprised at just how much I'm enjoying the game. It is amazing fun co-op, and I love just how many small touches of story the world has.