Tom Clancy's The Division 2

I’m not sure I have ever felt confused about a videogame more than The Division 2. On the face, the game is enjoyable, they nailed the point to point action and the multiplayer is the most unobtrusive and seamless a game of this ilk has been. But the bad is so heartlessly and relentlessly bad it really feels like my thoughts on this game are being pulled apart from both sides. If I were reviewing this game I don’t know what I would say, let alone what the score would be. In some ways, this game feels like the purest form of an exact middling score a game could be. The good of the game kept me coming back, even having me shelf Sekiro, a game I was/am legit excited about, but the bad parts made me eject the disc in the middle of playing the game on multiple occasions hovering over the delete function in the PS4 storage options only to realize I didn’t want to wait 8 hours for 100gb to reinstall. Honestly, if I did review the game, it ironically would either be the shortest or longest review of a game ever even though it might be the most middling game I’ve ever sunk dozens of hours in to. I suppose that makes sense in the end though, the review score that needs the most text is the score in the middle. The short end of a potential review would basically be: Hey you know what this game is, it has guns, it’s vaguely military themed, there is white/green/blue/purple/gold colored stuff that is sequentially better or more perk-filled, and you play with your friends if you want to get the most out of it. The long end of a review ends up focusing more heavily on the negative aspects of the game because the good aspects don’t really need explanation. The negatives are so grating and irritating and sometimes unexplainable that review probably reads way more resentful than intended.

Man, I’m so happy I most definitely am not reviewing The Division 2. If I were, I would be forced to exert legitimate anger towards a game that is mostly harmless in execution and bona fide excellent in combat. The gunplay feels great, and the different guns genuinely feel different. I tended to lean towards LMGs and Assault Rifles because I got a good balance of accuracy and not having to reload all the time. But also, mods are plentiful and can turn a gun that doesn’t carry enough ammo into one that carries an appropriate amount of ammo so you’re not reloading an SMG that fires off 8000 bullets in 3 seconds all the freaking time. What probably makes the action of this game the most fun though is the enemy AI not being stupid foot soldiers. They will get behind cover and stay there, they will charge you like crazy if that is the best way for them to get to you. They will get on and off of mounted turrets and any enemy will get on one if it sees fit. Some enemies have gadgets akin to yours and some have gadgets you have never seen before. The AI is smart and hard. This isn’t a roll through enemies with your buddies game, you will get mopped up in many circumstances if you aren’t deploying gadgets correctly and taking good cover spots, whether it be co-op or solo. The only complaint I can log against the action of this game is the bullet sponginess of the enemies. I don’t really care if enemies are made into bullet sponges to increase the difficulty, my only real issue here is it’s ludicrous that some spindly white dude literally wearing a sleeveless bulletproof vest and pants with a yellow name tag can take 400 LMG rounds. It was immersion breaking, not to any extreme extent, it’s just so dumb because it doesn’t make any goddamn sense. Also, it needs to be mentioned that the climbing mechanic is unreliable and often excruciating. It lets you hit circle (on PS4) to climb some things and not others. Things that look very climbable aren’t always. There are some places that have yellow to indicate a climb up or through area and some places don’t have that. I multiple times had an issue where I would clearly hit ‘X’ to get into cover and it would climb over the cover leaving me to get shot to hell. The Division 2 gives the player all the agency in the world to create something that custom fits a specific playstyle, all while making loot feel different enough and graciously spread throughout the Washington D.C. map. Player customization also extends to looks, which is where Ubisoft is looking to extend the profitability of this game. I’ve seen some complaints(?) that finding new wearables in the world is few and far between, but I personally never had a problem finding stuff. It’s just the stuff I found was mostly the same, drab colored, ultra-common hats and pants. But it also never seemed difficult to earn Field Crates which contained usually around 30 of the crate currency which you could apply to open a higher end gear crate and get some sick Purple or Gold rarity sunglasses. I have never really cared about this stuff much, but I did enjoy my dude wearing a cowboy hat for 70% of the game. While I didn’t have trouble finding different things to wear, there isn’t really much pizazz to the wearable gear overall. Nobody is running around as a clown or in hockey gear, (though I’m sure there is an Ezio costume you could buy, I didn’t check, but surely… I mean this is a Ubisoft game, that surely exists) the Gold sunglasses I got didn’t look all that different than the crappy aviators I put on my guy when originally creating him. All the clothing looks like someone raided a modern right-wing militia camp and I guess that’s apropos to the setting for this series, but it’s all dark blah stuff that doesn’t stand out from one another. Overall the wearable gear is all pretty nondescript, which is perfect for this game because The Division 2 as an entity is pretty nondescript. The environments are all pretty generic, though some of the main missions had some interesting level design. The story is laughably forgettable at best and brutally embarrassing at worst. I had to skip a couple of cutscenes as I ventured into the 20-hour range because I… I just couldn’t any longer. This is something I LITERALLY cannot remember doing in a very long time. Coupled with the environmental storytelling, it feels like the only thing this game is striving for is to not ruffle any feathers, whilst telling a U.S. on the brink story set in Washington D.C. This has become a Ubisoft special of late and it’s a bummer they can’t seem to take a narrative stance in their games that are gameplay-wise pretty darned good.

Perhaps the most notable thing about this game is the multiplayer functionality, it truly feels seamless, playing with friends doesn’t feel like a hassle, but the most intriguing function is asking or responding to help from other agents. It occasionally will pop up on the screen that an agent is asking for help with something and you can answer that call and quickly your single-player session turns into multiplayer with a stranger just looking for help. It’s a neat idea and it seems to mostly work. I also was able to just hop into groups via the clan I was in and pick up and play with a group doing a mission. The clan stuff seemed really good, with the exception that you actually don’t get access to this until hours into the game, and you have to rescue an NPC to be able to gain access to it.

I should also add that I thought this game looked straight up bad in places, playing on a PS4 Pro. I’m sure it is fine on PC, not sure about Xbox One X or the original Xbox One or PS4, but the hair looks awful at times, like borderline PS2 trying to make hair look realistic but it just looks jagged and see-through. I also noticed this phenomenon when wearing a baseball cap in particular and it was zoomed in when you are in the character screen. Some of the foliage also embraced this unfortunate look too. It wasn’t disastrous, but it was noticeable.

In my mind, the good parts of this game seem to keep tugging the rope in its favor, but in one fell swoop, the bad side pulls the flag back to the middle, leaving me inevitably destined for a stalemate. That is why I cannot review this game. This is why I take solace in anyone who has to. It seems like this game is so close to nailing this loot shooter/RPG genre, but never will get the chance to perfect the imperfections.