KSI Game Preview: “Tom Clancy’s The Division”

After a virus pandemic suddenly showed up in New York city during the anticipation of Black Friday, it turned the city into a ghost town. Welcome to Tom Clancy’s The Division, a RPG/adventure game that puts you as a highly trained solider operating as part of the Division.

Every RPG has character customization, where you get to make the character that you will play with the rest of the game. In the Beta, this feature is unavailable, but when the full game releases on March 8, 2016 for the Xbox One and PS4, it will be fully operational.

Much like H1Z1, Day Z, you roam around the city going house by house to gather gear, weapons, and other means of survival for your people to thrive.

In these travels you may encounter survivors that will ask for assistance, or the classic gangs that are “shoot on site” kind of people. This is where you can make decisions because you can either fight these people and take their goods that could make you stronger, or walk away empty-handed and hope for the best scavenging.

Since this is in the Beta stage, only the first couple missions are available to play, but while doing so it gives you a good feel of the combat. It is a third person/over-the-shoulder game like The Last of Us and the combat reminds of Gears of War.

Hitting the ‘A’ button will put you into cover as you battle for your life against these gangs. Even though this game is in the Beta stage, you can still have fun mindlessly roaming around the main city just scavenging especially if you are with friends. You can get up to three friends into one session to help you take back the city of New York.

The best part about this Beta release isn’t just in the campaign, but in the multiplayer. This game has the most fluent entry into multiplayer; it basically requires you to walk into one door into a safe room, then another door into the Black Zone where the online experiences begins.

Welcome, to the Black Zone.

The Black Zone is located in the middle part of New York City that is completely sealed off by walls. This is a cool concept because the multiplayer and the campaign are in the same map, just a simple wall away from one another. The Black Zone is full of the most dangerous gang members, quarantine zones, and other online players.

PVP is enabled when interacting with online players but it is not required. Everyone has a clean slate every time you respond but if you decided to go haywire and shoot other players; you become rogue. When rogue, other players will hunt you down at all cost to get a “bounty” for killing you.

Another feature about the Black Zone is the quarantine zones, which is where you can find special crates that contain valuable materials. This can included gear, weapons, Dark Zone Credits, and anything else needed to keep you alive.

One of the most action-packed things in the Black Zone is the extractions. Gear gathered in the Black Zone isn’t allowed to be taken back into campaign on foot because it is highly infected. To cure this, you signal a helicopter with a flair at designated points to come pick the stuff up go through a decontaminate process. Everyone wants to extract their items so everyone moves to that location. What happens next is up to them. Will they shoot everyone to steal their things? Will they leave you alone? Or even will they slowly follow you and kill you in the alleyway?

That’s why rule No. 1 is to bring friends with you to the Dark Zone.

So in the end, even though this game is in Beta form, it still is so addictive to play and strive for the extra gear to survive. This game has had so much hype and it does not disappoint by only showing a small portion of the game in the Beta. I would recommend this game to anyone who likes the post-apocalyptic environment setting and anyone who likes the freedom that the game gives you.

The game launches on March 8th on Xbox One and Ps4, so make sure to pre-order your copy to stay, and prepare for anything and everything.