With so much talk about the upcoming “Tom Clancy’s The Division”, the game was bound to either be a huge hit or a bit of a letdown, and even though many fans were hopeful for the former, recent reports from people who’ve had a chance to play around with it have been somewhat worrying. While it’s generally claimed that it does a lot right, there are also apparently some problems with the gameplay that aren’t a matter of adding extra polish or releasing patches – it could be a more fundamental problem with the game’s overall design philosophy.
Combat has been noted as particularly unsatisfying by many players, and while we don’t know how the game will look like once it hits the market, the features that have been announced for its fighting system are definitely lending some credibility to the worrying rumors. For example, enemies are particularly tough against firearms, to the point where critics have reported that it doesn’t even feel fun to try taking them down.
On the other hand, there is no melee combat and it doesn’t look like the game is going to get that feature either, so players will have to accept the fact that firearms are all they’ll be able to use, as clumsy as that system might be. Considering the setting and style of the game, it makes no sense to leave it without melee combat, and yet that’s what we have to deal with.
That’s actually a point that’s been brought up multiple times by fans. Even though the game is supposedly set in a post-apocalyptic world with scarce resources and a general theme of fighting for survival, the fact that the player is practically forced to use firearms somewhat contradicts that. Of course, the player is in a more special situation compared to others in the environment of the game, but that still doesn’t quite explain the peculiar situation.
Meanwhile, “Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands” has been getting some very strong comments from the community, and some have even claimed that the game might have stolen the thunder from “The Division”. Whether or not that’s true is early to say – there’s about half a year before the latter arrives to the market. At the same time, people are already paying more attention to “Wildlands” and have slowly started to ignore talks about “The Division”.
Some people suspected that this would happen though. There was so much hype about the game – and still is – that it would have been hard for Ubisoft to fully live up to the expectations that they set for it. The studio specifically gave various presentations about the title where they talked in detail about how great it was going to be, so obviously it’s not surprising that people now expect a fantastic release. And yet, it looks like the best they can get is a game that is at least in line with modern standards, but not really above them.
It would be sad to see this title go this way, because it certainly has a lot of potential. There are various themes that can be explored in “The Division”, both in terms of the game’s setting as well as its gameplay. Ubisoft have been quite innovative with their ideas lately as well, and the studio definitely knows how to release products that please their fans.