The Division Review

Hmm, Black Friday aka “The Most Chaotic Day of the year”. A day in which so much money changes hands and merchandise is bought it is “Christmas” for business owners. Sadly for the world within, The Division, a world crafted by the late, great, Tom Clancy, Black Friday is now known as Day Zero. The day in which the virus broke out and ravaged the entire New York City metropolitan area. You're now one the many sleeper agents activated with the simple task of reclaiming back the city, finding out what happened to “Wave One”, and discovering the origins of the virus. Grab your go-bag and get out there!

I feel like The Division has some of its gameplay elements taken from other fellow Tom Clancy games like Ghost Recon with the advanced weaponry, Splinter Cell for it’s not very obvious “Last Known Location” mechanic, and Rainbow Six Vegas 1 & 2 as they utilize the cover based system, tagging systems, and usage of gadgets to kill enemies. This game is taking the formula and places them into a fairly solid MMORPG format and man is it enjoyable if you ask me. I clocked in numerous hours in the Alpha and both Betas and have logged in about 3 days of playing time in the full release, I have been having enormous amounts of fun running the streets of Manhattan assisting desperate citizens with my scavenged supplies, exploring contaminated zones, finding ECHOs, as well as slaying enemies out on the streets, inside the iconic Madison Square Garden and the UN Building (just to name a few places), collecting loot, purging the Dark Zone, and kicking ass and taking names! It's all been a rush for me, so much so, that took off a day from work and even ignored my girlfriend for 3 days, just so I can fully delve into the world and explore until my heart’s content.  

So I'm going to tell you my likes and dislikes about this game without sounding too much like a biased fanboy.

Let's start with the bad:

Early game is pretty much simply run and gun, this is so you can get acclimated to the game mechanics, but the AI feels a bit “dumb” as they lack tactical usage.

I hate the forced walking zone when you first enter into the Base of Operations. I don't understand why I can't just run through that area to get inside and get to what I want to get to.

Restock crates in the world don't restock your health packs, only in your base of operations, safe houses or Dark Zone checkpoints and safe houses.

Fast traveling to the base of operations places you across the street from the entrance and not inside your base.

When in a party you can't see your allies inside your base of operations, but you can see everyone at the initial starting camp and have the ability to recruit other players to join up with.

Extractions should allow for more than 4 people to extract items, at least 6-8 (unless this is upgraded in higher areas).

How easy it is to be baited into going Rogue with people diving in front of you as you’re trying to kill a boss.

The Phoenix coin nerf (at the time of writing)

Not being able to inspect players gear.

The bosses are just slow moving bullet sponges that don't utilize much tactics, just rely on the heavy damage they dish out.

No real boss variety they usually just hide in cover (both mobile and stationary), have HEAVY shields, increased damage, or lots of more annoying mobs. There’s no multi-tiered system where they respond to you different when they lose shields or when they’re being pushed back. Hope to see more variety like when you fight Gen. Bliss in the future.

Now for a decent list of good things:

Lots of loot to find in game, from crates found in the world, the guaranteed item after completion of a quest; drops from enemies; rewards for helping citizens; buying them vendors; stealing them from players in the Dark Zone, and end-game dailies. There’s many of ways to get good gear.

4 man parties AND matchmaking for BOTH free roam, missions, and DZ..

Good in game chat system.

Mods, who doesn’t enjoy making their favorite weapon (for the time being) more bad-ass by decking it out with the things you want to have. I usually slap a silencer on everything so I don’t pull aggro when I’m in the field.

Story missions feel like epic instances or dungeons. They’re multi-layered and are engaging and fun.

Talents on gear, this is standard in an MMO but it’s nice to get a good weapon or gear with some good stats and extra talents to make you more unique, but be ready to yell at the Gods of RNG to get that “perfect” roll.

Fast traveling to a party member, which is a clutch remedy for going to new places you haven’t touched yet and when you get stuck.

Detailed overlay of base at the entrance. I like that you can see a overall percentage of how much of your base is unlocked and such, still hate the SUPER SLOW walking speed.

Seamless transition into the story missions. You don’t have to wait at a loading screen to get into story missions because they’re fully interactable. For example, for the MSG you just walk up to the door and the charges blow out the boards and you can then proceed to clearing out the enemies.

Not a lot of loading screens; only time there’s a loading screen is when you’re matchmaking and you have to move to the host’s instance; loading into the game or when you’re fast traveling.

Weapons react differently; you can’t expect to shoot an assault rifle accurately at long range as you could a marksman, just like you can’t expect to have a high success rate of hip firing with an LMG as you would an SMG.

Skill flexibility, I love the fact that you can change your skills on the fly (granted they’re not on cooldown) to allow you to change tactics on the fly when need be. This helps allow anyone to swap into the role they deem fit or is needed without having to have multiple alts (unless you enjoy making those).

Lots of cosmetics, which you can view in real-time and show off the new digs to friends or even work on coordinating with each other and feel like you’re apart of a guild or something.

I could possibly continue this pro and con list for a long time but let's get to more interesting tidbits about the game.

The game play is up first. The Division feels like a revamped version of the cover system you see in Rainbow Six Vegas 2, which is another Tom Clancy high action third person cover shooter, but has to slow itself down being that it has to be balanced due to no ability to change difficulty. The movements feel nice, the moving to cover is good looking as well. I wish however that the vault animation was a bit more fluid and realistic. It's weird seeing your character only at times jump over things like an actual human, with their free hand supporting weight as they vault and then when they drop from high places they don't roll out to reduce damage? I mean they are trained agents, you'd figure they would know how to roll out to reduce impact on their knees. The way they move with their weapons is nice to and the running is nice. I do hate that armor feels practically useless being that you're mainly going to negate or mitigate damage is by being in cover, but if you get outside of that, you practically get chewed up faster than the mobs do, especially on HARD. That does break realism especially being that we are wearing armor after all.

Graphics are gorgeous on console, hop into the visual options and ramp “Sharpen Image” to 100 and enjoy the game.  Of course they shall glisten and pop even more on the pc due to texture files being able to be manipulated and I can see pc with a 4k patch within a year, but overall they do well. I enjoy the attention to detail that's provided in the game. I love watching the fires and then seeing things frozen over after a wicked random snowstorm blows in and changes everything.

There's a good amount of content offered in game that can entertain a casual player for about a good solid hours but once you hit level cap of 30 in pve; complete side missions; run the story missions on NORMAL and HARD; work towards the level cap of 99 in the DZ (granted you don't die too much) you hit the typical grind for better gear drops, phoenix credits from bosses (if level 30), and/or money to enhance weaponry and gear. This can be a bore for most gamers who don't see the appeal in grinding, though that's to be expected in any MMORPG with loot and shops. There is an abundance of collectibles to find, they give a little experience and some lore that can be overlooked except by the most dedicated of players who want to learn everything they can about the game world.

Overall The Division does a decent job at filling a void that was left by Defiance, Destiny, and Firefall, for me. It could be because of the more realistic approach to the genre and the fact that I'm a resident of the state of NY. It could be because I'm a fan of the games of the TC franchise, but from playing the game I see myself playing this for a good while until they run out of substantial content, which I don't see happening for the foreseeable future. The game plays nicely, and I've been enjoying the fact of leaving my mark upon the history of the desecrated NYC and saving lives by taking them, yeah I know super cliche.

Firefall: Razor's Edge

Most people have only heard of Red 5 and their flagship MMORPG Firefall due to the whole fiasco of their employees not being paid, but let's switch gears to something more positive and enjoyable. The new expansion to come out, Razor's Edge. To be quite honest the word "expansion" doesn't even really give the proper emphasis on what they actually did to the game, so we'll call it "Reconstruction". For the last few years the game itself was nothing more than a decent open world shooter, but it lacked much content besides farming resources from the planet via giant machines called, Thumpers. They did start to add in story elements but they felt rushed and smack together and lacked enjoyment. Now enters update 16, Razor's Edge, this update brought a lot of new things to the table and gives me hope of seeing Firefall become a proper enjoyable open-world third person shooter MMORPG that they had sold to many people oh so many years ago. Let's begin the breakdown of this newest update.

Pros: 

- A much better structured story-line
- Weekly/Daily bounties
- Endgame raids (Titan Hunts)
- Gear variety
- Classes feel more polished and balanced
- More frequent dynamic open world events
- Mods
- Upgrading feel worthwhile

Cons:

- Still quite a few technical/graphical issues
- Cut-scenes are out of sync at times
- Campaign quest unlocks are not properly implemented and explained
- No crafting until further notice
- Silent protagonist

Story: 

The story has had some overhauling as of late, soo much so that even high level players, such as myself, had to restart the entire campaign from the beginning. It's a nice take on reintroducing the story, but I do have one gripe with this move, the missions drop your level to fit within the level range and thus also drops gear at that level (which is otherwise useless). The story goes as you play the silent protagonist known as, Ares 35, and you're subordinate/handler, Aero, must be connected to your thoughts somehow being that you never utter a word of dialogue in game. She just seems to know exactly what you're thinking and says it for you. The main focus of the story is that there's an alien storm called, The Melding, that has been covering the planet and it's up to you to help push it back by defeating the alien race known as, The Chosen. The story comes off as your basic hero storyline, but Red 5 does through in some creative flair to keep the story from falling flat due to boredom. They've even managed to have some pretty memorable characters sprinkled in the story too, which is a very good thing in an MMO's story to have.

Gameplay:

The one thing that Firefall has kept well polished is the gameplay, whether you're shooting Chosen or whatever decides to trigger hostile on you, the guns feel good when you tap the button and watch their health drop. The movement is also pretty good and the environment uses the vertical and horizontal spaces very well. Your jetpack allows you to reach high places and has enough charge to get you up to a decent height before running out. The gliding is a lot of fun, especially if you can get up to a very high elevation, you can glide for a good 2-3 minutes, real time. The physics in the game for gliding and falling are also pretty realistic, if you come in too fast and crash  your glider, you can die or suffer massive damage, the same can be said about falling from high locations too. The driving aspect could still use some work, being that the vehicles are soo bulky it's a pain to drive them to fast because they're quite horrible with turning. The AI in the game could still use some work, because really all they do is run at you and shoot, then run away, then return back. Higher level enemies only have larger health and increased damage. This "bullet sponge" seems to be the most common way to deal with "difficulty" scaling it seems in this genre.

Content:

As with any MMOs the story isn't the only thing that most people join in a game for. As to be expected there is a fair decent amount of content packed in this game. Of course you can follow the campaign which does offer a mix of instanced missions and "overworld" missions.

You can run the challenge missions (once they're unlocked) to have a chance at getting some better gear. This mode can be played at it's unlock level, or you can go "Hardcore" which is only for level 40+ players.

You have bounties which come in 3 flavors, Quick, which are easy bounties to claim, but give very little items; Daily which require a bit more work and give some green or higher drops, and then you have Weekly which need more work and give you some blue or higher drops. Once you complete a bounty, you gain "Bounty Points" that stack up to a final cap of 10k "Bounty Points". Once you hit the mark, you unlock an epic chest with some really nice goodies hidden inside.

You also have ARES Missions, which are pretty much like dailies with some story to them at times.

You can run around and do some Wandering Missions, or stumble across a dynamic mission that can alter the area of the overworld, if left unchecked.

Titan Hunt is Red 5's take on raids in which you slay a Titan level beast in search of some of the best loot in game currently.

But if your need to slay others is more your style, you have access to both open world pvp and instanced pvp to whet your appetite.

Overall:

I feel that Red 5 is definitely making moves with Firefall in the right direction. I do hope that they keep adding in things to make the game more fun and hopefully even change up the meta from the dull resource grind and frame leveling. I do hope they continue to advance the story in more original ways to keep it engaging and keep the content flowing. So with that said, if you're looking for a pretty fun sci-fi third person shooter with some good gameplay I would recommend giving Firefall a shot. It's a free-to-play game, so you don't have really anything to lose by giving it a whirl. Just make sure you take your time in the game and learn the mechanics and KILL EVERYTHING that turns red on your screen, chances are it will drop something useful and give you experience (which is also useful). Good luck out there Ares 35!

Brawlhalla Beta Review

An enjoyable PC (soon to be on the PS4) brawler that embodies the thrill and excitement and creates a great game to play with friends both locally and online.

Pros:
- Great gameplay
- Expanding roster
- Good map selection
- Local co-op
- Native controller support
- Variety of game modes

Cons:
- Bots difficulty is to easy even on "Hard"

Graphics:
A visually beautiful game that has a great art style, with a great level of detail and polish. This is displayed from the character models to the map design.

Music: 

Each map has its own unique song associated to it, and fits the "theme" of the map as well.

Content:
Large roster that will continue to grow (had 3 new champions added in since I've been playing), nice amount of maps, various game modes for offline and custom, along with ranked and unranked online.

 

Gameplay:
An amazingly well crafted game that shows that an indie company can craft a great brawler to contend with the giants. The game runs smoothly at 60 FPS, rarely experience lag, and the online community is enjoyable. It can be deemed a more competitive game with the Ranked system that allows for Singles and Doubles matches to be played and you work your way up from Bronze up to Diamond.

Overall:
If you've been looking for a PC game that does have some influence from the larger games in the genre (i.e. Super Smash Bros.) I'd definitely suggest you give it a shot. It's free to play, but it does have a cash shop to buy champions, skins, and colors. They do have a similar package to SMITE in which you drop $20 you get all current and future characters that are released. So if you want a good competitive game that does have some influences from Super Smash Bros and don't want or have a Wii U, this is a GREAT alternative to pick up.