Be Excellent To Each Other

I'm firmly in the camp that while this looks excellent, it's not for me.

Tom Clancey is continuing in the tradition of putting his name on games that don't interest me.

As he's been dead for almost three years I don't suppose he minds much.

Good job he won't notice that I spelt his name wrong either.

In that case I call shenanigans on this being called Tom Clancy's The Division.

It's like how you can still buy Bernard Matthews turkey escalopes, I saw them in Shoprite before, and yet he's dead so he clearly isn't making them so it's all LIES.

As for The Division, one of my PC spod chums who's bought the game is currently online and playing WoW (according to the sinister spying battle.net client), which doesn't exactly strike me as a ringing endorsement for the brand new MMO/RPG/SHOOTER thing he's just bought, considering he's had his WoW account for over ten years and it's at the arse end of its current expansion, and that's the game he's choosing to play, instead of The Division.

I noticed and found it quite upsetting on Tom's behalf and that of his bereaved family.

I've seen some breathtaking substitutions of anecdote for data in my time, but that really is something quite magical.

I'm just working with what I've got, which isn't much.

We know mate, we know.

And somehow we've all just gone and bought the £69.99 GOLD EDITION off Steam with a view to enjoying multiplayer hijinks on Saturday.

Not sure what's happened there then....

Currently 62% though the 36GB download.

I shall report back as to it being GOOD or BAD or SOMEWHERE INBETWEEN.

Man, you just never learn a lesson do you? If you turn up later on moaning about the DLC we should just ban you.

EARLY IMPRESSIONS:

It looks fantastic and plays nicely enough, I'd call it a 'competent cover based shooter', but the gunplay is rather unsatisfying as the enemies are indeed dreadful bullet sponges, at the minute I'm running to an SMG clip per baddy which feels plain wrong. (Ammo is generous but I ran out of primary ammo at one point and had to switch to sidearm, at which point it became plain daft, BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG am I even hitting them? Oh yes their health bars are going down a little bit.)

Mission structure is fairly standard stuff, run somewhere, kill the baddies, collect something, or mark some crates for extraction, run to the next objective, then go back to the safe house to turn the 'quests' in. Loot is dropping with decent regularity and it automatically puts it into the right 'slot' in your inventory screen, so just compare the numbers and put the thing on with bigger numbers.

Obviously I'm not far into the skill trees but you can see how it'll pan out with different character builds that should synergise nicely in multiplayer.

Audio design is fine but nothing is making my ears dance with delight either.

I must stress it is mega-pretty, definitely a 'next-gen' looking game rather than last gen with a few extra shinies.

Controls are intuitive enough, I'm playing with K+M but I'd imagine it all translates pretty well to a gamepad.

Thusfar it's been very po-faced, it seems to take itself dreadfully seriously and the dialogue is somewhat tedious, maybe it'll get more interesting.

Overall it feels like exactly what it is, a big-budget ZOMG TRIPLE AAAAAAAA GAME that's going to do everything competently and by the numbers to give it as broad an appeal as possible and tick as many boxes as it can to keep everyone pleasantly content but not exactly ecstatic either.

I should note that up to now I've been doing it all solo and not been struggling, the real point of us getting the game is for multiplayer shenanigans on Saturday, and maybe the game will shine more in that scenario.

So yeah, it's fine, I'm having fun with it - but it's not come out swinging and made me think 'WOAH THIS IS AWESOME!' like Borderlands 2 did, for example.

I have a level of concern that I wouldn't be able to crash my way into a firefight in a bus. That's a feature that I tend to require in order for shenanigans.

I assume you can still steal a Titan, yes?

Decent chunk more playtime and I'm rather starting to like this now.

Turns out that the trick with the BULLET SPONGE BADDIES is to get close to them, like, as close as you dare doing the 'cover hop' moves, and then opening up at close range, which affords you something approaching a reasonable kill-rate with your primary weapon.

I've also now heard a couple of attempts at humorous dialogue (which weren't very funny but at least represented an effort), been customising my character a little bit more, getting into the flow of the game and working the cover mechanics - it's not bad at all.

The nicest thing I can say about the UI is that it works and you can get to everything alright, but it's far from elegant or intuitive in many regards.

Me and the chaps are co-ordinating Saturday night's upcoming play via our WhatsApp group so I've already created an alt and played through to the first main hub which opens up a load of missions, you can do that in about 40 minutes if you crack on a bit - and it's there that we'll start our group play on Saturday. (I've already pressed on ahead with my other character, but as per back in the WoW days we'll always have varying numbers of characters that we play through the game with at our own rate and in our own time mostly solo, but we'll keep a set of characters all at the same level for our group play sessions.)

But yes, overall, not too shabby.

Just put a three hour session in on this with the chaps, it's a really good multiplayer game.

Everything scales perfectly - more enemies, different tactics, they try and flank you, they use a greater variety of offensive abilities, you really need to work together as a team, talk about who's doing what, focus enemies, all that good stuff - and some of the bastards hit really hard.

We didn't have one outright death the whole session, but we did have to get a few revives in and quickly discuss tactics on the fly (we've been playing online as a group forever so we're pretty well tuned in to each other and are 'fairly good' at this sort of thing, so we genuinely welcome a game that's prepared to kick us about a bit if we get too gung ho, which this game does).

The instancing is very transparent, so when you go into your 'Base Of Operations' for example you can't see anyone else in your group, and even out in the alleged 'open world' it's just you and your group, so it's really not a traditional MMO in that sense. (There are a few proper 'group hubs' where you'll see all other players, but they're basically safe neutral zones unless you go out into the PvP Dark Zone, which we haven't done yet.)

Overall though, a really good game session, we didn't encounter any bugs or lag or any other gremlins, and the loot seems to work on a 'personal basis' so you can all loot the same things and get whatever was in there for you so no need to worry about pinching loot from your mates.

The only issue is maybe the standard MMO 'admin and busywork' that's required to sort through the haul from a mission, pick the best weapons/armour/mods/etc, junk/sell everything else, pick your talents and skills, and progress the story campaign with all the waffle and cutscenes, when all we really wanted to was to get out and start shooting the baddies up again - but that's more down to the genre than anything wrong with this game in particular.

We reached a natural cut-off point (completing the three main Base Of Operations missions and anything else we encountered on the way), and we'll just do all the admin stuff between now and our next session playing together. We've all got other chars on the go as well so we can get into the nitty-gritty of the skills and talents and what-not with them and then bring that experience back to our multiplayer sessions.

But yeah, overall, really good. Not a bad option at all for you folks who do BEEX gaming sessions IMO.

Decent single player game, great multiplayer game.

Whilst this game isn't fantastic it is keeping me playing, it's very easy to log in and end up playing for a couple of hours, just working your way around the map mopping up the (very similar) missions.

The 'admin' side of things, constantly rifling through your backpack to compare stats on items and equip the best gear is a lot clunkier than how, for example, Borderlands 2 handled a similar system.

Plus you've got all the various vendors (weapons, gear, mods), and the crafting system as well which requires collecting bits of tat from around the world, or disassembling redundant weapons, gear and mods into bits of tat to make slightly better weapons, gear and mods.

You need to keep on top of this shit as well, if you're using a loadout that's a bit behind the curve for your level and the baddies you're facing, the bullet spongey-ness gets tiresome.

On the flip side of this, I crafted myself a nice marksman rifle and modded it out with complimentary additions, and I can reliably one-shot standard baddies with a headshot, which are easy to get thanks to the nifty scope I have on it.

The gunplay is fine, and as I'm unlocking more of my base the talent/skill system is coming more into play, lending each encounter a pleasant tactical edge. The various audio diaries and 'echo' things around the map are an interesting addition which I'm enjoying finding and listening to.

The writing in the game is generally fine but also wildly inconsistent, as Zero Punctuation makes reference to in his video.

Overall, it's fine, although I suspect it'll probably be better in a year after all the road-mapped DLC is in place. We've got another multiplayer session coming up tomorrow which I'm looking forward to.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/ ... ion-Review

AAA gaming there ladies and gentlemen.

Well I don't want to oversell it as it really isn't a ZOMG AWESOME game IMO, I think the reviewers who are pegging it as a solid 7/10 or 8/10 territory are calling it about right.

I don't think anyone would be horribly disappointed by it either, as long as you know it's very much a 'genre piece' and aside from the graphics doesn't really break any new ground.

Definitely gets a chunk better if you're teaming up with friends to take it on though.

So does basically very game, to be fair.

Oh I dunno, we all thought Borderlands 2 was a mess in multiplayer despite giving it several Saturday night cracks of the whip. In the end we all played the game through solo, and then did it all again solo in TVHM mode.

It was all too easy to miss dialogue, bits of quests, quests being picked up and turned in, the scaling of the enemies didn't feel right (sniper rifles stopping popping heads open with one shot for example) - and so on.

BL2+DLC is one of my favourite games of all time, but as a single player experience.

Yahtzee on form for this one:

A good multiplayer session on this last night, we grouped up and went into the DARK ZONE, which is the PvP-enabled area of the game, and where all the baddies are higher tier (and lots of them too, you need to be careful to engage one pack at a time), but the rewards are better too. (Drops are largely blue quality or better.)

Also, you can only hold eight items of 'dark zone loot' at a time, at which point you need to get to one of the extraction zones, call in a helicopeter, defend the point for a couple of minutes (waves of baddies assault the position), and then when the helicopter arrives you hook your loot onto a towrope thingy and off it goes - at which point the loot is secured in your private stash back at your base.

As it's PvP players can attack each other at any time, but extractions are particularly dangerous because it shows up on the map for everyone, so you become a target for other players because they know you're trying to get your bags of loot out. If they kill you, they can take your loot. (Attacking another player marks you as ROGUE so you basically get a price on your head, as such it isn't a total free-for-all with everyone killing each other indiscriminately just for the sake of it.)

We didn't have any problem on that front but we were moving around as a group and were in our own level range of 15-19, so it's not like any Level 30s could come along and plunder us. (It shards the Dark Zone off into 10-14, 15-19, 20-24, 25-30.)

Once you've got your eight items of loot extracted you can then repeat the process, up to a maximum of 30 items at which point you have to leave the Dark Zone and return to your base, where the 30 items will be waiting in your stash. You then need to clear the space in your stash which then frees it up for your next foray into the Dark Zone.

It's a well constructed, tight, tense game mode, far more like a standard tactical group shooter than the MMO/RPG style of the rest of the game world, that really rewards group play, it's also pretty tough, we needed plenty of resurrections and had a fair few outright deaths as well, although no total party wipes. The loot you gather is then usable back in the rest of the game so your character will be more pimped out when you go back to solo questing style play.

I watched the Yahtzee video and there are a lot of valid points in there for sure, but overall I think this is a good game. Not mind-bendingly awesome but solidly playable and engaging in single player, and a real blast in multiplayer. (I'm up to about 30 hours of playtime in total.)

The first wave of new content is coming towards the end of April, including the first 'incursions' (think dungeons in WoW), so the slowest levellers of us need to get our characters to Level 30 and nicely geared for those. (A couple of the chaps already have high-geared 30s and are using alts for our Saturday night groups, but me and one of the others are taking things at a slower pace and our highest level characters are only 17.)

So yes, overall, quality stuff. I suspect those giving it a try won't be disappointed.

Sounds very much like Destiny, and I've only got room for one game in my life like that.

I am elevating this to an Officially Good Game As Endorsed by Hearthly, which is like, the Oscars of the videogame world.

I'm now Level 27 so not far to go to the level cap of 30. The first major patch hit yesterday which had loads of bug fixes, tweaks, and improvements - but also introduced the first new wave of content as well, all of which is for Level 30s so I haven't done any of it yet, as such I'm still talking about the 'base game' as it were.

There is a lot of 'copy and paste' in the mission structures (for the side missions at least), but each zone has unique story missions (or campaign missions if you prefer), complete with dialogue, cut scenes, and general advancement of the plot, and they also feedback into your main base of operations which you can gradually bring back online across the three wings of MEDICAL/TECH/SECURITY. (As you bring these back online bit by bit, you get talents, skills and perks for your character to choose from.)

I hit one fight in a story mission last night that I simply couldn't do with my existing character build, but got past it by trying different talents and skills to fit the nature of the fight, it was really satisfying to get the better of it. (There are no penalties or costs for chopping and changing your talents and skills, or the mods applied to them, and you can do it all out in the field, which is a great design choice IMO, unlike other games which might force you to go back and see some sort of trainer or similar.)

The fundamental cover-based shooter game is solid, you could strip out the RPG stuff completely and there'd still be a decent, playable game there. Add in all the exploration, crafting, weapons and gear malarkey, stuff to find out in the world and so on - there's a lot to get your teeth into.

I've had well over 40 hours out of it already, and given that I've got a year's worth of DLC with the season pass, the purchase price of £70 seems perfectly reasonable. (And they're not 40 hours of grind either, I'm genuinely looking forward to firing the game up and playing it for a couple of hours after work.)

Current mark is 8/10, but this is subject to change depending on how good (or not!) the endgame turns out to be.

Hit the (current) level cap on this of 30 last night. 52 hours total playtime in the bank, and of course I now have the endgame content to start on, which apparently isn't exactly expansive at the moment but lots of gearing up to be done, so forays into the Dark Zone, Challenge Modes, daily and weekly mission, the new incursion, and replaying existing missions in the Hard/Challenge mode difficulty for better phat lootz.

This is all apparently much better as a group and the chaps who are already 30 and well geared have offered to group up with me and give me a boost through the lower tiers of this stuff to get me up to the same sort of gear level that they're already at so we can run the same content together.

Previous comments stand, this is a good, solid, entertaining game and TBH I'd think it'd be a very good fit for the BEEX gaming groups that some of you chaps like to partake in.

Also there's already a roadmap for 12 months and more of content which I'll get with the Season Pass, so hopefully lots of good stuff to come.

This game is currently glitched and hacked to fuck, to the extent that any endgame PvP activity is a total waste of time.

It's not even PC specific either, as the glitches have been present on all platforms.

GLITCHES - These have been/are embarrassingly numerous. Infinite resources, infinite credits, infinite weapon damage, boss fight glitches, significant NPC farming glitches, too many to list overall. They all add up to there being a large number of players out there who are totally pimped out with absolutely the finest gear and weapons you can collect/craft that it's simply impossible to have acquired by legitimate means at this stage of the game.

In short, you've either glitched and are effectively indestructible, or you haven't and going into the Dark Zone (PvP) area is pointless.

HACKS - More specific to the PC version although apparently there's some dodgy stuff on consoles too. Certainly on PC though there are all sorts of nonsensical hacks which should be impossible, such as speed running hacks, can't that stuff be verified server-side?

So not only are you competing with impossibly geared players, they can also see you anywhere on the map, can speed hack their way to where you are if you start an extraction, and can then headshot you to death from half a mile away.

We're putting the game on ice for a while whilst Ubisoft get this sorted out, although it's arguably a bit too late now unless they put some sort of catch-up mechanism in for folks who aren't glitchers/hackers as we've got no chance even if they fix 100% of the problems with the game today.

I've had 60 hours of enjoyable play with the game so don't feel hard done to, but it remains to be seen how the game pans out from here and what content Ubisoft are intending to add over the next 12 months.

Yikes. That's a poor state of affairs.

They really need some sort of PTR equivalent, it doesn't matter how much traditional beta-testing you do, it's only once you let a sizeable mass of normal players loose on a game that they'll find all sorts of novel ways to cheat and break things.

Unfortunately the game is in a very awkward place now, as the gap between the glitchers and everyone else is fucking huge, so even fixing the glitches won't help. There are people packing gear and weapon loadouts that should require weeks if not months of work, so it's incredibly dispiriting doing daily HARD/CHALLENGE mode missions for a few scraps of resources and crap drops to deconstruct, and rare good loot drops, knowing full well that it's effectively impossible to catch up to the glitchers and have a fair chance in the DZ.

We were working our way towards being able to reliably clear the single incursion the game has on HARD mode, and then step up to CHALLENGE mode, a slow process with incremental gear improvements - but the glitchers have already pillaged the thing stupid and are happily running around the DZ slaughtering everyone for fun in all their top level endgame gear.

Re: the seriously advanced players, that's not really a glitching issue. I mean, right now it is, but in the future you'll have plenty of legit hardcore folk who can rip newbs to shreds if they try and PvP them. Some form of balancing is an issue that should probably have been in place before the game even launched, and it's certainly not a hard one to simulate.

Yes but the Dark Zone is sharded into level ranges up to Level 30, and then it shards off into gear score ranges at Level 30. (To give you an idea the gear score on Level 30 gear ranges from 89 to 240.)

Currently the highest Dark Zone gear score range is 161+ which I fall into with a gear score of 167, but the glitchers have already achieved almost total 240 loadouts from spamming the incursion on Challenge mode, which in reality should be almost impossible to complete at all at the moment, let alone spam repeatedly. The highest gear score any of us have achieved legitimately is 198, and they're the guys who've been hammering the game pretty hard.

TBH I think 161-240 is far too big a gear score range anyway and will indeed lead to the problems you describe in time anyway, but it's much exacerbated at the moment as a sizeable chunk of players have achieved what should be 'impossible' gear scores by glitching and exploiting.

EDIT - Unusually for me (lol) I'm talking slight bollocks there, you can repeatedly farm for 214s off incursion challenge mode, and get a 240 once per week. However with the other glitches (infinite resources/credits/etc) it's also possible to get full matching Gear Sets which have 214 gear score and become more powerful the more pieces of the set you have. Again, this is a process that should take weeks/months of effort, not be achievable within a few days of sustained glitching and exploiting.

And then of course there's the hackers on top of that....

I like it !. Bought it a while back for £20 (some one bought an Nvidia card) and finally got to play it today. Put in about three hours tonight and it's good fun

I think there's enough good stuff in there in the main levelling game to justify a purchase, unfortunately once you get to the end game it falls apart a bit, there's a limit to how many times you'll want to do the daily HARD/CHALLENGE mode missions and other activities, knowing that it all basically funnels into a broken PvP area.

I've got the game on ice for now, but am keen to see what content is added over the next 12 months with my season pass.

This is down to £20 on the Steam Weekend Deal thingy, which is the kind of price-point I'd recommend folks give it a try at.

I can't honestly comment about the state of the endgame/hacks/extra content because I never went back to game after my previous post where me and the guys put it on ice (for it never to come off ice....), but I got 60 solid hours out of it and I'd say the 'main quest and levelling game' is substantial enough to easily justify £20, and that was given the condition the game was in the best part of a year ago.

If you've got a reasonably chunky PC, I'd say that for £20 you could do a lot worse than take a look at this one.