The Division (Beta)
The fog curls around street lamps as diffused lighting casts desperate shadows across the snow drenched landscape. It's night time and my agent is moving toward their waypoint, a simple (I hope) hostage situation where some rioters have holed up with some imprisoned folks. The snow obscures my vision, and theirs as with a tap of a button my agent slides neatly into cover.
I tap the right bumper and a pulse moves out from my agent, picking up targets and transferring the data to my HUD. Five tangos, all of them armed, one of them has a grenade and the others a mix of rifles - one is foolishly armed with a baseball bat.
In a few short seconds I open fire, catching a couple of them with the weapon's staccato outpouring of lead - they go down and drop. Damage numbers ticking off their health until they're toast, their friends duck into cover, the guy with the bat screams and runs directly at the agent.
I'm down to a few bullets in the first mag, so rather than reload, I adopt a classic FPS trick - weapon switching, my secondary weapon is an MP5 and it takes only a few seconds as bullets pepper my position. I don't need accuracy at this point, just to kill the dude with the bat.
Blindfiring with a few bursts of gunfire does the trick, he goes down hard.
Now it's a case of mop up, a flashbang helps disorientate the bad guys and a few more shots from my primary weapon puts them in the ground.
By now the fog is clearing and I can see better.
A quick search of the store reveals the key, a few seconds later and the hostages are safe, I get my reward - XP and some components I'll be able to use in the full game to craft cool loot. My other reward is the crate in the back where they were being held, which holds a sweet green colour-coded pair of gloves which are much better than the crappy ones I'm already wearing.SCORE.
Welcome to Tom Clancy's: The Division (Beta) and what a Beta it's been. I wasn't really too fussed about this game after the various delays and online-only moniker. But after snagging a code I was ready to give it a good blast, which I did, all the way to near the Beta's end (which was extended).
The chargen in the Beta is simple, it'll be more complex in the full game - but it lets you get right into things quickly and after a cut-scene setting up your arrival in the city, you're given your first mission objective as you hit your first hub. Here, rather like Destiny or an MMO you're able to view and interact with other players, giving you a chance to join in a line of Jumping Jacks via the emote menu.
So my beard-guy joined a few players who looked like they were warming up, before he went off exploring the rest of the hub, finding a few places of interest and grabbing some useful map data which opened up a few side missions and encounters around the Beta area. The first thing I was impressed with in the Beta, the graphics, Division is a NICE looking game and after tweaking a couple of the settings which are unusual to see on console (Xbox One version), I was able to make it look even nicer. Score One for Ubisoft Massive already.
I could write paragraphs on the Division's graphics, but honestly, they're fantastic - the lighting at night is some of the best I've seen and the lighting during a foggy/snowy night is incredibly atmospheric.
You kick off at Level 4 in Division, allowing you to grab one ability and assign it to the right bumper - I picked the pulse, because I'm a fan of cooperative abilities and ones which let me detect bad guys. Once you're out of the hub and onto the streets the world building is apparent, Ubisoft have done a great job in getting the feel of the pandemic world and I have a feeling the Division will be rather like the remake of XCOM in that regard, telling stories around you as you wander the streets, witnessing the NPCs in their struggle for survival and finding people who need things.
Food, med-kits, water, any scrap of hope in a horrible situation. If you have soda, or a chocolate bar, or something like a can of food you can carefully approach these people and give it to them. In return you'll get a piece of clothing you can use to customise your character's look.
This brings me to my first point, something I truly love about the Division. Apart from the slick GUI and menu system which makes accessing everything a breeze. The Division has a great way of separating stat based stuff from visual appearance.
Body armour isn't going to really change the look of your character, but a new hat will, a new jacket will and so on. So this way you're able to customise your PC without being left looking like a twit in armour that doesn't really look cool. In half an hour I'd got quite a collection of goodies from people, looted from houses and found in containers.
My agent already looked bad-ass in his attire.
Slick Gameplay
At its core the Division is a slick third-person action RPG, with a deep system of choices and customisation that really does let you make the agent you want. There's no classes, it's all about your player agency from the get-go and even when out and about exploring, you're given a choice of waypoint markers to poke around at and a recommended level for the various missions/side missions. Weapon customisation is quick and simple, allowing you to slap mods onto guns in a few seconds and see exactly what's going to change.
ACog scopes will let you play in first person when you're looking down the scope. With ranges from 2x to 4x (so far) and altering the stats on the gun in question.
Movement is natural, mantling/clambering over things is as easy as tapping/holding the B button and sliding into cover is on A. Cover is intuitive, you can easily detach, or slip around a corner. You can simply hold A and run to the next cover - it's everything I know/love about games like this and a total joy to play.
Gunplay is nice, it feels good and there's a risk reward to the cover system when in a firefight. Enemies will try and flush you out and they'll work together to their various strengths and weaknesses - it's not flawless, but it's fun and that's all that matters.
You can mark targets too, only one target, and then with a press of a button you can issue a tactical countdown. Not so great for solo play, but really cool for co-op.
Yep. You can play Division solo, I tested this out and never once saw a single player in my whole time with the Beta on a different account. I was able to hit level 7 solo and I had a damn good time, a better time than I ever did on Destiny Vanilla - take from that what you will.
Playing with Others
The Division uses an instance system where you're on your own little part of the server, you don't need others around, but if you want other folks in your game you can either join their group or invite them into yours (up to 4 agents) and believe me when I say this: Division's co-op is some of the best co-op I've played in a long time. 
3 of us teamed up from my friend's list and everything was stable and fun. We hit some core missions, some side stuff and explored a hell of a lot working together, picking each other up off the ground if we had to and cooperating to ensure the team's survival.
Loot is individual and there's no player trading/loot stealing (unless you're in the Dark Zone that is).
Opening the map (which is the coolest map in a game yet - the whole thing is a real time VR overlay) shows you your friends online, and in a fable-esque way you can select them and use that to join a game or invite folks in. It's quick, simple, painless, and more importantly works as intended.
Your HQ is accessible by you alone and you'll not get other players in there. It's cusomisable and you can build it up through the game, the more you upgrade it, the more you unlock perks and mods for your character's skills. It's a great concept and dovetails nicely into progression systems in the game.
A decent slice
The Beta offers a decent slice of what promises to be a huge game, it'll live/die on the content rather like many MMOs. But it's important to realise that the Division isn't an MMO. It's an always-online tactical action RPG with an emphasis on teamwork, even in the Dark Zone.
Dark Zone...
Whilst core Division play is PvE, you or your friends vs. The AI... the Dark Zone is PvPvE. It's like the normal map, only there are other human players in there in squads or alone, and the rule in there is: trust no one, not even your friends, unless you're REALLY good friends.
You can attack/kill any other player, even teammates... but be warned - the moment you do you're considered a Rogue Agent and the whole server will see it. Like GTA Online's Bounty/Wanted system for players, you'll get the whole Dark Zone bearing down on you, other Rogue Agents included if you're not careful. So why go in?
LOOT. The Dark Zone has the best loot in the whole game, want it, you need to brave the hell out of that place and hopefully keep your morals and friends intact.
Get out safely via the extraction chopper and the loot is yours, once it's been cleaned.
Anyone can attack you, kill you, steal your stuff.
Anyone...
Even that 'friend' who has been saving your ass the whole time.
The Shape of things...
From this small section of the game it's pretty easy for me to say: I love it. I love the atmosphere, I love the combat and I really love the feeling of cooperation when you buddy up. This and Ghost Recon: Wildlands are the two games I really want from Ubisoft and they've pretty much hit the mark in the kind of thing I wanted the Division to be.
Time will tell if I feel that way months after release, but for now, I couldn't be more excited to work with my friends to take the city back and punish those responsible for the viral outbreak.
Not long to wait now, since the Division comes out in March.
I'm a fan!