The Division is a game developed by Ubisoft which was announced at E3 back in 2013. After endless delays, it was finally released on March 8, 2016. The Division features a rather interesting storyline which follows a common theme: a post-apocalyptic world.

The thing that draws The Division away from other games with this theme is the way it is used. On Black Friday, there is a smallpox epidemic transmitted by a virus planted into bank notes. The disease, called “Green Poison and “The Dollar Flu”, causes widespread chaos. As a result, the beloved city of Manhattan is placed under quarantine. It is up to you as an agent of The Division to restore order to the city.

This creates an atmosphere that few games have. Manhattan is haunting without the millions of people that roam it every day. Gunshots echo around every corner and in every alleyway. Subways and alleys are filled with bodies from people who died to the epidemic. The stores of Manhattan are emptied with all left behind. People die right before your eyes in the middle of the abandoned street. Empty taxis flood the streets that are now inhabited by murderers and thieves.

The atmosphere created is horrifying, and that is perfect for this game. It is what a post-apocalyptic game should feel like. The game is played as a third-person shooter role-playing game with a looting system. The storyline consists of various missions that revolve around your base of operations and restoring three separate sectors: power, security, and medical.

The storyline is very dry when it comes to playing alone. The game is best when played with friends or other users because it seems as if the game is built solely for that. It shows a lot of weakness when it comes to the area of solo play. The missions are extensive and very challenging at times, and solo play can become very tedious and stressful. In a game like The Division, it is aggravating to play missions multiple times because it can be very linear at times.

Ubisoft boasts a system that runs on player choices, but there are none that really have the potential to change the whole game’s course. The Division also can become redundant in the ways it plays out missions. There are several points in the game where you must hold off several waves of enemies and after, defeat a named boss character. This actually happens at least once per sector mission. The upside to this is that with multiple players, this can become very enjoyable and bring an accomplished feeling after completion. Another weak point for The Division storyline is that the characters in it are not memorable. They can be easily forgotten after the first time they are mentioned, regardless of their role in the game. The only character that may stick out is Faye Lau, a fellow Division fighter, but only because she can be very annoying.

All in all, the storyline is very weak compared to that of other RPGs. It seems that the only way to actually enjoy The Division’s storyline and missions is to play with multiple people.

The light of The Division comes in the way it uses multiplayer. As mentioned before, the best way to play The Division is to play with multiple people. The main part of this game that encourages multiplayer is the Dark Zone. The Dark Zone is an area in which the virus hit the worst. It is essentially the atomic ground zero of The Division. It is divided up into different zones on a system where the higher the zone is, the harder the enemies are. Players can team up and take their chances in the Dark Zone for better loot and rewards.

All loot is contaminated, and must be extracted by helicopter, where it will be placed into the player’s stash back at the base of operations. The Dark Zone is overall incredibly fun and a highlight of the great things about this game that can be hard to see during its storyline.

The Division has its bad parts and good parts. It’s storyline and game are not very friendly to players who prefer to play alone. If played with friends, it can be argued that it is one of the best games released in the past decade. The bad parts of this game are outweighed by the good parts. The Division has replay ability but only in it’s unique feature, The Dark Zone.

7/10