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So tonight, I "finished" The Division.

Altogether, I spent about 60 hours (more or less) and usually played in a team of three. We completed every main and side mission, and also maxed out the headquarters. I’m not going to collect all the random pickup doodads, but I will come back for the DLC after giving it a little rest.  

Over the course of playing the game, we dipped into the game’s online quasi-PVP called “The Dark Zone” a few times -- nothing too frequent, but we had some good runs. Sometimes we’d get some good loot, sometimes we’d lose it to other players, but overall I felt like it was a great idea and a neat twist on the usual PVP offerings.

We went back in today and had what is, hands-down, the worst experience I've had in The Division, and probably one of the worst online experiences I've ever had.

When we first entered the DZ, we were approached by another player. We were having headset difficulties at the time and none of us could hear each other very well, so we didn't think too much of it. After the connection improved, we started catching bits and pieces of this guy talking, and it was along the lines of "Let me join your group or I'll kill you".

Obviously, this is not the proper way to approach other players if you want to work together, and since he seemed like he had a screw loose, we moved on and ignored him.

The thing is, he did not ignore us.

He started following behind us silently, and I thought he'd eventually get bored and buzz off. However, he persisted. Once my team started taking down AI characters and accumulating some loot, he opened fire on us from behind and took all three of us out before we could do anything.

We immediately respawned and ran back to the scene of the crime, and he was still there.

I figured that the three of us would open up on him and get our stuff back, but even with three of us firing at him in unison and giving him everything we had, we barely scratched him.  He took the whole team down a couple more times without breaking a sweat. While he was doing it, he kept saying "You should have let me join your group." and "I thought we could be friends."

After repeatedly getting killed by this guy, we decided to bounce and go to a different zone, but he kept following us wouldn't leave us alone. Even after we completely left the DZ and came back, he still found us and wouldn’t stop tailing our group. The whole time it was the same M.O. -- he'd follow us and not do anything until we collected some loot, and then he'd kill us in a matter of seconds and take our stuff.

Don’t’ get me wrong here -- the problem is not that somebody in the Dark Zone killed and robbed us (it’s been clearly stated since before The Division‘s launch that this was part of the online) but the problem is that it’s absurd for one player to be able to steamroll a team of three with impunity, and then keep on doing it, effectively preventing us from doing anything in the DZ.

In The Souls series (another game with unusual online PVP) things are different. After getting beaten by someone, that person returns to their world and it's just luck of the draw if you ever see them again. Unless the servers are deserted, you probably won’t. I certainly don't mind getting beaten by someone who's better than me or who has better gear, but being beaten by someone and going your separate ways is not the same as being killed by someone and then having them follow you during every minute of your playtime to kill you over and over and over again.

Another difference is that there’s no talking in Souls. No matter how cheesy or awful someone might be, the devs don’t make you listen to their taunting or verbal abuse. In The Division, we went to PSN party chat to avoid hearing randos talk in the DZ, but we could still hear this guy talking (environmentally) when he was close to us.  Thankfully there are options in the menu which prevent verbal communication with other players, so as soon as we stopped playing, I shut all that stuff off. It's going to stay off. 

This experience was incredibly frustrating and discouraging, and is by far the worst time we’ve had with the game overall. Ubisoft definitely needs to address a few things in order to improve things here because there are always going to be people who want to be the biggest fish in a small pond, and if someone like that can be an active barrier to the gameplay of others, then action needs to be taken.

For starters, let’s talk about the balance. Prior to becoming level 30, the DZ is sectioned off to players in certain segments. Levels 1-5 play in one zone, levels 5-10 play in another, and so forth. My team were all level 30. The guy harassing us was also level 30. In The Division it’s possible to find or craft gear that improves individual stats regardless of level, and I’m guessing this is how he was crushing us – on paper we seemed like equals, but in practice this was clearly not the case. It seems like assigning point values to players based on their gear might prevent the sort of one-sided domination we saw here. People who grind for days to get the best gear should be matched against people who are doing the same.

Going further, despite the everybody-for-themselves nature of the DZ, I’d say this guy’s behavior was straight-up harassment. It's one thing to take a headshot in PVP or lose a match here and there, but it's something else altogether to have someone watching over your shoulder the entire time you're playing, arbitrarily stopping your progress and verbally taunting you.

In situations like this, I’d like to see some sort of system to let me avoid being instanced with an abusive person – if I tag them as being a harasser, let the servers put us in different games. There's a similar system in the phenomenal Helldivers. You can down-vote a player who's a jerk, and the game will then take steps to avoid bringing you two together, which is brilliant. If Ubisoft can't do that, then at the very least there should be some sort of reporting system. I know it might be hard to implement since anyone who gets their stuff stolen might want to ‘report’ the thief as a knee-jerk reaction, but I felt like this went way beyond gameplay and became full-on harassment.

If Ubisoft wants The Division to have a robust player base and become a persistent online platform, they’re going to have to take steps to stop people like the guy we met tonight from dominating the online component. If there’s nobody in the DZ except nigh-invulnerable creepers who get off on actively interfering with others, then they can kiss any dreams of long-term success goodbye despite everything The Division gets right, and it gets a lot right. Seeing all of that hard work go down the drain thanks to people abusing the system would be a real shame, but I’ve gotta be honest – after a session like tonight, I’m pretty reluctant to ever go back into the Dark Zone again.   

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So, The Division.

First off, I want to say that although it was really inconvenient for review purposes, I do think it was a good idea for Ubisoft to hold all review copies back until launch day.

Personally, I'm a big believer in not reviewing a game with significant online components until it's open to the public… Sometimes games can look or feel very different when there are only 100 writers playing, as opposed to 100,000 people who paid $60. (Let’s not forget about day-one patches as well.)

I know a lot of writers are still locked into the “have to be first, have to publish on day one” mentality but I think that's becoming less of an option these days. If nothing else, reviewers owe it to their readers to give the most accurate and thorough impressions possible, and that's just not a thing we can even do without access to the full game in an environment that matches what paying customers will get.

So, what about the game itself? I'm about nine hours in at this point, and I have to say, I really, really like it.

The Division is a third person, real-time cover-based shooter with heavy multiplayer integration and progression elements, but it's entirely possible to go through the game by yourself -- although that's not the ideal way to do it.

Basically, you create a character and jump into a New York that’s been devastated by a virus. Lawless gangs have taken over, and you are one of the few people trying to keep order. Although there are named characters and NPCs, this is not a story-heavy experience… Basically the plot is "take back New York" and I haven’t yet seen much more than that. If you're looking for a very story-rich, character-driven experience, The Division is not that.

After starting, it's pretty overwhelming at first… There are a lot of menus and a lot of stuff going on, and although the tutorials do a fairly decent job of explaining things, there are inevitably a lot of questions that will only become clear after experimentation. That said, I figured things out pretty quickly, and it seems like a good system.

The player’s home base is a hub that has three areas: Tech, Medical, and Security. Each one has their own questline, and completing these quests unlocks upgrades and abilities for your character. Resources are also needed to earn some of these upgrades, and missions out in the world will award these necessary things.

New York is a totally open world and the player is free to go wherever they wish, although the map clearly shows that some zones are recommended for certain levels. The zone around home base is for players level 0-4, the next zone is for levels 5-8, and the furthest parts of the map are for levels 18 and up, and so on. You can go in there if you like, but you're probably going to get your ass shot off in short order.

Getting back to the quests for a moment, they're roughly divided into three sizes -- the story quests are the biggest, there are side missions which are kind of middle-size, and then there are encounters, which are small-scale. Players can look at these and decide what kind of experience they want for the time that they have, and self-regulate.

So far, the multiplayer has been excellent. It's really easy to find friends and to join them, or to invite them to join you. It's also easy to meet randoms and join up. I haven't done any of the PVP stuff yet, but it’s important to note that PVP is limited to The Dark Zone, a very clearly marked and separate location on the map. Players who don’t want to participate in PVP 100% don’t have to. It is purely optional.

However, I have done a lot of co-op, and it’s great. The thing I'm most impressed with is the difficulty scaling -- I did one specific mission by myself and it was a cakewalk, I did it with one other player and I noticed a ramp-up (but wasn't too hard) and then I played the same mission again with four people and it was quite a bit tougher, this time requiring team tactics, supporting each other, and making sure we all had each other’s back. Although it was the same mission all three times, it felt very different playing it with different numbers of people, and so far it feels like the difficulty scaling is right on.

As far as the gear goes, enemies will drop stuff as a player makes their way through the world… There are a whole slew of armor pieces, some cosmetic pieces, and of course, weapons.

Although it's not entirely based on reality, The Division certainly skews towards realism, and in that respect (so far anyway) I haven't found any gear that seems really crazy or anything that doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of the world. Apparently the best stuff is kept in the PVP zone, but the quality of drops ramp up as the player goes on, and I'm constantly finding new things to use while not being overwhelmed with stuff to trash or sell back at base. I feel like the loot drop rate is quite nice, although I will say that I certainly wouldn't mind a few more exotic things. However, I'm pretty early in the game and there is a lot left to see… 

Considering that the player has access to some science-fiction equipment (a portable healing zone generator, a spider drone with a gun, etc.) I wouldn't be at all surprised to see some more fantastical stuff show up later on.

I've said this before but the best way of summing up what The Division feels like is to say that it gives me the experience that I wanted from Destiny, before I knew what Destiny was actually like.

It's great to be out in the world and feels like you're really a part of something, and the missions are quite varied… I'm not doing the same strike over and over, and New York is far bigger than one small hub. There are large chunks I haven't even seen yet, and I like that there are little surprises in each mission that keep the play feeling fresh.

I'm not an MMO guy in general, but this game has enough action to keep me in, and the ability to solo anytime is really appealing to me, plus the feeling of being in this world and fighting with purpose is a great spin. The Division is definitely in the same general ballpark as Destiny is (as far as I’m concerned) but it's hitting different notes and it has a very different feel. It’s clicking for me.

There is a lot of The Division left to see and although I'm not sure I will be able to complete it before I turn in a review, I feel like I need to put at least another 10 or 15 hours in before I’ll have a good measure of what's going on. That said, I really like what the devs have created here and I'm playing every chance I get, which isn't something I can say about every review assignment.

So far it's an unequivocal thumbs up, but look for my full review in the future.

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So, Far Cry Primal.

There are a lot of reviews out there so I'll spare the general breakdown (the @Gamecritics review from Brad Bortone is still forthcoming) but I had a few thoughts I wanted to share.

Getting the hard data out of the way: I finished the game tonight, and clocked in about 21 hours. I captured all of the outposts, did all of the story quests (main and side) upgraded the entire village, tamed all of the companion animals, and upgraded almost all of the gear. A lot of that stuff was totally optional, but I was having a great time so I decided to go for it. I would imagine that someone could do a critical path of the game in far less time than I spent, so all told it comes in at a very reasonable, appropriate length. Even was doing all that extra stuff, it didn't feel like it overstayed its welcome.

Now about the game itself… Wow. I've never been a fan of Far Cry as a series but this one really clicked for me. By setting the thing in a prehistoric context, all the elements come together so sensibly -- the open world, expanding territory, killing animals, crafting… it’s all a great fit.  Every aspect of the game’s design harmonizes, and there aren't many open world games where simply wandering around is satisfying to me, but it is here. Just taking in the scenery, cruising around with whatever beast was with me at the time and hunting down anything that came across my path provided me with far more entertainment than I would've imagined.

As for the story, I've seen a number of people complain about it, but I find this quite puzzling. I think it's pretty clear that this is a story about Stone Age survival, so I'm not sure what people were expecting. In general, it’s a tale of protecting your tribe, wiping out your enemies, and fighting to live. Beyond that, the game actually includes two proper antagonists- Ull of the northern cannibal tribe and Batari of the southern fire users. In addition, each major member of the player’s tribe has their own brief storyline. None of this is novel-length stuff, but I really don't think it should be. Keeping in mind that Primal is about prehistoric man, what’s here is quite satisfying. There were several moments that were laugh-out-loud funny, and certainly several that were quite interesting, or touching. 

Along the same lines, I've seen people complain about the weapons variety, and again, I have to ask -- what were you expecting? Considering that the main character gathers sticks and rocks and uses animal skin as tethers, did anyone actually expect rocket launchers or automatic weapons? I mean, what can you logically make out of that kind of stuff? If you ask me, the game actually makes several concessions towards variety via two types of club, a spear, a sling, bait, traps, three types of bow, three varieties of stone dagger with different effects, three types of bombs (yes, bombs) and this isn’t even counting the animal companions.

After receiving a "beast master" power from a shaman, the main character can tame several different kinds of predator. The owl is used as a forward scout, is large enough to kill men on its own, and can drop the bombs I just mentioned. The other animals all have their own perks, from the black jaguar who can kill enemies without alerting others, to the wolf who enlarges the player's sphere of awareness, to the powerhouse cave bear who draws all enemy fire so that the player is safely ignored. It seems to me like there's plenty of variety within the game’s context, and frankly, a good chunk of it goes past the boundaries of believability. So, to hear people say they weren't satisfied with the variety of weapons… I just don't know what would satisfy them.

(And Real Talk: there are a million games out there that let people pack ridiculous arsenals. Did you really need that here too?)

Getting back to the story for a second, I think it's well worth saying that Far Cry Primal treats its women quite well. There are three prominent female story characters who are treated as either equal (or superior to) their male counterparts, and none are sexualized in any way. In the lower ranks of the player’s tribe, there are just as many female hunters as there are male. When approaching enemy fortifications, the soldiers are of either gender, so even in a prehistoric context where there might be an argument made for having women in a lesser role, the developers were mindful of this and made them clearly equal to the males. It's a great move, and very appreciated.

Although anyone who follows me on Twitter or listens to the GC podcast knows I've been very critical of Ubisoft in the past, it's clear to see that they have taken a major step forward with Primal, and I want to applaud them for doing so. This is a great game on many levels, and it shows the kind of thoughtful consideration that makes a piece of work appreciably better. I'm thrilled that they decided to do something more than phoning in another sequel, and hopefully other people will give the game a chance and feel the same.

Far Cry Primal? It's great stuff. Absolutely recommended.

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We at Gamecritics.com are supporters of accessibility in gaming. We love to play videogames, and we think everyone else should be able to enjoy that love too, no matter what their situation might be.

In order to give helpful information to those who might need it, we've been posting addendums to our reviews for several years -- we started with content guidance for parents, but we soon began including audio information for those with hearing impairments. If a player needs audio cues to be successful, we felt that was something that someone should be aware of before putting their hard-earned money down.

Recently, it was brought to our attention that the option to re-map controls (or the lack of that option) would be of great interest to gamers that require alternate configurations or special setups. It took us about two seconds to see the value in this, and we will now be adding this info to all of our reviews.

Along the same lines, we've been seeing a number of developers include ‘colorblind' modes as a way of making their work playable to that segment of the audience. We decided to not wait for someone to make the request, so we're also adding this to our reviews, too.

Starting today, February 16, 2016, every review that runs at Gamecritics from this point forward will feature:

- Information for parents

- Information for hearing impaired players

- Information on controls

- Information on colorblind modes

We believe in and support accessibility and diversity in gaming, and we hope that these additions to our coverage will benefit players of all kinds. 

Thank you for supporting Gamecritics.com!

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The beta version offers only a portion of the features that will be available in the full product. There were a number of things (perks, crafting, and more) that were greyed-out or otherwise unavailable.

It's also worth mentioning that unlike other so-called 'betas', this one seems like it fits the proper definition -- there were a number of bugs that cropped up, several areas were inaccessible, and all sorts of weirdness was on display. I was dropped from the game a number of times, the game began with Spanish as the default language, sometimes my gun floated five feet in the air above me, and in general, it felt like it was not in a finished, polished state.  

Not a complaint, just an observation. 

At the time I began, I was only able to choose between male/female for my character. The customization options were not enabled and the race was chosen either at random, or perhaps based on the language selected? 

The normal view when a player calls up the map via an AR overlay. 

A zoomed-out view showing the surrounding area. 

From there, things kicked off with an opening cutscene describing a city descending int chaos after a virus was released, and the game quickly rolled me into tutorials. There's a lot going on in The Divison and there are loads of systems. It was overwhelming at first, but things quickly became clear. Well, mostly clear.  

The Division is an open-world, third-person shooter based inside a huge city. 

The core campaign is single-player. 

This may come as a surprise to many since the trailers were so heavily oriented on co-op, but it does seem entirely possible to play as a lone wolf. However, there are at least two flavors of co-op available -- Apparently players can go through the story campaign with one or more partners, working together to restore the city.  

I played the beta partnered up with my wife, but I also ran into a few friends randomly exploring the world. Grouping up with them was as simple as walking up to them, and away we went. No painful hoops to jump through, although there are options for forming more formal parties.  

The other type of co-op was based in a special area of the game's world called The Dark Zone.  In this area, groups of players enter and the game becomes PVP. Squads of friends can stick together and cover each other's backs, but when other groups or real players are encountered, it can get hairy. 

If nobody fires a shot, they can co-exist peacefully while gunning down AI characters carrying loot. But if one group decides to open fire on another, then all hell breaks loose and squads try to take each other down while collecting spoils from the fallen.

This screen shows the different types of gear the player can equip for tactical purposes, and below is the screen for skills. There are also menus for equippable perks, cosmetic appearance, and more.  

The development team has a complete post-launch plan to keep the experience fresh for all players, including several free updates, new features and functionality, as well as 3 major expansions to provide a renewed gameplay experience after launch.

The free updates to be released for all players will add new game modes such as challenging group-oriented operations to test players’ abilities in co-op mode and win unique rewards.

The 3 paid expansions are included in the Season Pass and will be released over the course of the year. Each expansion builds on The Division, continuing your agent’s journey and progress with new content, gear and gameplay as you fight to take back New York:

•       Expansion I: Underground
This first major expansion opens up a new area to players as they explore the uncharted underworld of New York City with up to 4 friends for intense co-op action

•       Expansion II: Survival
In this expansion, players will have to survive as long as possible in a very hostile environment that will challenge even the most talented agents.

•       Expansion III: Last Stand
Stay tuned for more information.

At launch, Season Pass owners will also unlock the exclusive Sawed-off Shotgun, a unique sidearm customized for short-range destruction. Season Pass owners also receive a set of exclusive outfits and weapon skins, as well as access to special monthly benefits including exclusive content drops and special events.

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Since we’re still in that wonderfully empty-ish zone of downtime after the end of fourth-quarter madness but before the start of the 2016 releases, I'm still happily plinking away at my backlog.

If you follow me on Twitter, then you probably already know that my most recent selection was Dead Space 3 from Visceral Games. Although I’ve played and completed all the other Dead Space titles, I can't say that I really enjoyed them… It's kind of funny because I think they all have a lot of potential that they don't live up to, but I keep coming back to them… Because?

Anyway, I had heard nothing but bad things about Dead Space 3, but I knew that it had a heavy multiplayer focus, and I'm always looking for games to play in co-op with the wife. Making the prospect even more attractive, I got two copies for about three dollars each, and that's a pretty hard price to beat – if it turned out awful, we weren’t out much cash.

At this point I'm about 10 hours in, and getting pretty close to the homestretch, which is just fine. The gameplay is pretty much what I expected… Typical Dead Space shooting, with a hell of a lot of monster closets and surprise attacks. You could basically call this "Watch Out Behind You, Because It’s Always Behind You: The Game” and it would be accurate.

In fact, the gameplay is so dull that I can easily see why a lot of solo players abandoned ship on it and never came back. If I was playing by myself, it would be far too one-note to trudge through, but it really takes on new life with a second player, and not just because you have a buddy to chew the fat with -- the devs have made some really smart decisions that make it shine in cooperative. (And to be clear, this is co-op between two separate 360s. The game offers no splitscreen or couch co-op.)

Sidenote: For whatever reason, the “story-oriented, intentionally co-op” genre has never really taken off on console. Things like Army of Two, Hunted: The Demon’s Forge, and others like them are quite a bit of fun in their intended co-op modes and significantly less so alone. I wonder what it would take for this style of game to flourish on consoles, but that's a question for another day.

So anyway, what does Dead Space 3 do right?

One: The graphics are pretty awesome. Although I’ve been spending a lot of time on PS4 admiring all of the bells and whistles, I was really impressed by how sharp DS3 looks on 360. Of course, it's not really all that old, but even so, it shows just how much life was still left in the old machine. It looks fantastic.

This modding is a strong component of the game, and it’s made better with special co-op focused attachments which share life-ups, ammo, or other effects between players.

Three: So about that co-op. Obviously, the game can be played through in solo mode, and it sports the usual story-oriented campaign with cutscenes and NPC characters. However, the brilliant thing here is that in addition to series star Isaac Clarke, the devs have included a second character called Carver.

I'm not sure how often he pops up in the solo campaign, but in the co-op, Carver is always tagging along. In each of the cutscenes, Clarke takes center stage in order to carry the campaign along BUT Carver is always prominently featured behind him, or to the side, or in some other way so it looks like he's present even though he's not actually participating in the story.

Furthermore, the game shows cutscenes from different perspectives. While I expected one section to look identical for both my wife and myself, I was surprised to find out that each of our screens was showing something different. At one point my wife (playing Clarke) was inside the cab of the vehicle that was sliding down a cliff. My character (Carver) was outside the vehicle trying to get her out. She couldn't see me on her screen, but I could see her on mine. That’s just one example, but there are many.  

In other instances, there are weird psychological effects that crop up. At one point, a level we were in was covered in party streamers, presents and birthday cake. I thought it was the weirdest thing ever, but my wife couldn't see any of it, nor could she hear the voices that were playing on my TV. This attempt at approximating Carver having a moment of insanity was really cool, and created a few moments of confusion between the two of us in real life as we were trying to figure out what the hell was going on and why we weren’t seeing the same things.

There aren’t nearly enough of these moments and I think that's a shame considering how strong they are, but even the little bits that we get are pretty brilliant. I can't say that I've seen anything else quite like them in other games.

So where does Dead Space 3 go wrong?

Well, I think the biggest thing is what I already mentioned -- the action is flatly one-note. Most of the game is walking through hallways of various lengths and taking out monsters which pop out at you from all directions. In ten hours, I think we’ve come across… one boss? Maybe two? It's not especially compelling, and the game is certainly long enough for boredom with this content to set in.

Otherwise, the story just isn't good. Although I’ve played through all of the Dead Space games, I have a hard time keeping the plot straight in my head… I know there's something about an alien “marker” that turns people into monsters, but then it was really man-made, but then it was actually alien. And, for whatever reason, people keep joining the cult that popped up around the worship of this marker because… I don't know why. I mean, who wants to turn themselves into a corpselike grabby-monster? Dead Space 3 furthers all this somehow, although I couldn’t explain what the point of it is, honestly. Clarke goes after another marker and it’s all hazy after that.

So, while the downsides are significant and I don’t recommend this game to lone wolves, the interesting, fresh take on co-op and the gun modding in Dead Space 3 are actually both quite good and very creative. I could easily see some of these same mechanics making a big splash in different games that might use them to better effect. In the meantime, if you have $6 for two copies and a buddy willing to commit 15 hours, I’d say Clarke’s final journey is a worthwhile investment.   

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