Michael Sawlani

April 11, 2016

Professor Bowers
English 1101-072 Comp 1
A Five Star Game
It was a beautiful Saturday night and I was in my room sitting on my nice comfy
chair with my gigantic television screen. My online friends and I were playing a
videogame on Xbox One. Videogames have come a long way over the last ten years and
there is fierce competition among videogame manufacturers to make the most appealing
games for consumers. Tom Clancys The Division, a videogame about chaos, survival,
and justice in New York City during 2020, is one of the best games currently on the
market that looks visually stunning. This game also has plenty of content, a welldeveloped story, and excellent game mechanics. When you put all these attributes
together, you have a five star game.
The amount of content or activities in The Division is endless, but believe it or
not, it can be more infinite when new updates are released in the coming months. There
are plenty of main missions that you have to accomplish, and upon doing so, the player
be will promoted through thirty different levels. Some of these levels include missions
about navigating through Manhattan and learning about the city, rescuing important
people, stopping the Last Man Battalion, and finding out the truth about multiple deadly
viruses.
There are also many side missions that will help you reach the top level, and daily
missions become available with a range of difficulty levels. Some of the types of side
missions involve bounties, investigations, missing persons, rescues, supply drops, and
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technology repairs. Bounties, for example, require the player to locate and kill a specific
target for a reward. Supply drops, as another example, demand the player to discover and
successfully secure supplies in various locations. The more advanced daily missions are
sometimes easy, but you cannot do them alone, and the more challenging daily missions
require some high-end gear for protection. Additionally, three other people playing
online are required to help you advance through the level filled with smoke and
explosions. The levels are extremely engaging and there is certainly never a dull
moment.
Yet another reason The Division is truly endless is because the game offers
another version of side missions called encounters. During the course of the gameplay, a
player may come across these additional obstacles. There are many different types of
encounters a player may need to address such as medical, security, or technology. One
specific example of a medical encounter is when a player has to rescue hostages, and a
technology example is when the player needs to interrupt an illegal arms deal between
two large factions in the game.
The Dark Zone, often referred to DZ, is the area in the game where players can go
rouge, meaning they can turn on each other, but the players cannot kill the people with
whom they team up. This area is split into six different zones. Each zone has a safe
house that players can enter for ammunition and buy items. Since each zone becomes
more difficult, one and two are in level thirty, three and four are in level thirty-one, and
five and six are in level thirty-two.
The most appealing part about this fascinating area is that if a player has
contaminated loot, it will drop to the ground and everyone can see it. These items
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sometimes include gear, Dark Zone credits, experience toward other levels, and Dark
Zone keys. The Dark Zone keys are used to unlock chests that will give players loot and
credits. There are also the four factions in the Dark Zone that players can kill. To use the
contaminated loot, the players must extract the items at any of the eight extraction zones.
In addition to the amount of content and future updates, The Division offers a
tremendously well-defined story. The setting takes place in Manhattan, New York on
Black Friday when a smallpox pandemic occurs. Diseases like the Green Poison and
The Dollar Flu cause widespread chaos in the streets near Wall Street and Times
Square. The United States government activates agents to assist the Joint Task Force
(JTF) in restoring order. Other than the JTF, there are four additional factions called the
Rioters, Cleaners, Rikers, and the Last Man Battalion (LMB).
The Joint Task Force is similar to the current United States National Guard. This
group of soldiers is responsible for taking back Manhattan from the enemies. One of
these enemies is called the Rioters. This is a group of former citizens that are now thugs
and criminals ravaging the city at all costs in order to survive. The next enemy is a group
called the Cleaners, a collection of former citizens who share the common goal of
eliminating the virus even if it means killing innocent people. The third enemy the player
must consider is called the Rikers. This enemy includes former prisoners who have
escaped the prison on Riker Island due to the virus outbreak in the streets. These villains
are extremely dangerous and all share the same goals of power and greed.
The last enemy of the JTF is called the Last Man Battalion (LMB). The LMB is a
group of ex-soldiers from a private military company led by Lieutenant General Charles
Bliss. They were hired by Wall Street companies to protect high value assets during the
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outbreak. Unfortunately, members of this group could not be pulled out, and instead
were forced to take advantage of superior weaponry and training to take over New York
City. The LMB believes in dictatorship in order to restore order and save the city from
the virus and resulting chaos. The fact that there are many different enemies creates a
very exciting story.
The other important characteristic about The Division is the fact it offers
outstanding game mechanics. Game mechanics refer to how the game is constructed in
terms of rules or methods, and how it allows players to play the game in a smooth
fashion. In The Division for example, the cover system is set up very thoughtfully to
ensure the player can be protected against incoming bullets. This will allow the player to
retaliate against the enemy when they are adequately shielded by cars, barricades, walls,
or by large dumpsters. Playing this game and searching for cover makes for a very
exciting gameplay environment.
Another important game mechanic is the security, technology, and medical wings.
These wings will allow the player to use certain abilities to aid them in their missions and
in the Dark Zone. The players will have to preform the encounters or story missions to
earn points for their wings, which will allow the players to research different upgrades to
unlock certain abilities.
These abilities will also come with modifications, also know as mods, and this
will allow the skills to function differently. An example of a medical ability is called
pulse, which will allow the player to mark hostiles in a certain radius. One of the pulse
mods will let the player ensure extra critical damage to enemies that are pulsed, and this
works for all party members. There is also a signature skill for each wing that will heal
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everyone and revive anyone that is injure, provide everyone a damage boost, or give
everyone damage resistance and movement speed.
Another game that is similar, but does not measure up to The Division is called
Destiny. The unappealing feature about Destiny is that the story is short and not very
rich. For example, it can take the player twenty levels before the content becomes
exciting and more difficult. As a result, the player can easily become bored and lose
interest in pursuing upper level game content. Not only is the size of the play area
significantly smaller, but also part of the map in Destiny does not include an underground
portion like a player will find in The Division. In addition, there is a section of the map
in The Division that is only players versus players. This area in the game can become
very exciting because a player can turn against other players and make surprise attacks.
There is no question that The Division is one of the finest games on the market
today. When we were done the mission had taken my online friends and I two to three
hours because we ran into bugs, glitches, and we were being timed to open the safety
valves. The mission was on challenging difficulty. So all the enemies were level thirtytwo, which makes them hard to take down. The game surpasses its competitors in the
fields of content, storyline, and game mechanics. Some games may offer more features in
one area or the other, but The Division collectively is head and shoulders above its
counterparts such as Destiny when all parts of the game are closely examined.