The Division 1.8
There is allot that can be said about The Division. From it's horrible launch to its unimpressive endgame. Whatever you choose to say about it though one thing is certain, for a while, It was fun and original. I did enjoy my climb up the ranks to level 30. I just didn't enjoy it enough to stay playing it. You see I am not big on RPG games. I am not particularly good at figuring out if I want to be. I would rather just have a character setup that I can p[lay as kind of thing.
I believe the real problems for the division came from trying to mix the shooter and RPG worlds. At first, they just didn't fit. I remember getting frustrated that I would pick up a new gun that was a higher quality than mine only to have it be lower in DPS then my gun I had since launch. Nothing was making sense to me, and still to this day I am not entirely sure what I am supposed to be doing. I run a balanced approach to my character, and it does all right in a scuffle. It is just not polished to a sheen.
I think this falls on the gear-sets, with my inexperience in the MMORPG world I do not know what does what or what leads to where. I relied on a buddy of mine who plays WOW to help me out some, but even then I was not happy with the results. At least not until I started balancing out my character, and just always striving to make sure nothing goes red when I upgrade my gear.
However, I am not here to give a gear review I am here to write a review about what I think is the game-saving update of the year. You see I had been sporadically playing the division on and off checking out the updates. I liked Underground at first, but then it just relapsed, and the Last Stand fell flat for me, But this Resistance update saved it. With the introduction of the Updates namesake game mode, Resistance is an endless survival-wave after wave-Zombies-esque mode that is fun and challenging. I have only played one map of it so far, and it is terrific. It is trying on your fireteam for sure, it seems like you should stick together to maximize firepower, but then something happens to split you apart and to get back together becomes the biggest challenge of all.
The west side piers area that was unlocked in this update is intriguing in that I have, at the time of this writing, only explored a tiny bit of it before going back to the safe house to get rid of new loot or updating my gear. Enemies respawn fast in this area and that area you just cleared out and are now loitering in is already surrounded by the same enemies you just killed, which makes the area dynamic in my opinion.
I have not tried the 4 vs. 4 multiplayer that was introduced so I cannot comment on that too much other than too say it sounded fun.
That said what I can comment on is the new Rouge 2.0 in the 1.8 update. It just makes the dark zone so much better. Rouge agents were such a freaking nuisance when the game debuted that I refused to go into the dark zone and get the better gear. Part of it was also that my friends would get us into sticky situations with rogue agents and I would end up losing my gear every time. The weird thing is you still have the same chances of running into rouges, but it just has a different feeling now.
In conclusion, I think we should give Massive and Ubisoft another chance at this game. Which I do not think is going to be a problem, as the last couple days, the servers have been full. Maybe open up a few more of those servers Ubisoft?