[2019] New Division player impressions of open beta

As someone who has not played TD1 but is looking for a game to really sink time into, I've had my hopes up multiple times and have been let down over the years. I know I'm not alone in this feeling. Regardless if our expectations of games have grown, or the corporations producing/creating games have lost their soul, it's been rough.

I was happy when I heard about the open beta of TD2 because I really wanted to give this game a shot. I've browsed this subreddit a bit reading info about the game but I noticed there wasn't a lot of content or impressions for brand new players who may be in the same boat as me.

If you're agreeing with what I'm saying so far and check a few different games out to try and get 'that feeling' again, let me say that the open beta is giving me that feeling and i'm extremely excited. Outside of giving the bullet points of the strengths in this game that I felt were missing from other recent games, I think the most simple way to describe how I feel would be an analogy.

You know in music you can sometimes tell musicians or a band forced something in their sound that makes it 'feel' unappealing? It's almost as if there isn't a genuine feeling behind its artistic creation, and it sounds ultimately uninspired even if some parts of the whole are ok. That is exactly how I felt playing games mostly recently such as Anthem and to a certain extent, Destiny.

I wasn't expecting it, but this game feels like a song that is really inspired. Playing through the open beta gave me that feeling, and I think it was a combination of a lot of things I've witnessed in game and from watching interviews with the devs.

I don't want to over-romanticize the game more than I already have. I just thought I'd let new comers to the subreddit know that this game is definitely worth checking out (and for free with the beta!). The open beta felt like a single for a band that I heard people like that I never fully listened to and it has so many elements I've been wanting. Blasting the full album on release for sure.

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Originally posted by Slunk32

I really like how the gameplay balances skill, tactics, and gear. It's hard to not compare this to Anthem since that was the last game I played, but in Anthem I felt like an acrobatic tank where gear just improved my fire power as I went along and hit 'fire' to groups of bad guys. In this I feel like my positioning and movement is really important as well as my aim. Better gear seems to obviously help, but the fundamentals of combat in this game seem to be around more interesting and skill based combat. I like that.

I also really enjoy the environment. For example, the Theater felt alive in all the ways that Fort Tarsis didn't. I think it has to do with the detail on a graphical front along with the way the characters are moving about and doing things in their world. Kids are dancing, people are saying hi to me, there is a megaphone voice giving people encouragement, some dude was messing with his garden. It feels post-apocalyptic in a good way. I also love not having to force long conversations with people.

I also really enjoyed the detail gone into the RPG elements like the graph that shows the damage drop off. There are a ton of different numbers that I can see being really fun to try and maximize and improve with new gear. There seems to be a lot of attention to detail with things like bulk selecting items to sell, a character inspect screen in game where I can zoom and pan around to check out my gear. A lot of quality of life stuff that feels good.

Thats a few things that stick out now to me. The quality of life and environment stuff is great, but the gameplay is what makes me really excited. I see a lot of opportunity for how they can do challenging experiences.

Don't forget to do jumping jacks with the kids :)

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