I’m quite enjoying this! I’ve played about two hours and did the first mission at the Grand Washington Hotel.
The enemies are definitely less bullet-spongey than the beta for the first Division (and yes that was a long time ago) but still a liiiitle bit. Headshots don’t seem to matter all that much (although my stats say I have one headshot kill so I guess I have to try harder). As for the AI, nothing too special but they do move around a lot and provide some challenge. I did have a good ah-ha moment in a room when it felt like they were infinitely spawning like in the old Call of Duty games and decided that I really should flank them and close the distance to shake them up a bit. I looked to the right and found an escalator, ran up the stairs and attacked from a new vantage point. Jobe done, so that felt cool.
The game looks beautiful on my PS4 in 4K. Looks like it might even be native 4K checkerboard. Those streets man. So much clutter and stuff laying everywhere. Everything looks fantastic and the frame rate is rock solid. Plus the White House feels way smaller than I thought it would be in real life. In my mind’s eye it’s a huge complex like some shopping mall, but I guess it really is more like a large country estate house! The distances are accurate, too. According to Google Maps it’s about 600m between the White House and the theatre.
Another good thing… guys… you know I don’t swear that often so please excuse me when I say this: the music is fucking kick arse. It’s deep house that brushes up against fast heavy metal. In the middle of battle it cranks up and gets the heart racing. Pretty exciting.
On the downsides, we’ll, it’s loaded with stuff and it’s not very nicely spaced. It’s typical for this genre, sadly, and I just don’t have the patience to sift through it all. I’d love it if they put decent effort into easing me into it, but instead they jam it all in your face as soon as you’ve completed the opening few minutes. I suppose that’s why I bounce off these games pretty hard after a few hours. The menu is just spread out and slammed up on the screen like a hastily assembled birthday cake, making them really hard to get my head around. There’s even an option for large fonts in the settings, which I tried. All it seems to do is increase the distance my eyes need to travel from one menu panel to the next.
Even the menu tutorial serves no purpose. Firstly, if your menus need a tutorial you’ve already failed. Secondly, don’t give me five topics all at once without giving me a chance to practically experience the thing you’re trying to teach. There’s no way I’m going to remember any of that. Learning to play a game should be organic.
And another downside: we all know that it’s going to be loaded with micro transactions and continuing service game events. I don’t have any patience for that either!
Still better than Anthem tho. Much, much better.