Imagine being stuck in New York City without decent clothes or food. It would be a big problem but an even bigger one in the world of Tom Clancy’s: The Division. New York City isn’t the city it used to be, it’s filled with people who are trying to shoot you at first sight and there’s a deadly virus spreading, killing millions of people. To make things worse, the temperature dropped way bellow zero, making it impossible to survive for more than an hour without the right clothing. It’s hard to imagine, but this frozen city just became my new reality.
The Division, as it should be
When The Division was first demonstrated to the world during Ubisoft’ E3 conference, a lot of gamers got excited. The game promised true survival together with your friends and other players online. The world of The Division looked incredibly realistic and the missions looked like they offered enough variation to keep things interesting. Needless to say, when the hype is this big, the final game might disappoint. This is exactly what happened to The Division. The final game didn’t look as good as the trailer and the missions resulted in grinding missions to score the best gear of the game. Ubisoft never gave up on the product however and improved the game a lot with patches and great expansions like Underground. This improvement continues with the second big expansion ‘Survival’. As the title already suggests, this expansion finally gives you a true survival game set in a frozen New York City, something fans have been dreaming of since the first revealment of the game.
This isn’t an easy mission
This expansion, just like the previous one, is a standalone expansion, meaning you don’t need to achieve something in the main game to play it. It creates an entirely separate mission from the main story and the story of the Underground expansion. You can access the Survival mission in your Base of Operations and once you do so, you’re ready to go.
Survival tells the story of a soldier being asked to pick up a new cure for the virus in the Dark Zone. Things need to happen fast since there’s a huge storm rising, traveling by helicopter seemed like a good idea. It won’t be a surprise to you that the storm arrived earlier and your helicopter crashed in the frozen city of New York. Without the right clothing and armed with your pistol, you’ll need to seek warmth in order to survive.
The expansion starts here and it isn’t an easy mission to complete. Since you’re a very loyal soldier, you continue your quest to reach the Dark Zone on foot but this isn’t without danger. As if finding warmth wasn’t hard enough, you’re also infected with the deadly virus, giving you a deadline of 60 minutes. Finding medicines is crucial if you want to reach the Dark Zone but those are rare in the frozen city. By killing others or discovering hideouts or loot crates, you can get lucky and find some medicine or tools to craft better clothing. Survival really feels like a survival game and that’s exactly what we wanted from The Division in the first place.
Work together or aim for the kill
You can play Survival as a PvE or PvP game, if this is your first time here, we recommend you to play the PvE mode where others can help you out. You’ll need the help of other players since you simply can’t reach the Dark Zone alone. Playing this expansion on your own is nearly impossible since the enemies are simply too strong and medicines are too rare. Don’t be mistaken, however, even if you play together, it won’t be an easy ride. The biggest problem is the storm, blocking your view constantly. Losing your friends in the big city will happen more than once and you’ll really need to communicate in order to reunite. Also, note that your radar doesn’t work and you can’t mark locations on your map. You can see the entire map in the menu but you can’t interact with it the way you could in the main game. This results in a lot of challenges to overcome.
Collecting gear is crucial for your survival as is going from warmth to warmth to keep your body temperature from dropping. When it comes to gear, there’s a first come first served rule, meaning that once somebody grabbed the gear, you can’t take it. Sharing your resources is key for survival and you’ll really need to work together as one. You play Survival with 23 other players and you’ll be notified when one of those dies, just like the Hunger Games. This only adds to the tension of the game.
This is the way the game is meant to be played in my opinion but you can go for the PvP mode if you like. In here, others are able to shoot you down, resulting in players with better guns camping in warm locations, waiting for you to arrive. Personally, that’s not really my style so I didn’t really enjoy the PvP mode, I’m sure some of you will.
Conclusion:
This second expansion isn’t an easy one since you’re faced with a lot of problems. Keeping track of the virus, controlling your body temperature and trying to defeat the boss isn’t easy but it’s definitely worth the ride. Survival can become rather frustrating at some points but it’s an experience worth taking, especially when you can share it with your friends. This is what The Division should have offered from the start although this expansion is a bit too short to really demonstrate the potential.
