I played during Tom Clancy’s The Division closed beta to get a hands-on look at what players can expect from this next-gen third person hybrid-MMO multiplayer shooter. While the beta felt rather small and sparse, it provided an excellent view of things to come in the game, but it was not without its flaws.

The Division was announced during E3 2013 and now it’s finally ready for launch in about a month. The game is published by Ubisoft Entertainment S.A. and developed by Ubisoft Massive (Massive Entertainment) with the assistance of Red Storm Entertainment for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

The game is set in a near-future apocalyptic New York after a virus strikes the U.S. and kills most of the population right before Black Friday. Fittingly, the urban wasteland’s streets are littered with broken-down cars (many of them police cars) and derelict moving vans. It’s also snowing all the time in the game, the icy streets home to vagabond civilians dressed almost warm enough and with nowhere to go.

The Division’s New York is not exactly a winter wonderland, but it’s home for the agents of the SHD. Much of the game is spent running through icy streets and walking around snow-blanketed cars.

The graphics are good and one thing that I noticed early is how much the winter in New York affects the ambiance. Time to time blizzard conditions would roll in and blanked in the hush in the streets (with the occasional sound of gunfire) I could not see more than a few feet in front of me. It made the game feel treacherous and led me to move more cautiously.

Players are put in the position of being a member of the Strategic Homeland Division, a sleeper agency that exists exactly for the purpose of putting the U.S. back together after a major catastrophe. After the virus hit, killing much of the population, anarchy descended on New York City and Division agents are deployed to help stabilize the city, build infrastructure and curtail criminal activity in any way they can.

As an agent of the SHD you don’t want to go out the front door without being armed to the teeth.

Your character: SHD Agent, well armed and equipped

As mentioned above, the beta appears to be extremely limited. As a result, I was only able to pick between what seemed like three or four faces and did not have access to modify my features. If this remains the same on launch, many players will be seeking out cosmetic items to make themselves stand out (such as leather jackets, pom-pom beanies, sports caps, etc.).

The beta got itself into the plot as quickly as possible and immediately thrust me into an entry-hub off the Hudson in New York and sent me to establish my BOO (Base of Operations). In the full game, players will do this by running three initial missions to acquire specialists and staff to activate three wings of their base: Medical, Security and Tech.

In the beta only the initial mission to activate the Medical wing was available.

To take on this task, my agent was equipped with three weapons: a primary, a secondary and a sidearm. Primary and secondary weapons run the gamut of standard military ordinance such as assault rifles, sniper rifles, SMGs, shotguns and the like. Sidearms seemed extremely limited, however, as I did not see any revolvers (only pistols, although I suspect revolvers will come with the full game).

The loot system uses a standard RPG gear rarity mechanic with colors indicating rarity (green, blue, yellow, etc.) and levels that gate buying or equipping the biggest and baddest equipment. The same goes for armor pieces, which included armored vests, knee pads, gloves, vests, gas mask and backpack. Most equipment had special attributes that would affect certain types of gameplay (by adding skill bonuses, critical chance, extra proficiency for certain guns, etc.).

In The Division firing from behind cover is extremely important to survival. No cover means almost instant death.

Take cover agent: Your survival depends on it!

The enemies I found on the street also had levels, and players will notice quickly same-level foes are rather bullet-spongy. It can take an entire clip to put down a gangster wearing a winter outfit who is looting a shop off the main avenue. This is because the game pushes players to attack groups tactically using a cover-based system.

Pressing the spacebar causes the agent to hide behind cover—crouching behind a car, pushed up against a wall peeking around a corner. This is important for survival since being out in the open can mean near-instant death.

Attackers would attempt to outflank me or charge my position if I did not shoot at them first. Some heavily armored enemies brandishing baseball bats would just run right at me. Other times, attackers would throw grenades to force me to change cover. (Oh yes, and if someone is about to throw a grenade and I shoot them, sometimes they drop it and explode instead.)

Getting around in New York isn’t easy on the best of days (the traffic is hell). However, a nice holographic map and a GPS system does cut down on the commute.

The Dark Zone: No-holds-barred encounters and the possibility of enemy players

The beta seems extremely limited in what story-based content there is available. There was one main mission (the medical wing rescue) and three or four side-missions. New York City in The Division beta feels empty and without life, but this is probably designed to push players into the player-vs-player area known as the Dark Zone.

The Dark Zone (also called the DZ) is a highly contaminated area of New York that is uncontrolled. Overrun by criminal gangs, military outfits and potentially hostile players, this is where Ubisoft expects players will spend most of the game after completing all the story missions.

Aside from extremely dangerous enemies, other players are also a potential danger in the DZ. This is because while in the DZ, players can fire on other players and “go rogue.” Going rogue can be lucrative because in the DZ the only way to get good loot is to pick it up off enemies (which places it in a container) and then calling in a helicopter to extract it. While carrying loot another player can shoot me and steal my hard-earned loot.

Extraction is one of the most exciting parts of the DZ experience. Across New York’s DZ are orange areas called “Extraction Zones.” When I want to get my loot out, I go there and fire a flare into the air. Doing this informs everyone on the map that someone has loot and is trying to get it out. As the chopper is flying in there’s a little over a minute of tension waiting for the extract.

During this time the chopper pilot radios in, “Inbound on your position, agent,” and a timer counts down. The music ramps up and suddenly everyone around you could be a possible rogue agent. Other people often arrive at the landing zone (with their own loot they want to extract). Sometimes it’s a simple extraction, the helicopter arrives, drops its rope and you attach your loot; other times it’s a powder keg when someone started shooting while I’m trying to get my loot out (if they kill me and it’s not on the chopper they can steal it). Do I return fire and push the attacking players back? Or do I risk it and try to extract my loot before running to safety?

Coming home to the BOO (Base of Operations) after a long day in the Dark Zone to relax is always welcome. This is also where I pick up the loot I extracted after it’s been decontaminated.

Closed beta: Some minor bugs and getting killed by rogues

Aside from the limited nature of the beta listed above, the beta also revealed a few bugs. Most of them appear to be minor but others have put the community up in arms about the final product.

The first, which affected me, is a mouse-click bug where the mouse does not work upon launching the game. Certainly much of the UI can be access with the keyboard (hitting the spacebar, pressing ‘F’, etc.) but the mouse is needed to aim and fire. When the bug is happening, clicking the mouse does not register. To fix, I just kept closing and restarting the game until it worked again.

The other issue, however, is a lot more polarizing: people have been catching a lot of cheaters in the game.

It appears that no anti-cheat system exists in the beta and it is speculated by the community that the server simply trusts everything sent by the client. As a result, players can set their health to a million, never have to reload, turn invisible, and so on. This sort of cheating capability would ruin the experience in the Dark Zone entirely by allowing players to become invincible gods.

Of course, there may be no need for anti-cheat in a closed beta, but it’s also speculated that this might be part of a honey pot run by Ubisoft to catch would-be cheaters in the act and identify how they intend to cheat the game. Messages to Massive Entertainment developers on Twitter have been met with soothing replies saying that anti-cheat will be part of the game launch (but no details are forthcoming).

When Tom Clancy’s The Division rolls out on March 8, 2016 it’s highly likely an anti-cheat system will be active; otherwise all of this amazing work done to make this game beautiful and compelling will have gone down the drain.

Featured image credit: Courtesy of Ubisoft Entertainment S.A.