Eh. I don’t know if it’s as bad as you guys think. We had discussions in the first game’s thread that went over the same Tom Clancy issues, and Ubisoft riding the line between wink-nudge “this game has a deep stuff to say but it’s not aligned with any politics” is a canard other non-Polygon reviewers have pointed out.
Yeah, I’m with the Polygon side on this one. Ubisoft’s “our games don’t have anything do to about politics” view is complete and utter bullshit.
The problem is that the review doesn’t say anything. The reviewer clearly has a bone to pick with Fox News and he finds a way to squeeze it into his review of The Division 2. Which, ok, he got paid so good job dude! But if I’m trying to learn about the game, I don’t see how that review gives me any information of value.
So let me make sure I’m understanding this correctly. The skill power stat doesn’t have any impact on the power of your skills? The only thing the stat does is gives you a threshold where you can equip skill mods? I’ve been piling on the skill power and was wondering why my abilities didn’t seem to be any more effective then when I wasn’t running any, but I saw this this morning:
That explains a lot, but I’m pretty surprised. Why would Skill Power not scale the power of your skills? Can’t understand what their thought process was here.
I doubt many Variety readers are actually coming to Variety to get a product review of a game. The focus on the way the game’s political themes favor a guns hoorah Fox News fantasy tells me how the game felt to that reviewer.
So it’s basically a blog. Mission accomplished, I guess.
You know, though, from listening to a lot of the cell phones you find, and watching the footage you find, etc., it seems very possible that Ubi is really yanking everyone’s chain a bit. Yes, the overall setup for the game is pure techno-fascist tripe, but much of the subtext in the game undercuts that framework pretty effectively. Taken as a whole, it starts to resemble more of a put-down of people who actually believe that stuff than as a celebration of those positions. Now, one could argue that what they’re doing is too nuanced, or subtle, or ineffective, to overcome the obvious prima facie message of the game’s setup. One could also argue that what you do, as the character, outweighs what you hear or read as the player, but the more I play the more I see the core of silliness under the veneer of oo-rah hyper-macho ultraviolence.
Yeah, that’s why the review is bad.
It doesn’t actually talk about the game itself. It’s not a game review. It’s a political statement.
And really, it’s not a deep, or meaningful one. It’s not even good on that level.
It’s a terrible review, no matter how you look at it.
Aw, that’s kind of a bummer. Running around spamming explosives with the Tactician set was a ton of fun in the first game.
Here’s an exercise. Read Tom’s review of Carmegeddon Max Damage and tell me how much of it is a product review and how much is him telling you how he feels about it.
I will say this regarding the Variety review: the reader comments are gold.
Ugh. That is a terrific reddit post, but it’s definitely bad news. I planned to run a skill build, as I did in D1. I hope Massive fixes this.
I suppose I should remind myself that they absolutely did make huge balance changes as D1 went along, and most of those were for the better. Also, the game released in such good shape that this sort of thing may actually get addressed soon. They don’t have dozens of serious stability or critical path issues that require immediate attention.
Oh good, exercise! I could use a little. But sure, why not: challenge accepted.
I just know that hitting people adds time to my time limit and points to my score (which is basically money and experience points in the latest version of Carmageddon).
OK sure, that’s a little ways into the actual content of the review, but right there we’ve got the basic structure of the game and how scoring works. Here’s a little more info about its priorities:
Stainless accomplishes this with the three P’s of Carmageddon: pedestrians, power ups, and physics. By playing out in an arena littered with people, by strewing silly power ups throughout the arena, and by tying everything together with a physics model that was amazing in the 90s and is still impressive today, Stainless created an infinite DIY joke machine based on the absurdity of cars intentionally hitting people.
And here’s a little criticism:
For instance, the multiplayer support misses entirely the point of the game by not having pedestrians, AI cars, or a multiplayer community. The last one isn’t the developers’ fault, but my theory is it’s partly because of the first two. Stainless also completely whiffs a perfect opportunity to plug the game into this generation of Twitch and YouTube. The excellent replay feature needs to be a little more accessible, but more importantly, it’s needs to be a lot more persistent. There is no way to save videos, much less upload them to social media where they belong, and where they would probably cultivate more Carmageddon fans. Those videos up there were a pain in the ass to make. Come on, guys, you’ve pulled up to the 21st century, just a little more, a little more, keep going, almost there, a little more, you got about a half foot to go…
And that’s not even getting into the videos that Tom very helpfully included to even show us how the game works. Let’s look at the Variety review one more time. And let’s skip over all the Tucker Carlson crap, because I really don’t care about that anyway. Let’s look at how gear works in The Division 2:
It’s pale even in the standards of video game logic. Consider the idea of applying gameplay tropes familiar to sword-and-sorcery or sci-fi epics to what’s branded as a real world, near future story. Here, guns deal damage points. A holster can deflect X amount of said damage. A better holster, more deflected damage. One headshot deals 100 points, another 500. Of course, different enemies were born with thicker skulls, so they can withstand 500-plus points. This isn’t the context for those gameplay traits, but a bigger gun deals bigger numbers logic, thus the need to hunt for new weapons.
Wow, so random gear has random adds random values to my character, and random weapons appear to do random damage to enemies. Wouldn’t it be awesome of the gear had some indication of how much protection or damage they offer? Oh wait a minute: they do! Or what about the heritage of Tom Clancy games:
Ubisoft’s prior Tom Clancy-licensed output consisted of “Splinter Cell’s” Sam Fisher or the international exploits of the Ghost Recon team. “Hawx” too, a wild, pure-Clancy flight combat sim with the explosive mark of Michael Bay. By comparison, “The Division 2” has no legacy. It exists because modern video games do this specific thing.
What does this even mean? Hawx has a legacy but The Division 2 is just this thing that games do? What is this review telling me? Since you asked for the comparison, I’d like to spell out in case I’m not clear, I have no problem with reviewers injecting their opinions and perspectives into reviews. I’d far prefer that to a dry recitation of bullet point features. But I do need at least a little information about the actual game in there too, and there’s none of that to be found in the Variety review. Now if your retort is that we’re just not their audience, that this is a space filler for a studio executive to chuckle over while he thumbs over to the latest film grosses, fine. I’ll skip over the next link I see to Variety’s game reviews. But don’t tell me this review carries any value or contains any substance, because I can see for myself that it does not.
First comment:
Good grief. This review couldn’t be any cringier.
You laid a trap for me, you son of a bitch!
Sure, to you, this carries no value or substance. I’m not going to tell you that your feeling is wrong. I am going to disagree that the review not having value is an objective truth.
The author very obviously has a bone to pick with gun culture, Fox News, and that relationship with gaming. The Division 2 lies squarely in that territory, and I think that’s not unsurprising or controversial to many gamers. It’s a Tom Clancy game after all. So what right? Take a step back and really think about it though. We joke about how the player verbs in games can reveal how shallow the narratives are, but if the prevailing solution is “SHOOT GUN” maybe we need to look at that. Perhaps that doesn’t seem like an appropriate conversation in a review to you, but it tells me a lot more about how the game felt to this guy than another feature list rundown.
Edit: (And I like The Division 2 so far, but I’d be lying if I said some of these thoughts also hadn’t crossed my mind.)
I find someone saying “This game made me feel icky because its mechanics and story showcase the worst of our culture” more engaging and valuable than “this game’s sound design is a 9, shooty bits are a 7, graphics are a 10” etc.
And I would submit that those two statements are exactly as useless, just for two different reasons. But we clearly have a fundamental disagreement that is likely irreconcilable, so I leave it at that. Good day, sir.
I have no idea what to do. I don’t watch TV cop shows.
Slide across the hood of a car. I had that achievement within my first five minutes playing.
You can turn in Project items anywhere from the Map.
I wanted to hit 30 before I left for a week of visiting colleges with my kids over spring break, but no such luck. It’s probably a good thing - this game has it hooks in deep right now; maybe taking a break will help reduce my obsession.
Here’s hoping I won’t miss whatever D2’s version of the Bullet King loot explosion turns out to be.