The Division: Resurgence - Review
I’m a sucker for looter shooters. I just am. Sure, most of the time they are arbitrarily designed just to pad out game length. You know what I mean, forcing you to use the crappy stuff before the fun stuff. Hell, a mobile game more often than not will allow you to pay for shortcuts to bypass it. When I heard Ubisoft’s The Division was getting a mobile port, I expected the worst initially. What I didn’t expect was official PC support, cross play and progression, appealing graphics, and logical tweaks to the game itself.
That being said, I have always been a fan of The Division. I’ve gotten to max rank in both games across numerous systems, even sinking lots of time in 2’s endgame. Resurgence is a very streamlined version of what’s come before, combining systems from both titles to make it easily accessible to anyone and everyone. Though, if you weren’t a fan of The Division before then I don’t think Resurgence will convince you otherwise as it is more of the same.
The premise is simple. You are a sleeper agent only meant to be activated when there is no other choice. A virus known as the Green Poison, or the “Dollar Flu”, begins to rapidly spread. Most of the people you knew, friends and foes alike, turn to tyranny and now it’s up to you to fight back. From there you fight at the start of the pandemic, and fall into a coma during the events of the first Division game. When you wake up, it’s time to go to work.
While there is an overarching effort into creating a story providing you the context you need for the missions you’re on, most players including myself are going to skip most of the narrative bits. These characters mostly serve as a means to get a mission or to act as a vendor. There’s even a moment where a fellow Division agent mercy kills an enemy. My character began berating her about the morality of it all, when on the way here I shot down 17 people with an AK.
Luckily, you aren’t here for the overarching plot. The star of the show here is the gameplay, and if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. It is the standard cover based shooting that The Division had back in 2014 and it feels the same here. Though not as smooth as The Division 2 or even 1, the fact that the game is meant for a mobile device feels the same as it did on my PS4 does blow me away.
Ubisoft have been in the mobile gaming business for quite a long time now. I remember being a kid playing games like Modern Combat which was “heavily inspired” by Call of Duty on my iPod touch. Legitimate ports such as Assassin’s Creed appeared on the App Store too. I didn’t realize it but a lot of those variations and ports were all done by Gameloft, a sister company of Ubisoft, how about that? All these years later, I’m still enamored by console games on not a console.
The thing is though, those games really did feel like their console counterparts for the most part. Gameloft at the top of their game provided me with the experience that I can now get as an adult through Steam. After having sunk hours into The Division: Resurgence on PC, I simply am amazed at the fact that this is a mobile game. The presentation is stellar providing crisp visuals at all times with no frame drops whatsoever. No pun intended but it is a far cry from the memory leaks that have plagued The Division 2 for the longest.
However, The Division: Resurgence being a mobile game also happens to be its biggest detriment. While the core gameplay is still as fun as ever, navigating the menus requires some serious patience. While on the subject of patience, Resurgence only shines when they finally let you off the leash. That being said, they hold that leash rather tight very early on. It isn’t until hours of gameplay later where you can finally explore New York at your own pace.
Given that mobile gaming is meant to be a very accessible market, it’s meant to be as easy to grasp as possible. This leads to a very long and winded tutorial filled to the brim with cutscenes. Again, it is hours before you get complete agency over your actions. What this means is you will be sent on very linear missions with very obvious enemy placements and predetermined gear and rewards that will be used for teaching purposes.
That’s all fine and dandy, but the real kicker comes in when you start to navigate the menus. For starters, on PC because I was still locked into the tutorial and I didn’t have full access to the game’s features, I wasn’t even allowed to change the 30 FPS cap until I got through it as the menu simply didn’t exist until then. Not to mention that there are some more minute annoyances such as having “Armory” and “Equipment” being very similar in name but much different in function.
Then there’s the heads up display itself which is cluttered with numerous icons. Again this is a mobile game so it’s all meant to be accessed at the touch of a finger, but it makes it difficult to know what you’re looking for on PC. Especially if you’re using a controller. It’s a mouse cursor styled menu but the controller’s sensitivity with both aiming in scopes or just selecting something in the menu or on the map is a challenge in itself.
However, despite how annoying navigating the menus can be, the game itself shows why The Division works and has since 2014. It’s just satisfying to go out and explore New York finding collectibles, dispatching patrols, getting new loot, doing world activities of which there are over 100, or even engaging with more intense modes such as the Dark Zone or Conflict. You really are getting the whole game here, and that serene exploration is there and the fun can be had once you blast through that initial tutorial.
Some of the other changes they’ve made are to the classes you play. For example, in The Division 2 before let you mix and match between selecting two gadgets out of a pool of eleven. Here, Resurgence lets you pick a class or a Specialization and you instead become a savant instead of a jack of all trades. This allows people you play with to have more dedicated roles such as a recon to point out targets and get extra critical damage or a medic to heal from anywhere on the map. I actually quite like this change, especially since you aren’t locked into one specialization throughout the whole game. You can continue to upgrade all of them at any time once you can and decide to.
While the shooting for the most part is your standard fare, there are some key tweaks that have been made here that I truly appreciate. For starters, all weapons can now be aimed down their sights. Whether it’s iron sights, a red dot, or a sniper scope, every weapon can be aimed in first person and it makes for great strafing in firefights around cover. Mind you, this isn’t even present in the other games and I have long wished it was.
All guns can now be upgraded to match your character’s level as well, another feature not present in the other games. With the materials you pick up from missions, vendors, or the world, they can be used to keep leveling up a specific gun you really like. I always hated having to discard a weapon like in say Borderlands that carried me through so much of the game only because it can’t output the damage. If you have the materials then it’s no longer an issue.
It became very easy for me to remember how this game can get addicting. You constantly earning XP for everything you do. There are never ending checklists that pop up with short yet feasible challenges to get you meager bonuses of various kinds. You’ll always have something to do next and for a game like this that’s vital.
Luckily in terms of monetization it seems to be confined to some convenience, things to bypass time gates for example. Unless it takes an egregiously long time to unlock it all yourself then yes that is an issue but for me I haven’t had any. Aside from that, there’s your cosmetics which are done gacha style and your premium currency but nothing available for purchase seems downright viable to enjoy the main game, like weapons. It’s not like you can buy Big Alejandro for $4.99 right now and just breeze through the whole thing.
If you enjoyed The Division before, especially The Divison 1, I do recommend giving Resurgence a shot. It isn’t trying to tread new ground, just offer a free and fun looter shooter that anybody with a gaming capable smart phone or a computer can try. Just, be prepared to have some patience. Once you’re out there though, it really is just simply fun to play.
The Division: Resurgence
Despite some quirks, The Division works very well as a fun mobile shooter, with patience as the penulitmate price.
