In The Division 2, the first review on Metacritic is online. It is surprisingly poor. Fans of The Division 2 attack the reviewer.
This is the review’s subject: Those who look at the Metacritic page to find the first reviews of The Division 2 get a rather negative impression of the game:
- Currently (Saturday, March 16, PS4 version), there is only one review displayed with a rating from the press – and it’s quite bad.
The review comes from the page Cheat-Code-Central. The page gives The Division 2 an overall rating of 2.8 (out of 5). This means the game receives the tag “average”, which in this page’s rating system lies between “bad” and “fair”.
Metacritic converts this rating into 56 out of 100 points. Thus, The Division 2 is scraping the lower “Mixed” rating threshold. Below 50 points, a game is classified as “Negative” on Metacritic.
Why is the review from this site important? The review is important because it stands on Metacritic and thus garners a lot of attention.
Many potential buyers orient themselves by what they read on Metacritic.
How did this rating come about?
The review and the rating were written by the Writing Team Lead Lucas White of Cheat-Code-Central. His individual ratings for The Division 2 are significantly better than the overall rating:
- Graphics: 4 out of 5 – The city looks great from the outside. However, the character models, interiors, and environmental design are rather bland.
- Controls: 4 out of 5 – This is mostly simple and straightforward. However, it doesn’t feel particularly tactical when constantly rolling around.
- Music: 3 out of 5
- Gameplay Value: 3.5 out of 5 – Tons of endgame content and various quests, as well as many character build options await you as you trudge through a banal story, according to the author.
Reviewer considers The Division 2 “Survival Porn”
Why is the overall rating only 2.8? The author has a lot to criticize in his review. He writes that the story develops from cheesy and bad to “extremely dumb.”
The author also seems to have an ideological problem with The Division 2: The game feels like propaganda for the violent right-wing – like Survival Porn.
As a player, you are sent to sparsely developed NPCs at various locations to retrieve things to bring to the White House. You follow orange lines to complete missions and find loot, just to finally get to the endgame, the critical part of the game. But all of this is “so boring.”
This is the main criticism: The main problem with The Division 2 is its pace. White repeats this often. You play for many hours but hardly notice any significant progress. He played mission after mission and found hardly any exciting loot he wanted to equip. Most of the time, he spent dismantling trash loot.
Moreover, the environmental design isn’t particularly interesting, especially indoors. The city itself is quite impressive, but the aesthetic of The Division 2 consists mainly of junk everywhere. Trash bags and waste dominate the design. Every room looks the same; it’s hard to distinguish between them, and everything is cluttered with trash.
However, he enjoyed the gunplay, even though he criticizes the game’s “terrible” pace. Everything takes forever. You have skills and armor kits, but both take an eternity to activate – and for no apparent reason.
“Using a medikit feels like holding down the D-pad button for ten years, and the cooldowns for skills are enormous.”
Lucas White, CheatCC
You can improve the cooldowns with upgrades, but first, you have to play for hours until it gets better.
In terms of content, The Division 2 feels packed. There are several dark zones, many random Destiny-like events popping up on the map, and the campaign itself is also quite lengthy. But he emphasizes again: The pace is the biggest problem. It takes forever to make significant progress.
This is his conclusion: The Division 2 is a loot shooter with too much trash loot and a lovingly rendered Washington D.C., which mostly leaves you hiding behind piles of trash in dark buildings.
I didn’t even think I would experience something exciting, unique, or creative while playing this game […] and The Division 2 is already fighting a lost battle for my attention.
Lucas White, CheatCC
Many disagree with this review
This is how readers react: In the comments of this article, the review is met with a lot of criticism. The nicer commentators still write that The Division 2 is probably just not the right game for the tester. This is okay, but the tester must also consider the audience for whom this review was written.
Others are more aggressive in their criticism and say this is not a real review and now only serves to make the game look bad on Metacritic. The review is full of “bullshit” and “lies.” There are also personal, quite hostile remarks against the reviewer.
Several write that the rating is “unfair.” They understand that opinions can differ, but they cannot comprehend such a poor rating. They call it a “joke.”
What is the current mood around The Division 2? Because actually, there is currently a nearly uniformly positive first opinion about The Division 2. Some of the things that the author criticizes are even seen as good by numerous agents:
- The slow pace is “fantastic,” wrote Youtuber Skill Up, and many agreed with him. This allows one to immerse themselves in a world full of details, collectibles, resources, and events. You can also rush through, but those who want to enjoy the game and like to explore the world will find plenty to discover.
- And the fact that there is trash everywhere in the post-apocalyptic Washington D.C. actually contributes to the atmosphere. The details and the dense atmosphere are continuously praised on reddit.
- The loot and progression system also receive positive responses from many agents.
If you look for aspects that multiple agents criticize, you mainly find bugs, technical issues, long cooldown times for skills, and strange weapon mods. The fact that the protagonist is mute and the character editor leaves much to be desired adds to this.
However, this does not diminish the generally positive mood surrounding The Division 2, especially since Massive is quickly addressing the issues.
The reviewer’s criticisms cannot be shared by many.
So far, all other authors in the press have refrained from giving ratings as they want to thoroughly test the endgame first, as have my colleagues from GameStar. Presumably, further ratings will follow on Metacritic next week. We are curious to see how these will turn out.
But: The agents mostly agree that the currently only rating on Metacritic does not do the game justice.
As The Division 2 will only reveal all endgame content with World Tier 5 and the first raid in the coming weeks – and that it will be expanded with free content in the following months – it is questionable whether an early fixed rating is appropriate at all.
So, what do you think? What rating would you give The Division 2 so far?
Many gaming sites have already written first impressions of The Division 2. These are quite positive. You can find a summary here:
However, he enjoyed the gunplay, even though he criticizes the game’s “terrible” pace. Everything takes forever. You have skills and armor kits, but both take an eternity to activate – and for no apparent reason.
“Using a medikit feels like holding down the D-pad button for ten years, and the cooldowns for skills are enormous.”
Lucas White, CheatCC
You can improve the cooldowns with upgrades, but first, you have to play for hours until it gets better.
In terms of content, The Division 2 feels packed. There are several dark zones, many random Destiny-like events popping up on the map, and the campaign itself is also quite lengthy. But he emphasizes again: The pace is the biggest problem. It takes forever to make significant progress.
This is his conclusion: The Division 2 is a loot shooter with too much trash loot and a lovingly rendered Washington D.C., which mostly leaves you hiding behind piles of trash in dark buildings.
I didn’t even think I would experience something exciting, unique, or creative while playing this game […] and The Division 2 is already fighting a lost battle for my attention.
Lucas White, CheatCC
Many disagree with this review
This is how readers react: In the comments of this article, the review is met with a lot of criticism. The nicer commentators still write that The Division 2 is probably just not the right game for the tester. This is okay, but the tester must also consider the audience for whom this review was written.
Others are more aggressive in their criticism and say this is not a real review and now only serves to make the game look bad on Metacritic. The review is full of “bullshit” and “lies.” There are also personal, quite hostile remarks against the reviewer.
Several write that the rating is “unfair.” They understand that opinions can differ, but they cannot comprehend such a poor rating. They call it a “joke.”
What is the current mood around The Division 2? Because actually, there is currently a nearly uniformly positive first opinion about The Division 2. Some of the things that the author criticizes are even seen as good by numerous agents:
- The slow pace is “fantastic,” wrote Youtuber Skill Up, and many agreed with him. This allows one to immerse themselves in a world full of details, collectibles, resources, and events. You can also rush through, but those who want to enjoy the game and like to explore the world will find plenty to discover.
- And the fact that there is trash everywhere in the post-apocalyptic Washington D.C. actually contributes to the atmosphere. The details and the dense atmosphere are continuously praised on reddit.
- The loot and progression system also receive positive responses from many agents.
If you look for aspects that multiple agents criticize, you mainly find bugs, technical issues, long cooldown times for skills, and strange weapon mods. The fact that the protagonist is mute and the character editor leaves much to be desired adds to this.
However, this does not diminish the generally positive mood surrounding The Division 2, especially since Massive is quickly addressing the issues.
The reviewer’s criticisms cannot be shared by many.
So far, all other authors in the press have refrained from giving ratings as they want to thoroughly test the endgame first, as have my colleagues from GameStar. Presumably, further ratings will follow on Metacritic next week. We are curious to see how these will turn out.
But: The agents mostly agree that the currently only rating on Metacritic does not do the game justice.
As The Division 2 will only reveal all endgame content with World Tier 5 and the first raid in the coming weeks – and that it will be expanded with free content in the following months – it is questionable whether an early fixed rating is appropriate at all.
So, what do you think? What rating would you give The Division 2 so far?
Many gaming sites have already written first impressions of The Division 2. These are quite positive. You can find a summary here:
