Off to the south!
New York? Isn’t Division 2 playing in Washington? That’s right – at least so far. But after two missions led to Coney Island in the last season of last year, in the immediate vicinity of Manhattan, and a villain named Keener reappeared at the same time, Warlords is now almost completely returning to the Big Apple. That’s where Keener is up to mischief and they want to put an end to the culprit. Because you do not know your whereabouts at first, you follow the trail of your henchmen in order to obtain relevant information and finally pay a visit to the villain himself. The new campaign includes five missions and a number of special tasks in the open world.
“Returning” doesn’t mean visiting the moon, sorry: the Manhattan of the previous one. Rather, with an area south of it, a completely new open world is available. It’s nowhere near as big as Manhatten or DC, but a sprawling location knitted according to the same pattern.
The division experience
That is still one of the great strengths of this game (and its predecessor): The illusion of being in a living world is fantastic. To this day I just soak up the surroundings in peace and quiet; the quiet music when leaving the secured area, the stone backyards, the lots of rubbish, the artistic graffiti, overwhelming weather conditions as well as chairs and sleeping bags on the roadside or dull volleys of guns that get lost in the desolate sea of houses.
Still great: The action was mainly expanded to include tactical variants.
-The action itself has not lost any of its strength in the past twelve months. Division 2 is a feast for the senses at the latest when a storm rages or fire rollers break out among a group of opponents to carry away a few gas cans and turn night into day. Because explosions are not just loud here, but have a physical course – a beat that is reminiscent of comedic timing without being silly.
“Look there!”
How practical, therefore, that with the Warlords expansion those sticky mines of the predecessor return, which you snap directly at a villain, whereupon it burns for a long time and is then blown up or exploded immediately, depending on the selected mine. Also new is a hologram that attracts the attention of enemies, as well as electric mines that briefly put people and machines out of action. It works so unreliably that its use leaves something to be desired, but I haven’t really looked into it yet.
I prefer to handle different variants of fireflies and sticky mines, as required, as the latter cause a lot of damage to the guns mounted on robots. After all, they have received reinforcement in the form of an outrageously nimble climber who feels like firing from all directions at the same time and should therefore be scrapped as quickly as possible. In general, many opponents now have more on the box. Some even use the skills that were previously reserved for division agents, or even appear in the open world in variants that are a lot to nibble on.
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