We tried early access The Division 2 Episode 3 - Coney Island: The Hunt, the last of the free contents foreseen in the first year of support for the title. Massive Entertainment's third-person shooter will in fact turn one year old on March 15, a period of time in which the road has not always been downhill as the excellent start foreshadowed. It will not even be Episode 3 to remedy the structural problems that afflict the title, in fact the great upheavals are expected after its publication, but the plan to restore vitality to The Division 2 has already been drawn up and Coney Island: La Caccia will do forerunner to a new year of content.
Like every episode published to date, also the third appointment with the narrative enrichment differs depending on whether or not to purchase the Year 1 Pass. All Pass holders will be able to play the 1 main story missions 2 week before, unlocking from the new Specialization immediately and also access 2 top secret assignments. There is never peace even in Washington DC, where the True Sons imprison civilians and the Hyenas get high in Spezia in a nightclub. Those without a Pass will have to wait another week to get their hands on the content. The top secret assignments will remain an exclusive for users in possession of the Year 1 Pass, while the Specialization number 6, Firewall, is accessible by facing the challenges of the Special Research. Before we see the new content in more detail, let's do a little recap on the history of The Division to understand why Episode 3 is a fundamental hub.
Previously on Episode 3 ...
First there was the rampant terror caused by Chimera smallpox: a powerful virus, born from the delusions of omnipotence of the virologist Gordon Amherst and created in the laboratory with the sole purpose of eliminating much of humanity as a solution to safeguard the planet. In the height of the holidays, during the wild shopping on Black Friday, infected bills passed from hand to hand at breakneck speed. With only 7 days of incubation, the first devastating effects soon began to appear, throwing the large population of New York - and the world - into panic and despair. As the green poison hit with ferocity, Manhattan became a ghost townengulfed by a spiral of violence that belligerently crushed the semi-deserted streets. Anarchy and psychosis spread faster than the pandemic and neither martial law nor the health measures in place had any effect.
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Under Directive 51, all infected people were quarantined in downtown Manhattan. The quarantine area, which has become famous for posterity as the nefarious Black Zone, was a huge disaster at the management level that forced the deployed forces to retreat. As the order was now lost and the Second Wave of Division agents were put into operation to fix the situation, Russian virologist Vitaly Tchernenko, trapped inside the Russian consulate in New York, he was investigating green poison to understand its properties and find a cure that could stop the virus. The new agents of the Division, called to work after the blatant failure of the First Wave, however, have not managed to rescue Tchernenko, kidnapped by order of the first traitorous agent Aaron Keener.
After being called back to Washington to stabilize central power, give hope to spontaneous groups of citizens organized in settlements and slowly rebuild a society no longer on the brink of collapse, the balance was once again shaken by a highly militarized group: the Black Tusk. The organization went, over 2 episodes, to the Pentagon, where, in the DARPA laboratories, the perfusion reactor, an instrument capable of synthesizing antivirals, is hidden. Episode 3 coming in February, it will take us on the tracks of the Black Tusk and Tchernenko. With all the technology acquired and the offensives arrested, the time has come for The Division to look forward and concretize the efforts to achieve a cure, as well as close an open wound from the first chapter that goes by the name of Aaron Keener.
Coney Island: the amusement park of death
We will not go further into the details of the narrative missions which, at the mildest possible difficulty, are completed yes and no in an hour, but we will once again spend a few words on the skill of the team of create truly suggestive settings. In the imagination, Coney Island is a place of relaxation and fun, a place that, especially in summer, is filled with life and tourists. The Coney Island of the game is deserted, the attractions are badly reduced and out of order and in the night the only figures that wander among the collision cars and the rides are those that make up the enemy patrols. Although in the game the places are essentially emptied of all forms of life, it is as if they evoke a familiar experience through objects. The crackling neon lights of an Arcade shop sign, the massive Ferris wheel towering over every other game in the park, and even the screams and smoke that simulates the fog in the haunted house.
The clashes that take place between the rides do not have the surprise effect that occurred in the finale of episode 2, but there is also a dose of adrenaline caused by an insistent mortar attack that forced us to often change shelter and to attack the enemies in our advance. Even the levels in the tight spaces force us not to have a passive attitude and this is undoubtedly designed to be able to make the most of the abilities of the new Firewall Specialization. Equipped with a flamethrower as a distinctive weapon and an incendiary sawn-off shotgun as a sidearm, the Firewall is the perfect solution for those who prefer to engage at a short distance and to give tit for tat to the Purifiers who have made fire as a form of cleansing their life goal.
The skill mod for the Aggressor shield allows you to use certain types of weapons even when it is in use, giving more protection and allowing you to stay longer in the open field than was the case with the Machine Gunner. Also, with the addition of the “Pride Reaction” feat, when the armor is destroyed, all enemies within 5 meters catch fire. The grenade available in the skill tree is the Cluster Grenade which launches mini grenades that explode involving a large surrounding area. Here too it seemed logical to expect some sort of incendiary grenade, but that remains the prerogative of the Survival Specialization which, like the Firewall, it is an effective choice against state effects.
The main element of this update, however, is only the fire and we do not hide that it has always been very satisfying to set enemies on fire. It was fun to combine the fire turret with the BT Wired Gloves and decimate enemies under the fire of the Pyromaniac. The Division 2 is above all a game where the greatest challenges can be faced as a team, even if we have not been able to thoroughly evaluate the synergy of Firewall with teammates by playing on the public test server. What we can draw from it, however, is that the Aggressor shield not only enhances the damage inflicted by the user but also the damage of all allies who attack covered by the shield, in proportion to the number of enemies on the other side. With companions in cover on the flanks, it is easier to break enemy flank attempts while you break through the heart of the defense by setting fire to everything that we encounter on the way.
