The journey to play The Division from Ubisoft in the comforts of our living room have been years in the making with a first look way back in 2013 at E3 here and a hands-on demo at E3 in 2015 here.  All the delays to the game’s original release window have been put into polishing up the gaming experience but may have put a damper on the overall hype factor.

We had a chance to check out The Division Beta over the weekend on our PlayStation 4 system – it ran pretty smooth and after 4-5 hours of gaming didn’t encounter any hitches.  When last we met The Division we were a bit on the fence as it was difficult to grasp all of the combat and multiplayer aspects of the game standing on your feet at a demo station.  Thankfully The Division is a much greater experience sitting on the couch and playing by yourself or with friends and we’re excited to be very close to the release of the game.

What started out as sort of a massive online shooter has morphed more into an open world RPG game with guns and explosions at your finger tips.  Graphically The Division looks prettier than most games on the market and the controls and gaming mechanics are mostly solid.  Getting in and out of cover is pretty easy to manage – tossing grenades during a firefight remains a challenge and there might be ‘too much’ to do as we mostly forgot about everything possible on the D-pad.

Here’s hoping The Division gives hours of fun when the final game releases – look for our follow up coverage upon release of the game in March 2016.