Just entering The Dark Zone is intimidating enough. The Division does a good job of building up the area as a frightening lawless war zone. It lived up to the bill. Not long after I entered, I was greeted with warring NPC factions, named enemies (read: stronger), and angry player-controlled agents that could tell I was defenseless.

Meekly minding my own business, I set out in search of difficult enemies and some better loot. After finding some equipment that were upgrades over what I had, I went out in search of an Extraction Zone.

Extraction Zones are the only way to permanently obtain any items that drop within the Dark Zone. You’ll need to call in a chopper which takes a couple of minutes to get there, and then you’ll have another minute or so to get your gear loaded up before it gets whisked away to be safely be decontaminated so you can use it. It’s a cool idea for sure.

The safest way to pull this off is through cooperation. If you’re lucky, you’ll run into other lone agents with similar goals. You could attack someone else, and steal their gear, but the penalty if you fail is harsh. As soon as you attack someone else, you’ll be marked as a rogue agent, and if you are killed in that state, it’ll cost you dearly. You’ll drop what you had and lose more than the normal amount of DZ (Dark Zone) experience points and DZ currency, both of which are separate than the EXP and funds you get outside of the Dark Zone.

What makes these encounters particularly thrilling is that they often devolve into Mexican Standoffs. No one really knows who to trust, who is going to fire, and who is actually a nice person just trying to do their thing. It’s an incredibly tense and unique feeling that I can honestly say I’ve never felt before in a video game.

Occasionally, I would run into gangs of players that had total control of an Extraction Zone. One time, I watched peacefully from a distance as a group did their thing, and slowly approached them to see if they would attack. They didn’t. Clearly they didn’t have a problem with my presence. So, thinking everything was cool, I helped them out with the next extraction and proceeded to try and extract my loot. I was instantly betrayed.

As I was securing my loot, I was set ablaze by an Incendiary Grenade and lit up like a Christmas tree. Everything I had was gone. I tried to get my revenge, but it was futile. On my own, I could never take out that group of players. I had to go somewhere else, with my tail between my legs.

That unpredictability though is what makes The Division’s “PvP” exciting and fresh compared to its competitors. The Dark Zone really does feel like the Wild West. Any time that I went in there, I really didn’t know what to expect. Kudos to Ubisoft for taking a risk on its competitive mode and delivering something that feels fresh compared to other popular AAA games.

However, while the ebb and flow does change a little once the level 30 loot and currencies are worked into the mix, more or less that’s what the Dark Zone is, and it makes a up a lot of The Division’s endgame. At 30 you can also challenge much harder versions of the missions for bonus Phoenix Credits (an endgame currency), which is neat, but that’s all there is to it. For now, it’s fun, fresh and exciting, but it might not always be that way. It will be up to Ubisoft to continue to add to the Dark Zone to keep it interesting.

A lot of The Division’s future success is contingent on effective post-launch support. There is a season pass that will stretch the game throughout 2016 accompanied with regular free updates and tweaks as well. Like Destiny and Bungie, how Ubisoft responds to player feedback on evolving the game from what it is on launch will be crucial. The Dark Zone is a nice start, but if that’s all The Division’s endgame is ever going to be, it will eventually get dull like the campaign experience did by the end.

Right now though, at launch, The Division is a well-made open-world shooter with lots of ways to keep you busy. It borrows from the right games and improves on them while still doing enough different to feel like its own game instead of a rehash. It’s flawed sure, but what it does right, outweighs its shortcomings. Will it evolve like Destiny did and stay in the spotlight long after launch? Or will The Division fizzle out like so many other games? No one knows the answer to that question but Ubisoft, so if that something that keeps you up at night, buyer beware.

Score: 4/5