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A new patch makes The Division’s New York more fun than ever. Shame we still don’t care about anyone in it

- Tom Stone

2016 has been an amazing year for shooters, and looking back over the last 12 months feels a bit like being shot in the eyes by a giggling rainbow. Because after years of ruling the genre, the realistic shooter finally lost dominance to the colorful, wacky weapon shenanigans of games like Doom, Overwatch and Titanfall 2. Even Call Of Duty gave up any pretence of realism this year, blasting off into space to throw black holes at the mopey guy out of Game Of Thrones.

Yeah! Take that, realism! You’ve held the genre in an iron grip for too long with your dull weapons, gray scenery, and stubborn refusal to let us run and double-jump into giant mechs. Good riddance! But weirdly, as Christmas looms, as nights get longer, days colder, and the sky starts dropping heavy hints about throwing up snow, I find myself craving a return to The Division’s city streets.

A third-person cover-shooter MMO set in a beautifully rendered and (no!) realistic recreation of New York City, OXM scored it an eight out of ten when it was released back in March. It’s a game I like a great deal, with some of the best cover-shooting I’ve played outside of Gears Of War. Still, after 30 hours of blasting through the campaign, I doubted its long term value. But with Ubisoft announcing a major new patch to fix a lot of the game’s problems, I find myself more than ready to dive back in.

Bullets on Broadway