Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Developers: Ubisoft Montreal, Ubisoft Bucharest, Ubisoft Reflections, Ubisoft Paris, Ubisoft Toronto
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
Tested on: PlayStation 4
Watch Dogs 2 – Review
Watch Dogs was an overhyped piece of garbage to some, an unpolished gem that was rated too poorly for others, one thing that can be said is that it was a new IP of Ubisoft. It had its flaws, many of them to be honest, from the downgraded graphics on PC and overall it came to prerendered E3 footage, to cars that handled like leprotic pieces of ass, to the main character being a discount Batman without the cool outfit or the overall likeability. During an interview the developers had promised the viewer and the player that they had taken on both the constructive and the not so constructive criticisms and had worked very hard on making true their promises when it came to making Watch Dogs 2 everything the first failed to be. On time this time around.
Story
You are Marcus Holloway, a twenty-four year old youth that despite his age has gotten himself into a pickle. Well not him per se, but ctOs has gotten him into the mess. He’s being framed for things he didn’t do by a cold, unforgiving machine. So what’s a man to do? In the opening scenes of the game you walk into a facility and erase your very digital footprint. Having successfully done so, Marcus is enlisted in DedSec.
Their goal is simple, taking down the ctOs, which has been upgraded after the events of the first game to ctOs 2.0, so the hardware and software have been updated, so the old tricks Aiden Pierce used to get around the system won’t work this time around. The story starts off really lighthearted and fun and the DedSec team doesn’t really find any hurdles they can’t pass if they really try, it’s only a while into the game that events happen that are rather gritty and shift the game’s tone every so subtly. It’s really well done and if the scenes were to have been done in a real life television show it would have some real gravity, so a lot of work went into the writing.
The characters are likeable, flawed but overall none of them are really bland or forgettable, every member of the Dedsec team stands out, and the ‘enemies’ aren’t ‘that’ over the top, there are some moments where the line of suspension or disbelief gets strained but nothing too severe that makes them seem like they aren’t flawed humans. Watch Dogs 2 improved the story of the first by miles.
Graphics
Ubisoft makes beautiful games. Some of their games don’t age well, especially when looking at the latest release of the ‘Ezio Collection’, even though those games were graphically beautiful back then, they didn’t weather the console upgrade storm. Watch Dogs 2 is eye candy. It’s A LOT more vibrant than the first game and it might be difficult to believe but there are no major graphical glitches when talking about the cutscenes.
There are some clipping issues and the draw distance isn’t really all that great when it comes to rendering objects and cars, but when they are rendered it all just shines. One slight marring of this almost too beautiful game is that the tracking doesn’t always work. When you go to track a mission, you have to ‘retrack’ it for every segment of the questline. So say you’ve finished one part of the mission, then the next part shows up as ‘tracking’ in your Dedsec app, but it doesn’t necessarily show so on the map. So you have to untrack and retrack or manually track the mission.
We’re not quite sure what is the deal with the whole ‘Batman-o-vision’ where you can just see everything around you on the fly, with the click of a button. You don’t have to unlock it, but can immediately do it. It sort of goes around having to find your way around a problem. The way the buildings you have to invade are mapped, they beg to be explored and for you to die several times until you find a path that works. Now it’s just a click of a button away for you to view every guard, every outlet and every vent. It takes away from the enjoyment of exploration and ultimately of the gameplay and the effort the developers took into making the maps.
Sound
Watch Dogs 2 is great when it comes to music and sound effects. When you are in a car, the soundtrack is fun to listen to, and riding around is fun just for this sole purpose. The song of the reveal trailer: ‘Spaz’ by Nerd is integrated into the radio, which is a cool nod. Almost every kind of vehicle sounds different and the sound they make when you accelerate just adds to the ‘feel’ of the vehicle you are on or in. The voice acting is really well done, but that’s sometimes weighed down by the graphical limitations of the cutscenes, yet overall the voice actors really gave it their all.
Gameplay
Watch Dogs 2 is an action/adventure game. Though the selling point of the game is ‘hacking’, there’s much more to do than just sit behind a screen and correct codes and crack algorithms. You go around being more of a vigilante with computer skills than you are a full time hacker. When the game first came out there were problems with the online co-op gameplay, but those issues have been resolved and now you can just play online and have random players jump into your game and either help you finish missions or fuck up your code by hacking you and then it’s up to you to take them out. The overall seamless multiplayer is integrated fantastically, but it’s a pain when a player does come along and hacks you, so having the possibility to set the game to ‘co-op’ only would be a nice treat to players not into the competitive part of the game.
Almost everything you do in the game nets you followers. Be it driving people around being a cabbie or doing drone races, playing co-op missions or story missions, everything revolves around followers. The story aspect shows that you need the processing power of these followers to take down the ctOs 2.0, but when it comes to gameplay, you just need a number algorithm that is a reference to your level and with every level up you gain ‘tech points’. These can be sunk into skills that upgrade you and your hacking skills.
There are several ‘skill trees’ some revolving around driving around, making bombs or upgrading the battery of your cellphone, making it possible to link more hacks together and creating bigger and more chaos. Hacking isn’t the only way to tackle missions, you can also just 3D print your weapons and go in guns blazing, but do know that the enemies aren’t keen on having you and will take measures to take you out, they’ll call in backup, so paying attention to every enemy on the battlefield is key to winning the battle if you do decide to go in armed to the teeth.
Should you make it out alive you’ll have the police to deal with and they aren’t to be messed around with, they’ll hunt you down like bloodhounds and it’ll take more than a few tight corners to escape them.
Conclusion
Ubisoft had big shoes to fill when they made their promise about Watch Dogs 2, and they have more than held up to it. The game shines and is everything Watch Dogs should have been and more. With a likeable protagonist, a really cool cast and a plot that’s both hilarious at moments and gritty at others this game just pleads for a playthrough. If you had set your hopes on Watch Dogs, but had them dashed, then don’t hesitate to take a look and see what Watch Dogs 2 has to offer, it’ll certainly entertain you. If you didn’t like Watch Dogs because it wasn’t for you and you’re not into GTA with hacking then you won’t find what you are looking for.
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