Surprisingly compelling story, characters, open world, and quest design, pairs really well with its clever and fun environmental interactions through hacking. Will keep you very entertained! NameBrand
I started my journey into Watch_Dogs 2 with mixed feelings: The game looked stunning, and I could feel myself dreaming of the possibilities that awaited me on the skill tree, but then they had to introduce the other characters, and to be honest, I wasn't super thrilled about playing through another open world game.
But, sticking through until the credits rolled, I was really surprised at how much I enjoyed my time in the game, and with just about every aspect of it no less.
Those characters I was bothered with, had great voice actors, and after a while, I actually found the writing to have a certain charm to it. The characters started to become believable and I really became attached to the whole team. I can't say that's ever happened to me in a game before? Usually I can get a sense of the trash characters and be like, "yep, spending the next 20 hours with you, that's gonna hurt." But no, I really did change my mind. I even think the subplot characters were well done, and the main "villain" character has a really interesting blend of 'evil' and 'hipster' that was so ominously foreboding and just worked, really entertaining stuff. I don't know how they did it, but they knocked it out of the park with the writing and the characters. Even just conversations you hear in the street from pedestrians are believable. There's real people working at Ubisoft I guess! Haha. Genuinely makes the world feel lived in and alive.
I really dug in and enjoyed the narrative, and all of its pokes and jabs with the meta-narrative, and big data, and corporate warfare, etc. It seems like there's a ton of missions that were just engineered to get me to think about their potential real world counterparts. I'm sure not all of the game was engineered to have connections to the real world on purpose, but still, all too often I would be doing a mission and think to myself about how it's not too far off from how a similar scenario may play out in real life. Some really aren't a stretch of the imagination either: Spoon-feeding specific advertisements to influence public opinion? Screwing around with the voting system? Selling your data to another big company that uses it for x, y, z, etc., and etc. These might be overarching narratives for "quests" that fit in a video game world, but they could also very well be real scenarios in our real world. It was interesting to experience and think about beyond playing the game, and I appreciated that discourse I was able to have because of the sharp writing on that front.
So what about the gameplay? I think that all of the stealth scenarios in the game were really well thought out, and always posed their own unique and interesting challenges. Strategizing how to be stealthy is definitely the way they want you to play the game, and in that sense, it can feel overpowered to be stealthy... until you're caught, and then you can be gunned down in seconds if you're not careful. I found that to be a nice balance.
So, when things did get hairy, the gun play wasn't my favorite, though it caused me to be more creative in my approaches, using everything I had available, and generally made the game more tense and interesting. I will say about that, the AI seemed to be pretty intelligent, not masterclass levels of smart, but enough to make them seem natural in their own settings, slightly predictable and unpredictable at the same time, acting how you might think a security detail may try and flush someone out.
Driving was excellent, definitely one of the highlights in this game. Drifting feels amazing and I have no idea how they fine tuned that to be so good. I'm really glad that there's a lot of optional races and driving missions because driving overall is just a real treat.
The music was surprisingly spectacular as well? The radio stations were well done too and always offered a good amount of variety for a lot of genres. Music during the main missions took the cake though, and even caused me to find it on Spotify for some casual listening outside of the game.
Controlling your RC's and gadgets were sometimes a mixed bag, but overall everything was always intuitive. If it wasn't, there's always button prompt instructions at the bottom of the screen. I had a period of a few months where I couldn't play this game, but was able to jump right back into it no sweat because of those. You barely notice them unless you want to see them though. Nifty good idea.
There was a few times I wish Markus would just "jump" instead of needing to be next to a wall within a certain height range to vault, and beyond that movement gripe, there were a few times the cover system betrayed me, but his movement was acceptable enough, and I enjoyed the parkour flare that he had, even though the animations take a touch longer than I'd like them to sometimes.
I really quite enjoyed the skill tree system. You get points by leveling up, which can be done by gaining "followers" from completing activities of just about any kind, of which there are a lot. You can do main quests, side quests, online quests, picture scavenger hunts, races, being a taxi driver, etc. So there's a lot of variety for how you can get these "followers". Sometimes you need a piece of "key data" in order to unlock a section of the skill tree, and those will lead you to places of the map where you might have to do a hacking puzzle or sneaking mission to be able to unlock them, and they're usually a little more difficult than other random encounters. I liked it, the upgrades all felt like real meaningful additions to my kit, and allowed me to explore different playstyles with ease.
I thought that the "Dark Souls" style PvP invasions and other multiplayer events were super fun. I liked how they just randomly would happen and I would have to hunt another player down, or escape a certain area or something. Even in 2022, I'm surprised that people are still playing enough to where that's happening consistently, but man, it's way fun. I never got to try multiplayer with friends, but just the randoms I encountered during single player were enough to boost me into having a little extra fun. Helped me level up too! A really interesting mechanic that I didn't think I would like, but ended up really enjoying it.
Also, I am OBSESSED with the Dedsec branding, whoever did all of that pixel art, mixed with the old timey art, and the windows 98 computer vibes, with the skeletons and the reaper, and the spooky halloween kinda stuff... whatever team at Ubisoft came up with all that, they're all absolute freakin' genius's and if I was a content creator, I would hire all of them to do graphics for my videos or whatever because it absolutely speaks to me. So cool and unique. Though I have no freakin' clue how you would graffiti that stuff, that's gotta be borderline impossible lol. I would buy Dedsec merch in a heart beat. The art design for this game is incredible, and I can't get over it.
Overall, I am so surprised, even honestly shocked, at how much I enjoy this game. After playing it, I can't help but make comparisons to GTA5, of which, is probably WD2's direct competitor. You know, to each their own, but for me, I personally prefer Watch_Dogs 2. The meta-narrative, the characters, the activities, the skill tree, environmental interactions, etc., I just like it more. Totally subjective opinion. GTA5 feels and plays like a hyperbole of real life with an irreverent criminal twist, and Watch_Dogs 2 feels and plays like real life, with a video game twist. I think I just prefer WD2's more "gamified" approach to its game and world design, more than I did with GTA5's realistic, gritty take on the open world formula. Man. Watch_Dogs 2, what a good freakin' game. Not perfect, but definitely one of my favorites, and probably one of Ubisoft's best of all time.
I started my journey into Watch_Dogs 2 with mixed feelings: The game looked stunning, and I could feel myself dreaming of the possibilities that awaited me on the skill tree, but then they had to introduce the other characters, and to be honest, I wasn't super thrilled about playing through another open world game.
But, sticking through until the credits rolled, I was really surprised at how much I enjoyed my time in the game, and with just about every aspect of it no less.
Those characters I was bothered with, had great voice actors, and after a while, I actually found the writing to have a certain charm to it. The characters started to become believable and I really became attached to the whole team. I can't say that's ever happened to me in a game before? Usually I can get a sense of the trash characters and be like, "yep, spending the next 20 hours with you, that's gonna hurt." But no, I really did change my mind. I even think the subplot characters were well done, and the main "villain" character has a really interesting blend of 'evil' and 'hipster' that was so ominously foreboding and just worked, really entertaining stuff. I don't know how they did it, but they knocked it out of the park with the writing and the characters. Even just conversations you hear in the street from pedestrians are believable. There's real people working at Ubisoft I guess! Haha. Genuinely makes the world feel lived in and alive.
I really dug in and enjoyed the narrative, and all of its pokes and jabs with the meta-narrative, and big data, and corporate warfare, etc. It seems like there's a ton of missions that were just engineered to get me to think about their potential real world counterparts. I'm sure not all of the game was engineered to have connections to the real world on purpose, but still, all too often I would be doing a mission and think to myself about how it's not too far off from how a similar scenario may play out in real life. Some really aren't a stretch of the imagination either: Spoon-feeding specific advertisements to influence public opinion? Screwing around with the voting system? Selling your data to another big company that uses it for x, y, z, etc., and etc. These might be overarching narratives for "quests" that fit in a video game world, but they could also very well be real scenarios in our real world. It was interesting to experience and think about beyond playing the game, and I appreciated that discourse I was able to have because of the sharp writing on that front.
So what about the gameplay? I think that all of the stealth scenarios in the game were really well thought out, and always posed their own unique and interesting challenges. Strategizing how to be stealthy is definitely the way they want you to play the game, and in that sense, it can feel overpowered to be stealthy... until you're caught, and then you can be gunned down in seconds if you're not careful. I found that to be a nice balance.
So, when things did get hairy, the gun play wasn't my favorite, though it caused me to be more creative in my approaches, using everything I had available, and generally made the game more tense and interesting. I will say about that, the AI seemed to be pretty intelligent, not masterclass levels of smart, but enough to make them seem natural in their own settings, slightly predictable and unpredictable at the same time, acting how you might think a security detail may try and flush someone out.
Driving was excellent, definitely one of the highlights in this game. Drifting feels amazing and I have no idea how they fine tuned that to be so good. I'm really glad that there's a lot of optional races and driving missions because driving overall is just a real treat.
The music was surprisingly spectacular as well? The radio stations were well done too and always offered a good amount of variety for a lot of genres. Music during the main missions took the cake though, and even caused me to find it on Spotify for some casual listening outside of the game.
Controlling your RC's and gadgets were sometimes a mixed bag, but overall everything was always intuitive. If it wasn't, there's always button prompt instructions at the bottom of the screen. I had a period of a few months where I couldn't play this game, but was able to jump right back into it no sweat because of those. You barely notice them unless you want to see them though. Nifty good idea.
There was a few times I wish Markus would just "jump" instead of needing to be next to a wall within a certain height range to vault, and beyond that movement gripe, there were a few times the cover system betrayed me, but his movement was acceptable enough, and I enjoyed the parkour flare that he had, even though the animations take a touch longer than I'd like them to sometimes.
I really quite enjoyed the skill tree system. You get points by leveling up, which can be done by gaining "followers" from completing activities of just about any kind, of which there are a lot. You can do main quests, side quests, online quests, picture scavenger hunts, races, being a taxi driver, etc. So there's a lot of variety for how you can get these "followers". Sometimes you need a piece of "key data" in order to unlock a section of the skill tree, and those will lead you to places of the map where you might have to do a hacking puzzle or sneaking mission to be able to unlock them, and they're usually a little more difficult than other random encounters. I liked it, the upgrades all felt like real meaningful additions to my kit, and allowed me to explore different playstyles with ease.
I thought that the "Dark Souls" style PvP invasions and other multiplayer events were super fun. I liked how they just randomly would happen and I would have to hunt another player down, or escape a certain area or something. Even in 2022, I'm surprised that people are still playing enough to where that's happening consistently, but man, it's way fun. I never got to try multiplayer with friends, but just the randoms I encountered during single player were enough to boost me into having a little extra fun. Helped me level up too! A really interesting mechanic that I didn't think I would like, but ended up really enjoying it.
Also, I am OBSESSED with the Dedsec branding, whoever did all of that pixel art, mixed with the old timey art, and the windows 98 computer vibes, with the skeletons and the reaper, and the spooky halloween kinda stuff... whatever team at Ubisoft came up with all that, they're all absolute freakin' genius's and if I was a content creator, I would hire all of them to do graphics for my videos or whatever because it absolutely speaks to me. So cool and unique. Though I have no freakin' clue how you would graffiti that stuff, that's gotta be borderline impossible lol. I would buy Dedsec merch in a heart beat. The art design for this game is incredible, and I can't get over it.
Overall, I am so surprised, even honestly shocked, at how much I enjoy this game. After playing it, I can't help but make comparisons to GTA5, of which, is probably WD2's direct competitor. You know, to each their own, but for me, I personally prefer Watch_Dogs 2. The meta-narrative, the characters, the activities, the skill tree, environmental interactions, etc., I just like it more. Totally subjective opinion. GTA5 feels and plays like a hyperbole of real life with an irreverent criminal twist, and Watch_Dogs 2 feels and plays like real life, with a video game twist. I think I just prefer WD2's more "gamified" approach to its game and world design, more than I did with GTA5's realistic, gritty take on the open world formula. Man. Watch_Dogs 2, what a good freakin' game. Not perfect, but definitely one of my favorites, and probably one of Ubisoft's best of all time.