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REVIEW: WATCH DOGS 2 (PS4, Xbox One, PC - PS4 version tested)

7/12/2016

16 Comments

 
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Uh, yeah. So Watch Dogs was really popular, at least in terms of sales. When it came to the critical consensus this was the response: "Sir! That's not very good!" 

Because I'm The Man of the People, I sort of leaned towards those who bought the game. It wasn't perfect - essentially a sort of sterile, humourless version of GTA, featuring a middle-aged focus group's idea of what a hacker should be - but the central gameplay conceit was actually real big fun.

Being a pervert, I liked prying into people's personal data, and I liked using the city around me as a weapon by turning its connectivity against my enemies. Plus, frankly, I thought the shooting and the driving were vastly superior to GTA's offerings.

Still, the criticism must've stung UbiSoft, because they've gone all out to improve on the main thing that critics felt was bad-faced with the original: they got rid of the protagonist, and introduced a bunch of new ones. 

It's not unwelcome, but it does feel a bit like a work colleague being told they're boring, and then turning up at the office the next day wearing a piano keyboard tie, and blowing an airhorn, shouting "IS THIS WHAT YOU WANTED THEN?!"
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HACKO
Watch Dogs 2 takes place in San Francisco, and - fundamentally - it plays exactly like its predecessor. It's another open-world map-mopper, another GTA-lite, which we've only had about two dozen of already this year, 

In place of that man who wore a hoodie and looked like he'd come fresh from Video Game Character Central Casting, are a young, shades-wearing black dude, and bunch of socially awkward twentysomething hackers. They're clearly influenced by the TV show Mr Robot, to the point that one of them is evidently quite high on the autism spectrum. Although I can't work out whether they were playing that for laughs or not.

Humour is ramped up (one early mission has you stealing a Knight Rider-style talking car), and - while it doesn't always land - is welcome after the laugh-free wasteland of its predecessor. It still feels to me as if they're trying a bit too hard to be cool, a bit too hard to be likeable, but it's hard not to fault the intent.

Beyond that there's not much here that feels like a revolution; there are new hacking powers - you can summon the cops or gang members to descend on an opponent, which is a hoot - plus objects can usually be hacked in a number of ways (explode a gas pipe instantly or set it to explode when a pursuer drives over it, for instance). Plus, a lot of it will be played from the POV of your new drone and radio controlled car - neither of which are as annoying as such features often are when forced upon you in certain games.

Weirdly, where I found the stealth in Dishonored 2 something of a chore, it was always the approach I favoured in Watch Dogs 2. The hacking is so empowering that I wanted to play with it as much as possible, keeping my distance, and inflitrating bases remotely.

​Despite borrowing so much from the GTA series, and UbiSoft's own model of littering an open world map with more side-content than most of us could ever see in our lifetimes, that hacking gameplay is enough in itself to make the game feel distinct.

ARE THERE SURPRISES?
There aren't a great many surprises in Watch Dogs 2 - it continues much as it begins, but the variety, partly driven by the different approaches offered by each mission, ensures that it has longevity to spare. This being UbiSoft, the offerings are expanded with missions and options played online, but at least they feel organic to the gameplay.

Ultimately, this worked for me due to a combination of gameplay which isn't offered by anything else out there, and by its attempts to feel characterful. The humour and its grasps at satire - Silicon Valley and Scientilogy both come in for stick - can often be heavy-handed, but it's better than the morose portent offered by almost everything else.

Also: hats off to the spot-on recreation of San Francisco. It's certainly not as compelling an environment as San Andreas or Liberty City - or even Mafia 3's semi-imagining of 1960s New Orleans. Nevertheless, it's still beautifully realised, and authentic.

In fact, it made me want to revisit San Francisco - a city I've not been back to since the Pickford Brothers took me and their entire company there in the early-00s.

They may remember me kindly offering to buy tickets in advance for all of us to visit Alcatraz. That was the least I could do, I thought, after they'd been so charitable. Except when I picked up the tickets at the booth I realised we were a ticket short, having failed to count myself among our number.  And so I was the only one not to visit the Alcatraz that day, and had to go round the bay on a boat, by myself. I'm not bitter that nobody offered me their ticket. I just, y'know, have never forgotten it for all kinds of reasons, yeah...?

SUMMARY: I didn't quite leave my heart in San Francisco... but I did leave my trousers there.
​SCORE: I 'unno. 
FROM THE ARCHIVE:
REVIEW: DISHONORED 2 (PS4, XBOX ONE, PC - PS4 VERSION TESTED)
REVIEW: DEUS EX - MANKIND DIVIDED (PS4, XBOX ONE, PC - PS4 VERSION TESTED)​
REVIEW: MAFIA III (PS4, XBOX ONE, PC - PS4 VERSION TESTED)
16 Comments
The Bird Man
7/12/2016 11:10:05 am

Frankly you deserved not to go to Alcatraz for such a terrible ticket ordering error.

Although I'm happy to report that I visited this year and it was brilliant.

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Too big for shell help
7/12/2016 11:13:09 am

'Plus, frankly, I thought the shooting and the driving were vastly superior to GTA's offerings.'

This is why I enjoy your writing style and humour, but take any actual reviewing with a Lott's missus-sized pinch of salt

I found the shooting in WD terrible, but OK, I can skim that and not give it any further thought, different people different opinions etc...

But...you thought WATCHDOG's driving was better than GTA V's. Really? Actually though? Is this the famous 'clickbait' all the kids talk about?

I guess I have to ask, what is it you look for in videogame driving?

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Mr Biffo
7/12/2016 11:16:54 am

Not spending the whole time clipping lampposts and killing pedestrians.

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Too big for shell help
7/12/2016 11:42:46 am

You'll love the driving in FFXV then! Was it too slippery in GTA V? I know a lot of people think the cars in IV handle like boats

Stamford Grill
7/12/2016 11:45:52 am

2 reviews in one day! Monsieur Biffmeister, you are spoiling us

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Spiney O'Sullivan
7/12/2016 12:02:55 pm

I'm playing Watchdogs 1 at the moment, and actually quite enjoying it. I don't even find Aiden Pierce that annoying (just a bit average), and the hacking stealth gameplay is really fun. Plus, the minigames and digital trips offered far more colour and variety than I expected from it.

The driving definitely isn't quite as good as GTA, though. It's probably on par with Sleeping Dogs mechanically, though the addition of bullet time and the hacking tricks are great fun. It does take bloody ages to lose pursuers, though...

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combat_honey
7/12/2016 01:11:56 pm

I've always felt that WD1's poor reputation was mainly the result of it being massively overhyped, along with the popular idea that any game that scores lower than an 8 in any publication is an abject failure (especially if its a big studio game).

I remember having great fun with it, anyway, and now that you've reminded me of the digital trips and some of the side content, I do definitely feel it was more characterful and varied than it's given credit for. Also, on a personal note, having been to Chicago some years before the game came out, it was fun to re-visit a digital reconstruction of it.

(Coincidentally, I went to San Francisco earlier this year, so I'm looking forward to seeing WD2's version of it while it's still quite fresh in my memory. Though, as usual, Mrs combat_honey did most of the navigating and map-reading, so I don't have *that* good a sense of where things should be in relation to one another. Another coincidence - while we were there we stumbled across Ubisoft's San Francisco HQ, which led to me making an hilarious joke about wondering if we could 'unlock more content' if we climbed up the side of it and on to the roof. LOL!)

I agree with Biffo about the shooting being superior to GTA, and the on-foot movement was definitely much better too. (To me, GTA 5 characters manage to seem simultaneously weightless and as though they're running through treacle.) I never understood the criticism of the driving - it always seemed completely fine to me. But then I don't play driving games or drive in real life, so maybe I'm less likely to notice poor driving mechanics, or something.

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John
7/12/2016 12:05:02 pm

But does it warn of 'spiky bits'?

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SweetMrGibs
7/12/2016 12:29:09 pm

I bought this game, expecting to love it. Imagine my dismay when I found out it wasn't about being an audience member at Crufts.

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SalmonPuff
7/12/2016 12:51:28 pm

Tim Vine ladies and gentlemen

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Retro Resolution link
7/12/2016 05:06:19 pm

You've outdone yourself with this pun Gibster

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Ste Pickford
7/12/2016 12:37:37 pm

Hah, I wasn't with you on the trip to Alcatraz as I had the hangover from hell. I'm sure I would have given you my ticket so I could go and hide under a rock or something.

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Mr Biffo
7/12/2016 12:41:43 pm

What?!? Now you tell me. This gets worse and worse...

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Winkle
7/12/2016 06:15:39 pm

great quote from another site:

'The game’s primary conceit is that in order to take down the technocratic elite that buys and sells private information, a team of hackers must perform a series of increasingly elaborate stunts to gain social media followers. The goal is to then sell those followers an app, which is less a revolution than the actual definition of viral marketing.'

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Nick Carver link
9/12/2016 08:21:16 am

I'm enjoying this as much as it is possible to enjoy a Ubisoft product. I think that the core mechanics work very well for the most part and there's a ton of stuff to do, which is on the whole, pretty enjoyable. I particularly enjoy the side quests that require you to use the combo of wheelie drone and heli drone to find items. There are some great little platform puzzles that feel like someone actually ENJOYED designing them. Also, whoever designed those 3d Pipemania 'hack the side of a building' puzzles: I hate you.

Whenever I play one of Ubi's games I find myself wishing they had more personality, like they were someone's brainchild rather than an exercise in comprehensive box-ticking. However, it's a marvel to me that these kinds of games can even be successfully developed given how many people are involved in the process. I guess the price of such a production-line style development is that uniqueness gets jettisoned in favour of tried and tested ideas.

As for the story, I find the whole thing is so confused. I mean, there's already a disconnect in a lot of open world games (ones that feature cutscenes at least) where the scale and tone of what happens in the story is often completely detached from what happens in gameplay. Watch Dogs 2 is even more jarring than most games though as it presents a bunch of plucky 'hacktivists' (shudder) who are on the one hand trying to get followers for their app and on the other, 3d printing weapons that the player can use to mow down untold scores of police, security forces, and civilians. And tonally the thing is so lumpy, with commentary on racism and police corruption rubbing up against missions where you steal a talking car, or hang out at Burning Man for hackers. Ubisoft shouldn't try to be cool if this is the result. I find myself skipping as much of the story as possible to be honest.

Oh, and I recommend giving the 1vs1 hacking mode a go. I'm not much of an online player, but I find this organic game of cat and mouse to be pretty great!

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Jambo Bobbins
11/12/2016 10:48:38 am

Thanks! Think I'll get this, then. I enjoyed Watchdogs, including its drivy and shooty bits, infinitely more than self-indulgent prick-sim GTA V. Playing that always made me feel like I'd spent the time watching really seedy porn, says I.

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