The first Watchdogs caught Ubisoft at a Bad time. Flush red with the embarrassing launch of Assassins Creed Unity, Watchdogs was supposed to be the Knight in shining armor, a fresh IP with an Orwellian setting that promised a rich open world experience.
Well...That’s not how things panned out, at launch Watchdogs was greeted with a myriad of angry fans who simmered at the graphics downgrade, cut features, technical problems…it was a mess! Watchdogs gave Ubisoft bad publicity in droves, the kind which would have sunk a lesser company into the swamps of obscurity. Watchdogs, unwillingly became a poster child of things wrong within the video game industry.
Two years later, Ubisoft is having a second go at a franchise that nearly tanked them. Do they bring fresh ideas to the table?
Presentation
Straight off the bat, Watchdogs 2 doesn’t seem to have suffered any major Graphical downgrades from when it was first shown off. So, the aesthetic brigade can put those pitchforks away! The world in Watchdogs 2 is extremely well realized with great attention to detail. Free running across rooftops that overlook a river with a sunset in the background is truly an experience to behold, till you start noticing how sparse everything is. It feels like someone went through the trouble of creating a city that could house a lot of people but forgot to add well… people! The streets and buildings feel relatively empty. While, that’s not a game breaking issue, it just breaks immersion just a tiny bit. What does break the immersion a whole lot, are the weird glitches everywhere that pop up from time to time. It’s not too uncommon to see a weird box like thing suddenly morphing into a bus, like the game forgot to load textures and then suddenly went “HOLY S@!T” like someone sneaked up while it was taking a shower or something. Thankfully, problems like these aren’t too common and crop up only sporadically. The game also comes with a huge amount of graphical options to tinker with.
I ran the game on a slightly older Rig that had a GTX 970 and then went over to a friend’s place who has a GTX 1070. There do seem to weird optimization issues on both systems, frame rates will just unexplainably tank in certain empty areas to single digits, while areas with a lot going on, like lighting, tons of effects, explosions will play at smoothly at 60fps. This inconsistency in performance does rear its ugly head from time to time. Overall though, compared to the unplayable mess that the original was at launch, this is wayyyyy better! Watch Dogs 2 looks better than the first one and as a PC port performs better, if that’s any yardstick to go by, then good job Ubisoft…this is a good PC port.
Well...That’s not how things panned out, at launch Watchdogs was greeted with a myriad of angry fans who simmered at the graphics downgrade, cut features, technical problems…it was a mess! Watchdogs gave Ubisoft bad publicity in droves, the kind which would have sunk a lesser company into the swamps of obscurity. Watchdogs, unwillingly became a poster child of things wrong within the video game industry.
Two years later, Ubisoft is having a second go at a franchise that nearly tanked them. Do they bring fresh ideas to the table?
Presentation
Straight off the bat, Watchdogs 2 doesn’t seem to have suffered any major Graphical downgrades from when it was first shown off. So, the aesthetic brigade can put those pitchforks away! The world in Watchdogs 2 is extremely well realized with great attention to detail. Free running across rooftops that overlook a river with a sunset in the background is truly an experience to behold, till you start noticing how sparse everything is. It feels like someone went through the trouble of creating a city that could house a lot of people but forgot to add well… people! The streets and buildings feel relatively empty. While, that’s not a game breaking issue, it just breaks immersion just a tiny bit. What does break the immersion a whole lot, are the weird glitches everywhere that pop up from time to time. It’s not too uncommon to see a weird box like thing suddenly morphing into a bus, like the game forgot to load textures and then suddenly went “HOLY S@!T” like someone sneaked up while it was taking a shower or something. Thankfully, problems like these aren’t too common and crop up only sporadically. The game also comes with a huge amount of graphical options to tinker with.
I ran the game on a slightly older Rig that had a GTX 970 and then went over to a friend’s place who has a GTX 1070. There do seem to weird optimization issues on both systems, frame rates will just unexplainably tank in certain empty areas to single digits, while areas with a lot going on, like lighting, tons of effects, explosions will play at smoothly at 60fps. This inconsistency in performance does rear its ugly head from time to time. Overall though, compared to the unplayable mess that the original was at launch, this is wayyyyy better! Watch Dogs 2 looks better than the first one and as a PC port performs better, if that’s any yardstick to go by, then good job Ubisoft…this is a good PC port.
Gameplay
If you look past the technical mess the first one was, there was a cool game hiding in there. The amount of options you had at your disposal for tackling any given situation was just fun to tinker around with. Watch Dogs 2 works off the same template but branches out and expands in some interesting ways, you can hack just about anything in the game world from large fork lifts to security camera’s, every encounter feels like a chance to set up traps and watch the chaos unfold. There’s also a nethack mode which is elaborate and cheesy jargon for what amounts to a effect that lets you peek into the world, to survey potential hackable targets and doors. The combat feels like an open playground to tinker to your heart’s content with, and surveying a scene by hacking a security camera while hacking into a fork lift to run rampant at exactly the right moment is just as cool as it sounds. There are problems however, the enemy AI comically and consistently behaves like their brains are made of sponge. In one instance, I blew up a car behind a group to take them out, only to watch a second group come in, waltz into the fire left by the debris and die. In another instance, I hid two feet away from any enemy while I hacked an electronically locked door behind me and he refused to react and continued to stare blankly forward with a “I’m not getting paid enough for this S@!”expression. Weirdly, the weak AI doesn’t hamper the fun factor a whole lot. What is supremely annoying however, is the sticky cover system, routinely leaving you hanging in the middle of a fire fight and open to taking damage. I am also not a huge fan of the context sensitive control scheme that Ubisoft has carried over from the Assassins Creed games, but to each his own. The control scheme works great for the huge variety of parkour stuff you can pull off however.
Story
You play as Marcus, a turn of the century Millennial who also happens to be a fantastic hacker. Marcus is cocky, idealistic and a pop culture aficionado, in other words everything that the insufferable Aiden from the first game wasn’t. There also seems to be a lighter tone this time, with constant jokes and spoofs. What starts out as a cool Mr. Robot like thriller slowly devolves into the inherent cheesiness of a movie like The Net. Weirdly, it seems like Ubisoft is in on the joke, like they are laughing along with you at the cheesiness of it all. How else would you explain a side mission as ridiculous as rescuing a celebrity from a cult? It’s deliberate helping of cheese that leans toward the more fun side of the hacker culture. After all, this is a game where you can 3D print your weapons for god’s sake!
Conclusion
Is Watch Dogs 2 perfect? Nope but it’s not as bad as people thought it would be. At its best, it’s a fun romp the first time through, with a lot of side quests and activities to explore, it’s surprisingly long too, my first play through lasted about 16 hours which is a decent amount of time for an open world game. I am not sure; I will be coming back for a second helping anytime though.
If you look past the technical mess the first one was, there was a cool game hiding in there. The amount of options you had at your disposal for tackling any given situation was just fun to tinker around with. Watch Dogs 2 works off the same template but branches out and expands in some interesting ways, you can hack just about anything in the game world from large fork lifts to security camera’s, every encounter feels like a chance to set up traps and watch the chaos unfold. There’s also a nethack mode which is elaborate and cheesy jargon for what amounts to a effect that lets you peek into the world, to survey potential hackable targets and doors. The combat feels like an open playground to tinker to your heart’s content with, and surveying a scene by hacking a security camera while hacking into a fork lift to run rampant at exactly the right moment is just as cool as it sounds. There are problems however, the enemy AI comically and consistently behaves like their brains are made of sponge. In one instance, I blew up a car behind a group to take them out, only to watch a second group come in, waltz into the fire left by the debris and die. In another instance, I hid two feet away from any enemy while I hacked an electronically locked door behind me and he refused to react and continued to stare blankly forward with a “I’m not getting paid enough for this S@!”expression. Weirdly, the weak AI doesn’t hamper the fun factor a whole lot. What is supremely annoying however, is the sticky cover system, routinely leaving you hanging in the middle of a fire fight and open to taking damage. I am also not a huge fan of the context sensitive control scheme that Ubisoft has carried over from the Assassins Creed games, but to each his own. The control scheme works great for the huge variety of parkour stuff you can pull off however.
Story
You play as Marcus, a turn of the century Millennial who also happens to be a fantastic hacker. Marcus is cocky, idealistic and a pop culture aficionado, in other words everything that the insufferable Aiden from the first game wasn’t. There also seems to be a lighter tone this time, with constant jokes and spoofs. What starts out as a cool Mr. Robot like thriller slowly devolves into the inherent cheesiness of a movie like The Net. Weirdly, it seems like Ubisoft is in on the joke, like they are laughing along with you at the cheesiness of it all. How else would you explain a side mission as ridiculous as rescuing a celebrity from a cult? It’s deliberate helping of cheese that leans toward the more fun side of the hacker culture. After all, this is a game where you can 3D print your weapons for god’s sake!
Conclusion
Is Watch Dogs 2 perfect? Nope but it’s not as bad as people thought it would be. At its best, it’s a fun romp the first time through, with a lot of side quests and activities to explore, it’s surprisingly long too, my first play through lasted about 16 hours which is a decent amount of time for an open world game. I am not sure; I will be coming back for a second helping anytime though.
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